Cross Promoting Techniques that Work

September 17th, 2009 No comments

Cross promotions are not a new idea. They have been used by businesses for a very long time. For example, a real-estate company may promote a certain lawyer to close a sale, as the lawyer will promote that agency in his firm. The system is somewhat similar to the primitive barter system, where people traded items rather than using money. How can anything primitive fit into the online world of Internet marketing? Very easily. Cross promotions are, simply stated, a trade of advertising space. Instead of paying for advertising space on a site, you would place their ad on your page and yours on theirs. There are many ways to use cross promotions in your internet business that can be an effective and cost efficient way to advertise.

One way is to use link exchanges. This is very effective when doing cross promotions with a company that is similar to yours, however you should be sure and never link to a page that is in direct competition with yours. One of the best things about link exchanges is that some search engines are factoring in hits from the sites that are linked to your page to
when determining the ranking. Therefore linking to a more popular site, can not only increase your advertising, and traffic, but also increase your
search engine ranking.

When customers or potential customers subscribe to your ezine you can use this as an opportunity to use cross promotions. On the same page that the customer subscribes to your ezine, make available the opportunity to subscribe to another company’s ezine. You can even exchange ad space in ezines, and provide recommendations for those whom you cross promote with.
You might even want to exchange column space in one another’s ezines.

Writing free articles that inform customers or potential customers with information that is useful and accurate can create a reputation for you and your business. Soon readers will come to know you as an expert on the subject. In these articles the author uses a byline to help promote his site. Bylines can be a way to use cross promotions as well. You can use
part of the space in your byline to recommend another’s product.

If you have been considering writing an ebook, a joint venture could mean increased profits for you and the person you are partnering with. Cross promotions through ebooks are an excellent way to allow for a wider topic and to promote both your business and your partner’s business. The ebook should contain information that will benefit both businesses and still be helpful to the reader. A good example of using cross promotions through an ebook is to a site selling used video games partnering with a site selling gaming devices. These are two subjects that would interest the same reader and most likely lead the reader to both sites.

You should keep in mind that the recommendations that you make are a direct reflection of you, so choose your cross promotional businesses carefully. Also keep in mind that it would be nice as a shopper to be able to link from one site to another as a way to “shop around.“ Since this is usually not beneficial to you, never link or recommend a site that is in direct competition with you. Instead, recommend those who are similar, such as health and life insurance.

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Create an Online Business Site

September 11th, 2009 No comments

Hundreds of people daily are looking to create an Online Web Based Business. You can recognize the demand for online business by looking at the searches made on the search engines. They are phrases like create an online business site web, business online small web, business online page, business, online site web, web hosting for online business and online web site business opportunity just to mention a few.

Recently I wrote several articles, one about specific landing pages, another about matching keywords to specific landing pages and the last one was on keyword pricing.  This time I am going to cover a few easy ways to monitor your campaigns so that you ensure you are accomplishing what you set out to do. Otherwise you will not bear the fruits of your efforts.

As I mentioned in my other articles you should ensure that you have a different landing page on your site for each area of you business. For example on my site I have a landing page for Work At Home, Top 10 business, Home Based Business, Moms Jobs, Affiliates, Data Entry, Online Paid Surveys and a link to my real time newsletter.

When utilizing one of the tools available to us called (PPC) Paid Per Click Advertising, whereby we pay a search engine pennies to show our ad when someone types in particular keyword.  As I mentioned in my other article you must break up your keywords in such a manner as to have all of your keywords on a given topic sent to the specific landing page. For example you should have all Work At Home keywords go to your landing page, which is mostly about Work At Home ideas. Like wise have you keywords on Home Based Business go to the landing page that highlights Home Based Business Opportunities.

In addition you don’t want to bidding against your self so you want to make sure that you don’t mix and match your keywords. You will want to advertise only the keywords that match a specific landing page when using (PPC) Paid Per Click Advertising. Don’t have Work At Home keywords mixed in with Online Paid Surveys sending people to multiple landing Pages.

You will want to use multiple variation of a given keyword. Think about the conversation going on in your customer’s head. What would you type in if you were searching for the same thing? What would others type? Don’t just set you campaigns to run on a maximum price per click. Do some research to see how much a particular keyword is being searched for. This will help you set your keyword pricing.

So that you may ensure that your efforts are working you can monitor your campaigns on each search engine. Each search engine should have a reports page, whereby you can look up keywords for the day and it will show you what landing page your potential customer was sent to. If they clicked on the keyword Home Based Business and they were sent to your Work At Home page instead of your Home Based Business page then you know modifications are required. This will show that you must have home based business set as a keyword in you work at home campaign in addition to or instead of your Home Base Business campaign. You will either have to delete it and add it to your Home Based Business Campaign or move it there depending on the search engine.

Another tool you can use is to add a free counter to your page. There are many online that track urls so that not only can you see the ip address, time, landing page, length of time on your site, but many times it will show you the keyword searched for as well. It will help you see what needs to me modified on an ongoing basis.

Every subtle change in your website landing page, keywords, keyword bidding, no matter how minuscule, has an effect on your customer. I always recommend change, monitor, analyze, modify and keep continuing the process. Compare the new change to the old one so that you can see which landing page converts best.

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Building a Home Internet Business – It’s Easier Than You Think

September 6th, 2009 No comments

Building a home Internet business does not take an enormous chunk of money or computer expertise to get started. With a business based on the Internet, you will be surprised at how easy and cheaply you can have your own business that makes money for you. You do have expenses when building a home Internet business, but they are very minor when you compare them to the expenses involved in a brick and mortar business.

Going into Internet based businesses blindly is not really a good choice. You do need someone to mentor you while you are building a home Internet business and there are many legitimate programs that you can enrol in to help you as you are building your business from the ground up.

Before you start building a home Internet business you need to determine what it is you want to sell. It may be something you know that consumers really want to buy, but you do need a plan so that they will buy from your Internet based business. Therefore you have to think about the design of the website and how you want to market the products. It will only take a few sentences to achieve the goal of selling from your Internet business when you explain to customers visiting your site, why they need this product. You don’t need to be a superb author to do so. This will keep the customers interested and want to explore what you have to offer.

Begin building a home Internet business with the end goal in mind. Make a list of all the keywords associated with your product, including the benefits, because this is how Internet based businesses get high rankings in the search engines. Describe what it is your business sells and set a goal for yourself in terms of how much money you would realistically like to make from this business.

The next step in building a home Internet business is to start thinking like a customer. If you were to search the various Internet based businesses selling this same product, what would you be looking for? You can test out your plan for your home based Internet business by using the keywords you came up to do an online search. This will give you an idea of how many Internet businesses there are selling this same product. You may decide to continue or you might start building a home Internet business with a different focus. There are almost limitless ideas for working from home with a business on the Internet.

Building a home Internet business is extremely achievable for almost anyone, it just takes some application and some knowledge about how to do it, which is always available.

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Home Based Business Ideas

September 1st, 2009 No comments

So you want to start your own business and want to know what the hottest markets are. Well here they are, the best business ideas of 2006. These are what is hot right now and a great investment.

1. Tea: This is one the hottest trends out there. Teas are offered in organic brands, mixes, and in individual bags. The health benefits alone will give you content to drive business your way.

2. Online Specialty Foods: Many people are just not interested in hamburgers and hotdogs anymore. They want specialty dishes and recipes that they don’t have to leave their homes for.

3. Do-it-Yourself Meal Preparation: In the day and age where I want it all and I want it now there is this new way to get all your meals done for the month. Consumers pay to learn how to make a months worth of meals that are healthy and that they can freeze. This will save them tons of preparation time each night and make dining easy.

4. One-Product Restaurants: this capitalizes on one specific type of food and all you can do with it. Sounds crazy but it makes many millions.

5. Chocolate Cafes: We all love chocolate and just can’t resist it. You can eat your profits all the way to the bank with this enterprise.

6. Shredding: In the day of identity theft it is very good business to have a shredding company. Not only does this promote safety but can help the environment.

7. ID Theft Prevention and Recovery: The rise in identity theft can offer many business opportunities. Providing safety for a fee is the way to go in this market.

8. Hosted Security Provider: Get paid to keep other people’s web sites free from hackers, spyware, Trojans, worms, and viruses. Many don’t have the time to do it themselves so you can do it for them.

9. Data Backup: Help others to back up all their data so they can retrieve it later if need be.

10. Surveillance Camera: These are a hot item these days to be selling. With all the crazy people out there today every business can use one.

11. Mobile Ad-Ons: This is one of the biggest of the big markets. Providing wireless users with toys for their cell phones.
 
12. Aftermarket Accessories: This gives consumers new and fun items to spruce up their cell phones, iPods, and any other gadget they have.
 
13. Home Staging: You can showcase a property that will increase the value to its owners and put lots of cash in your pocket.

14. Senior Retrofitting: This will capitalize on the idea that older people will want to have their home remodeled to fit their needs instead of selling their property.

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10 ways to make money online

August 28th, 2009 No comments

1. Online advertising – On the Internet, a smartly organized small business may get excellent results, often competing side by side with larger corporations. Internet advertising is on an ascending trend, which shows plenty of potential for the near and distant future. As traditional media outlets struggle to keep costs down and become more attractive for potential advertisers, the virtual space offers any business the opportunity to achieve amazing results with a budget that is only a fraction of what an advertiser would pay to get the same ROI through traditional media. Using programs such as Google Adsense, placing affiliate banners on your site and making the most out of pixel advertising are all amazing ways to make some money.

2. Affiliate programs – You can choose affiliate hubs where different advertisers offer their banners and affiliate offers and you can manage them using a centralized system, or you can get a single affiliate website that will display their banners on your site. The potential profits that come from affiliate programs are strictly connected to how high your visitor counts are and how targeted those visitors are. This takes us a bit away from affiliate systems and highlights the importance of SEO in any online business. The web masters who invest money and energy into ethical SEO techniques often notice a very steady increase in traffic, which, in turn, enables them to make more profit from their online business.
3. Freelance jobs – Working as a freelancer on the Internet is one of the most popular ways of making money from home. You can try your luck at graphic design, copywriting, programming and several other dozens of ramifications and project types.

4. Electronic commerce – selling items on eBay is one of the hottest ways of making a lot of cash online. Not everyone is successful at it, of course, but those that are continue to increase their profits constantly. Auctions on eBay have a lot of potential – combine them with dropshipping and you can get a business that’s easy to run and very profitable at the same time.
5. Paid surfing and survey filling – There are a number of companies that pay you to surf the web. They display a small add on your desktop when you are connected to the Internet and give you a percentage of the advertising revenue they receive. The amount per hour is not very big, but there are ways to multiply it by referring other people. This is really the focus of all this programs. Tell everybody you know that they too, can get paid to surf, and get paid yourself for referring them. Paid surveys are also great, since they are easy to fill in and anyone can do that from the comfort of their own home.

6. Networking – while this is not actually a direct way of generating profit, you can use social networking and MLMs to generate leads and drive traffic to your online business.
7. Selling websites and domain names is becoming an extremely popular area, which still has a lot of room for development. If you bought a nice, short and relevant domain name a while ago, you can make a small fortune selling it today. If you don’t believe me, check out these figures, for the top five most expensive domain sales in the last few years:
Business.com – $7.5 million
AsSeenOnTv.com – $5.1 million
Altavista.com – $3.3 million
Wine.com – $2.9 million
Autos.com – $2.2 million

8. Work at home jobs – Depending on how much time you are willing to put into a work at home opportunity, you could either do it in your spare time, or make it your main income source. Work at home jobs are suitable for everyone: from students, to retired people. You do not sign any documents or commit in writing to anything, thus you are not obliged to work if you do not feel like it. In a modern society, with parents spending more time at home raising their children and college students looking for a comfortable part time job, a work at home opportunity is the perfect answer.

9. Outsourcing – this is not a moneymaking opportunity, but a money saving one. Outsourcing is the best way to create a competitive business in countries like the United States, Canada and most of Europe.

10. Free stuff online – you will not get rich while taking advantage of all the free stuff you can get online, but it is fun and rewarding. If you are a webmaster and you wish to create a very popular website, do your best to offer lots of things for free – downloads, software, ebooks, wallpapers and so on.

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10 Tools A Work At Home Newbie Can Use to Leverage Your Way to Success

August 26th, 2009 No comments

As a solo entrepreneur you can get overwhelmed trying to wear all the hats. If you are just starting out you are the CEO, the sales person, the book-keeper and the dish washer.  You know that I mean?  You might have heard the phrase create leverage and if so great. However, once you make that discovery you are now simply exposed to so many options it’s hard to know what to choose.

As a work at home business one of the goals is to create an experience for the customer that is as easy as if they were buying from a Fortune 500. So how do you make it happen?

One of the best things you can do is look for good products that can demonstrate value to the customer but involves little to no work on your part.

Here are 10 tools that are easy for the non techs but add great value to the customer.

1. www.Efax.com: EFax is an online fax service that eliminates the need for a traditional fax  machine, another line and all the associated expenses such as paper and ink cartridges. You get a real fax number that’s tied to your email.
   
 
2. www.Aweber.com: If you want to keep in touch with your customers automatically and personalize the communication an auto responder can be an important tool.  For a small monthly fee you are able to create email campaigns or a single message and broadcast it to your customer list. There are a variety of ways to increase the personalization and as a result will help you develop a better relationship with the customer.
3. www.VoiceShot.com: How would you like to instantly send a voice mail broadcast message to one or thousands of customers at a time? Imagine the power of being able to send reminders, alerts, product announcements or even so interactive polls or surveys right from the web. There are no set up fees or monthly minimums. You simply pay for the calls that are delivered. You truly can call more than one person at a time.

4. www.SendOutCards.com: Have you ever wanted to send a thoughtful card to someone but forgot or it simply did not happen because you ran out of time? Well Kody Bateman CEO of send out cards has not only revolutionized the greeting card industry he has made it his mission to change peoples lives one card at a time. With over a couple of cards in the inventory you can send cards to anyone.

I love this product because in less than one minute you can choose a card, personalize it, even add a picture, write it with your own handwriting, put a stamp on it and hit send. This is no e-card that may never get opened. You can set yourself apart from the competition and touch the heart of people you care about with this revolutionary product.

     
5. www.AudioAcrobat.com: Audio Acrobat is easiest way to add audio to your website or email. Would you to create your own online radio show? Audio Acrobat helps you record conference calls, podcast, interviews, and more. You can also learn to create products such as marketable CD’s.
6. www.FreeConference.com: Have you ever wanted to give a tele-seminar but did not want have the money to get started? Or maybe, you wanted to put a group of your customers or support team on the line to mastermind. A great way to not only develop a bound with your customers but to develop your content to them is through tele-seminars or tele-classes as they are sometimes called.

If you are just starting try www.FreeConference.com . You will receive a phone number where up to 25 participates can call in and listen to your seminar, boot camp, book reading or whatever content you want to deliver.

As you grow in experience you can choose other companies that will allow a larger number of participates as well options such as recording and creating a MP3 file.

Conference calls are great leverage because you can speak to several people at one time from the comfort of your home.
7. www.freeonlinesurveys.com: Would you like to know what your customers are thinking? You should. It’s simple to do when survey them. You can use this free online service to tap in the heart and mind your customer and uncover what they want from you. In less than 10 minutes you can be up and running. It’s easy to use with no software to install.
 

8. www.ilovechecks.com: Current figures show that 20% of all online transactions are check-based and that more  than 75 million Americans do not have a credit card. Now your business can accept online checks and get fast verification of account status. You don’t even need a shopping cart to process online checks with their virtual terminal and ATMVerify services. Don’t lose business because you don’t take checks.

9. www.EVoice.com or www.EVoicePlus.com: If you are a start up or home based business you may not want to miss your  customers calls or have them go to a voice mail. Providing a quick response gives your clients to assurance that you are a well run business.
      
The ability to answer a customer or get back to them quickly is a crucial part of customer service. There are several different ways to accomplish this. However, www.evoice.com and www.evoiceplus.com are two lost cost highly effective tools.  EVoice allows the messages to be send to your email and with EVoice Plus your messages can go right to your cell phone.
      
10. www.PDF995.com:  One of the keys to leverage your business is to create free reports, products, e-books and other publishing documents. The power of this strategy is once you develop a product you can either give it away or sell it over and over. You can even add free give-away rights which will allow someone to give your report away without changing any of the content. This can start a buzz and spread like a virus.

While there are only 24 hours in a day choosing the right tools can surely help you leverage the time. Think strategically when you are looking for products and service to help you build your business. Don’t just think about what you need right now. Always ask your self the question, “How can this tool help me grow into a million dollar business?”

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10 reasons for starting a profitable home business online.

August 21st, 2009 No comments

It’s possible to start a home business online with very little
outlay and you can easily earn from $100 to thousands per day.

1. You want to escape the rat race. You’d rather spend the 2 hours
you waste every day with your family, or on a hobby. Running your
own business online you can stop the commute, and you can feel good
because you are helping to cut pollution too.

2 You can work part time building your new home business online until
you see it taking off. You aren’t giving up your bill paying regular
job to jump in without any income.

3 It’s possible to start a home business online with very little
outlay. Webhosting is cheaper than a bricks and mortar shopfront.
You already have the pc to access the net, it can start working
for it’s keep.

4 You can choose your own hours. If you have an appointment to keep
in the morning, start your online work in the afternoon. No one can
tell you “you can’t have that week off in August, Bill got in first”

5 If you work harder you can benefit directly, you put more hours in
and your online business makes more profit, your wages go up. Your
salary isn’t fixed by someone elses view of what you’re worth.

6 A lot of online business tasks can be automated, using readily
available tools. Emails can be automatically sent by
autoresponders, even regularly asked questions can be sorted and
answered by software.

7 A website works 24 hours a day without complaining. Even if you’re
on holiday your online business website can be working online for
you bringing in money.

8 Your online business can be as far reaching as you want, it can
offer something for your local community. It can equally sell to
people around the world, without penalty. It doesn’t cost any extra
to send an email to Australia, or for your website to be used to
make a purchase by someone in Europe.

9 Starting a home business online means you have a continuously
growing market as more and more people come online everyday.

10 It’s dress down day everyday. You can work in your pyjamas if you
want, nobody’s going to stop you in your own home. No more suits and
ties unless you want to wear them, but that’s your choice.

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5 Ways Moms Can Make Money With A Home Business

August 16th, 2009 No comments

Does the idea of starting your own business from home sound appealing? Has finding the right one stumped you?  Do you often think that if you could make money at home you would be one very happy person? Then read on and see how easy it is to make money with a home business.

Make Money with Your Interests
Everyone is born with a special talent that sets them apart from others. Your job is to figure out what that talent is and find a way to turn it into a business. One lady I profiled in my book, “The Stay-at-Home Mom’s Guide To Making Money” had always liked horses. When she was younger she didn’t have a horse of her own, so she would groom and feed other people’s horses just for the chance to ride. Now that she is an adult, she has turned that interest into a pet sitting business. While she takes care of the smaller critters, she has niched herself in the area of horse care.

What Are Your Hobbies?
Is your hobby candle making, painting portraits, herb gardening? These are all great home businesses just waiting to happen, and you don’t necessarily have to produce these items to make money. Maybe you could start a newsletter on the subject of your hobby for others just like you.  Maybe you could sell supplies to other hobbyists or businesses. Or maybe you could write a book on the subject. Once you start brainstorming you’ll be surprised at all the ideas you will come up with.

One woman I’ve met online is now the owner of her own portrait sketching business. She actually had two other home businesses before she decided that she could make extra money drawing sketches of people.  She does incredible work, and when you look at your pictures it’s hard to believe she hasn’t been doing this longer. Sometimes the business for you is right in front of you; it’s just hard to believe that someone would actually pay you to do something that comes so easily and naturally for you.

You’re Producing a Product or Service for Your Friends and Family for Free already.

I talk with moms all the time who say their family or friends are always coming to them because they are great at creating a resume, or because they can really put a nice bouquet of flowers together for special events. These are all great ideas for a home business. Seriously consider charging for these services. Let your family and friends know you are in business. They’ve already used you in the past for these things; they trust your work. They will probably enjoy spreading the word and letting other people know that you are open for business.
 
Go With What You Already Know A Lot About
Maybe you enjoy your work outside the home but still want to be home with your kids, or want the flexibly and satisfaction of owning your own home business. Use your previous skills to get your business started. Teachers become tutors, secretaries become virtual assistants, graphic artists become — graphic artists. The same can go for architects, photographers, and transcriptionists. You’ll be surprised at the number of jobs you’ve held in the past that could be the key to getting your own home business started now.

Have You Ever Thought, “Why Doesn’t Someone Start A Business Doing…?”

Do you see the need for a particular product or service in your community? Are you trying to figure out why someone hasn’t thought of it and started providing it yet? Why can’t that someone be you? There is no reason why you shouldn’t be the one to see a need, fill it, and make money from it.

You have many interests, talents, previous experiences, hobbies, and good ideas that are just waiting to be turned into a money making venture. Why not make this the year your home business dreams come true?

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7 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Website

August 15th, 2009 No comments

Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word. Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic.

So, we all know that in the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you want think that you’re not getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider. If you are contending in these very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.
http://www.autohomecash.com

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5 Tips To Make Your Home-Based Business Not Appear “Homemade”

August 14th, 2009 No comments

One of the toughest obstacles we face when working from home is making it appear that we’re not, in fact, working from home. When clients call and there are kids screaming in the background, pets barking and meowing and timers going off for laundry and cooking, it doesn’t appear professional. So, how can we appear more professional?

Tip # 1: Have a clean, professional website with your own domain name.
Do not, under any circumstances, have a “free” website hosted on another domain name with other company’s ads all over the place! This is one of the biggest no-no’s out there! Decide, instead, that in order to appear professional, you must invest in a professional website. If you aren’t skilled in web design, hire someone to do it for you or barter with another home-based business owner who does do web design. Choose a domain name that is closely related to your business’s name.

Tip # 2: Invest in a separate phone line or in a distinctive ring tone for that line.
Most phone companies offer a plan where you can have two or more numbers ringing to one phone line with distinctive rings. It’s usually better to have a separate phone line in your office, in order to avoid after-hours phone calls from clients. This also enables you to “shut the door” on work when you’re not there. Use a professional voicemail message or answering machine message and check the messages often.

Tip # 3: Think about how to display your business address.
How are you going to display your physical location? There are a few different options available. Most home-based business owners will say that they accept meetings by appointment only, to discourage clients from “dropping in” while they’re still in their jammies and haven’t had their morning coffee yet. If you don’t want your customers to know you work from home, two other options are using a P.O. Box or attaching a “Suite” number to your address. If you use a P.O. Box, you will have to give your home address out for packages and anything they want to courier to you, but it does provide anonymity and discourages drop-in visitors. If you attach a suite number to your address in order to make it appear a “business office,” make sure you mention to your postal carrier that you’re running a home-based business and that’s why there’s a different address on there.

Tip # 4: Define your office etiquette rules to your family.
What are the rules going to be for your kids and family members when you’re on the phone or meeting with a client? Are you going to set a timer so they know when you’ll be available? Are you going to have set office hours and not meet with clients outside of those times? Are you going to have a play space in your office? This is especially important if you’re going to have small kids playing nearby (quietly) while you work.

Tip # 5: Invest in professional-quality promotional products and marketing pieces.
Don’t print off business cards from your printer, unless you have a top-of-the-line printer. Invest in professional-quality business cards and brochures. If you can, have some letterhead printed up, too, for contracts, letters to prospective clients and any correspondence that is business-related. If you’re printing promotional products like T-shirts or apparel, coffee mugs, mousepads, etc., check the quality of the products put out by the printer you wish to use. Don’t just “price-hunt,” look around for the best quality and invest in your business.

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