It’s well accepted that small businesses form the backbone of the United States and world economies. In recent years, no part of the small-business sector has grown as dramatically as home-based businesses, which now comprise 52 percent of all small businesses and annually contribute $300 billion to the United States economy.A survey of home businesses conducted in 2008 by the Cleveland-based Council of Smaller Enterprises (COSE), revealed that 79 percent of the surveyed companies had annual gross revenues in excess of $51,000. A report by the United States Small Business Administration (SBA) points out that 25 percent of home-based businesses had an annual gross income of between $100,000 and $500,000, and in 2000 there were 20,000 home businesses grossing more than $1 million.Many successful home businesses have never moved away from their home base, while others, such as Lillian Vernon, Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Google, Bonne Bell, and Xerox began in the founder’s home, garage, or basement and grew into mega-corporations.The COSE survey found that home-based businesses create jobs beyond just employing the owner. Almost one-half had at least one employee, and 17 percent employed three or more workers. The survey revealed that most home-business owners are dedicated people who enjoy the benefits of working from their homes and want to continue to do so, dispelling the myth that running a home-based business is a stopgap measure until one finds a “real” corporate job.Until just a few years ago, there was a stigma attached to home-business owners. The sense was that the businesses were temporary or “play” businesses. But with the proliferation of both virtual employees and home businesses, such biases are seldom heard today.Practically any kind of business can be operated from a home – if the house is big enough or the business is small enough, and providing that local regulations permit it. I have consulted with single practitioners sup-plying consulting services, with photographers with in-home studios, with printers running presses in their basements, with light-bulb distributors whose garages are full of inventory, with a garment manufacturer staffed with almost a dozen people working in her basement, and with companies whose offices are in the owner’s homes but which have plants or warehouses in industrial parks.Whether you are expanding a hobby into a business, starting a consult-ing service, or want to establish a manufacturing or distribution operation, operating your business from home can provide a lifestyle that will be the envy of your friends.For an ambitious young person, an employee weary of punching a time clock, a worker who has lost a job, or a retiree seeking a second career, the lure of entrepreneurship can be mighty tempting. The lowest risk way of starting a business is at home which can often be accomplished with just a small investment. What is required is a marketable idea fueled with passion and nurtured by a dedicated and determined owner exercising good business practices.
My 10 Best Home Based Business Ideas
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the times they are a changing. More and more people are finding a need for cash to support there ever increasing lifestyles. Combine this with an uncertain economic situation and the need to generate an additional income comes to the fore. To combat this situation an increasing number of people are starting and running a business from home.A complete list for a home based business would be endless. The 10 best home based business ideas contained within this article, are those considered by the author due to them being popular, competitive, relatively low start up costs and providing the ability for growth.1. Online business
As one of the 10 best home based business ideas, the list for an online business is possibly limitless. However, consider some of the following: Trading the financial markets, affiliate marketing, network marketing, eBay selling, web design and desk top publishing, to name but a few. Due to the popularity and accessibility of the internet more and more people are able to so.2. Franchising
This involve different types of business arrangements. Perhaps the most common type involves buying a licence to sell a product in a particular geographical region. An example of franchises are carpet cleaning, printing and retail franchises.3. Consulting
This will involve a specialised skill set. For example engineering, accountancy, teaching a school or university subject. This could be done from home or may involve travelling to the home of your clients. Alternatively, you could visit businesses and assist them in some specialist area.4. Home health
Visiting elderly people in their own home and providing non medical assistance, from shopping to cleaning. More and more elderly people want to stay in their homes. So as one of the 10 best home based business ideas, you would be providing a valuable service.5. Fitness coach
For this you would have to travel to visit your clients at their home or in a corporate setting, that is, at their place of work. You could work together with a hair and beauty consultant, fashion expert and a nutritionist and sell a complete package to your clients.6. Use a Previous skill set
Make a list of previous skills that you acquired during your working life and apply those skills for the basis of one of the 10 best home based business ideas. For example if you were a mechanic you could look at a business of repairing cars, lawn mowers or household appliances. As a mom your organisational skills would be very good, so look at party or birthday planning or event organising.7. Specialized Coaching
Specialised knowledge is required in every business and as a consequence, in areas such as life, relationships and business coaching are available. As in any industry new markets open up, providing opportunities to those aware of the changing conditions. Remember that being a coach is a people business and good communicating skills are absolutely necessary.8. Internet based teaching
Provide teaching over the internet. This should be a must for inclusion as one of the 10 best home based business ideas. Reason being, with sky high fuel costs and limited employee time, many companies today have turned to web based learning for education and training of their workforce. This could take the form of you producing videos about how to play chess to teaching cosmology or teaching leadership to senior management. The sky is the limit.9. Outsourcing
As a business becomes established it can be more profitable to outsource even the specialised tasks. Having outsourcing as one of the 10 best home based business ideas, you will be in a solid position to take a share of this market. If you specialise in a business function such as sales, marketing or accountancy (to name but a few) offer these skills to the business market, both large and small. You could act as an outsourcing broker and find people to do the work for your clients and take a percentage of the fees.10. Property acquisition consultant
You could do a variety of things with property consulting as one of the 10 best home based business ideas. As a property consultant you would find residential and commercial properties for individuals and large corporations alike. You would not need specialised knowledge but you would need to enter into an agreement with your clients and the guidance of a solicitor would be advisable.
7 Productivity Tips For Your Home Based Business To Make More Money
Being productive in your home based business is one of the first things you want to get really good at. For one very vital reason. When you have a job you are paid for your time. When you have your own business your paid for your production. So the faster you learn how to be supper productive, the sooner you will have success in your home business, start to earn money and get the lifestyle you want. Here are 7 tips to get you on track for being super productive and successful.1. Take control of your “busy work.” What do I mean by “busy Work?” It is the non income producing activities that can steal your entire day. This is time spent disguised as work. Examples of these are, answering phone messages, answering emails, checking Facebook or Twitter. Income producing activities need to be 80 to 90% of your work time. “Busy work” is one way we all spend our time when we are procrastinating on doing something else that we are usually uncomfortable with or that is new and we are not quite sure of. Tell yourself you can do it and get started on the task!2. Set goals and tasks before the day begins. Know what you need to get done the next day before you go to bed at night. You need a clear picture of your next days schedule. Have goals set for the next day, week, and month. The best way to know where you are going is to have a clear path. Include a finish time or deadline for each task. Hold yourself accountable for when each task needs to be completed.3. Work in 50 minute intervals with a 10 minute break for each hour. Have a stop watch or some type of timer so that you have a set amount of time a task needs to be completed. I use the timer on my cell phone (it is silenced). It is amazing how much more concentrated your efforts are when you know you have a set time that the task needs to be completed by.4. One of the things that can really slow down our production is the feeling of being overwhelmed. This is a big problem anytime you are starting your home based business and learning a new skill. In order to keep the feeling of being overwhelmed under control, pick just one marketing technique and focus on it. Master it, become proficient at it prior to trying a new tactic. Your goal here is to pick one technique and make it a habit. Make the new tactic part of your schedule and routine until it becomes a habit. Give yourself about 3 months to really learn the technique, before adding a new marketing technique to your business.5. No multitasking. Multitasking is an inefficient use of your time. It takes your brain about 15 minutes to refocus on the task when going from task to task. It actually takes longer for you to complete your work when you multitask. Batch your activities into time blocks and focus on one activity at a time.6. Take time everyday for motivation and learning. Motivation and learning are crucial to your home based business success. Motivation is the one thing that you can never skip in your daily schedule. The time you spend on motivation and learning is separate from your income producing time. This is another place people can get stuck and use to procrastinate. Don’t spend time learning new marketing techniques and not put them into practice. The only way to earn money in your home based business is to take action on what you are learning.7. Journal your time for 1 week. Take a few seconds each hour for 1 week to see how you are really spending your time. Evaluate at the end of the week. Where can you improve? Are you spending 80-90% of your time on income producing activities?Bonus tip: Keep your life in balance. Schedule fun time, time with your family and friends. Schedule time to take care of yourself, to exercise and eat right. Know why you want to have your own home based business and review your why every day.Incorporating these tips into your daily schedule is vital to your business success. We all get the same 24 hours in the day but how we use the time will make or break your home based business. Remember you are paid for productivity not hours, and you are in control of how you use your time. The sooner you make these tips a habit the faster you build the foundation to your business and the sooner you get the lifestyle and money you are dreaming of.
Six Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Hire a Property Manager
Being a landlord can be an agonizing and very rewarding business. I have been a landlord for over 14 years and currently have 55 rental units. I happen to love it, but it is not all roses all the time. Surprisingly, being a landlord is not that tough and you can manage many units without a lot of work, but you have to have your business set up correctly. You can scale your landlord business with or without professional property management. I happen to think property managers are expensive for what they do, but I also understand the tremendous value they can bring. There are many different reasons you should consider using a property manager, but before you make that decision consider these 6 questions:
Where are your properties located?
I have tried long distance management and can tell you it is tough. For it to work, you need great systems in place, which is not easy to set up when you are not on the ground. You will also most likely be relying, at least to some extent, on other people who are not licensed to do what you need them to do. This could include anything from signing a lease, to collecting rent, to fixing a faucet. In my business, I feel it is worth the money to hire property managers to manage all my out of state properties.
How many properties do you have?
You can manage a lot of properties with just a few hours of work a month. I manage all my in state properties myself because it is easy to do and is not worth it to me to pay someone else to do it. In fact, when you are getting started, I would strongly encourage you to manage your own properties. This will help you gain valuable experience, even if you want to eventually turn them over to a manger. To manage multiple properties, you need good systems. This includes a team to do your handy work (basic handyman, plumber, electrician, appliance repair, etc.) Obviously, this is all outsourced so you don’t need employees for this to work. You also need a great leasing agent. A leasing agent is someone who will typically give you advice on what needs to be done to get a unit ready and they will market, show, and negotiate your property. You can have them do the lease signing too, although I would recommend you do that so you get a chance to meet the tenant. Other systems you will need to implement include; rent collection, evictions, move ins and outs, maintenance requests, property improvements, enforcing the lease, transferring utilities, etc. I would consider a manager if I got so many properties that I felt overwhelmed, and in this case I would hand select properties to turn over.
Are you organized?
Here is where you have to be honest with yourself, which is not always easy to do. To manage multiple properties you really do need to be organized. You will have payments coming in for rent and going out for maintenance, mortgages, utilities and more. You will be getting maintenance requests, requests to add or remove people from the lease, request from government agencies, and requests from a slew of others. If you cannot stay on top of this, it is time to hire some professional help.
Do you have a problem property?
These are the worst and you won’t know you bought one until after you own it for a while. I have a few that give me trouble. Although I still manage them myself, those few problem properties take up more of my time than everything else I have combined. This is one time that I would consider a manager for a local property.
Can you afford it?
As I mentioned, property management can be expensive. You should expect to pay ½ or more of the first month’s rent in a leasing fee, 6-10 percent of the gross rent amount in a management fee, and additional costs for maintenance (this is usually marked up). I would try to look at this as if the property can afford it, not you. You really don’t want to get into the habit of feeding your investments, so if there is not enough cash flow from the property, then you might consider managing it yourself until you can get your expenses down or your rents up.
Do you have the time?
Because it only takes a handful of hours a month, my guess is you do have the time. The real question is, do you want to be managing the property with that time? As you get older and your goals change, it might make since to start to step away from your landlord business. Retiring is the obvious example. At that point in your life, you will most likely be deciding between professional management and liquidation.
Real Estate Law – The Deed Document
Though deeds vary from state to state, all deeds contain basically the same information. The names of the grantor, the words of conveyance, name of the grantee, consideration of statement, property of description, the agendum, the signatures and certifications.
Each section communicates the important information about the nature of the parties or the property or the transaction. Since the deed is the heart of most real estate transactions, it must be scrutinized carefully by both the buyer and there seller, if they’re to protect their interests. The person giving up ownership is the grantor.
Then the person receiving the deed is calling the grantee. The name of those exciting the deed as grantor appears first. These persons must be the owners of the estate conveyed on the order that interest to pass.
The words of conveyance generally determine which promises or warranties the grantor makes to the grantee. When the words “warrant and convey” or “grant and convey” are used, this indicates the grantor promises or warrants the following:
1. That the grantor owns the estate transferred and will pay the grantee for his or her injury if it turns out that the grantee doesn’t receive the state described in the deed.
2. There are no liens, easements, leases, mortgages or other encumbrances which bind the grantee other than those disclosed in the deed.
Deeds of this type are generally called warranty deeds or grant deeds. They are the kind that are most used today. The other major type of deed is called the quitclaim deed. The words of conveyance, for it often included the word “quitclaim.” This deed merely transfers the grantor’s ownership, if any. No promises or warranties are implied in the deed.
If a professorship gave a student a warranty deed to the school building in exchange for $10,000 the student could sue and recover the money if it turned out that the professor did not own the building. If however, a quitclaim deed were given, the student could not recover the money.
Quitclaim deeds are often used to remove “clouds on title.” For example if a divorced man sold property and then died and the buyer feared that the man’s ex-wife might have a dower claim. The buyer could ask the ex-wife to execute a quitclaim deed. She might sign–perhaps in return for $75; but her lawyer would surely advise he to not to exude a warranty deed because she is not to certain that she owns any interest in the property.
How To Succeed At Online Product Creation The Easy Way
Product creation could be a frightening subject for a lot of Internet marketers to face. Some folks who get in the game with the intention of making a full time income are completely ignorant as to how an online business operates. One of the most profitable ways to create online cash is by creating a product that others are happy to pay for.
Product creation is legitimate method of generating money through internet marketing but many entrepreneurs get it wrong. They start by imitating their Internet marketing gurus by creating information products on Internet marketing in hopes of getting rich the way their heroes did. The problem is that they usually don’t know what they are doing and enter a highly competitive niche with very little marketing experience or connections.
Here are a few tips for effective product creation that may help you get on the right track:
Start by finding a profitable niche with low to moderate competition. If you conduct some rudimentary market research and keyword research, you’ll find many opportunities in areas that will surprise you. Amazon and eBay are two great places to brainstorm for product ideas.
Developing Your Product does not have to be a difficult project. You can find experts in the right field for your niche and pay them to write the material while an artist designs the packaging and website or blog. You can outsource the entire product creation part of the project after you conduct the research and testing to ensure profitability.
Sales and marketing strategies should be created while developing the product and learning about the market. Some experienced marketers use pay per click to drive traffic to their offer page; some folks outsource the entire marketing campaign to affiliates through ClickBank or other affiliate programs.
Product creation does not need to be hard, particularly when the merchandise is electronic. E-books, videos, audio and multi-media products sell very well. They are distributed immediately to customers electronically. Once you have a good feel for a niche market, try to service your customers with associated products and upgrades. If you want to earn money online through product creation, you must understand supply and demand. The majority of new online marketers fail miserably because they go after highly competitive markets or forget to research their chosen niche properly. You have to create your products according to the needs, wants and desires of the prospective customers.
Information Product Creation: Never Compete on Price Because There Is Only One You
Information product creation requires extensive preparation, no matter which niche you work within and you want to make sure that your information product has a successful launch. That probably sounds scary and intimidating but here’s the thing: this is a one time effort and it will pay off in a foundation that is strong enough to get your ideal clients to invest in your high-end programs and services without the perils of a traditional funnel. This article will teach you a few of the things that you need to remember if you’d like to invest in yourself and start on the information product creation path using your unique talents and abilities. Remember that you never have to worry about anyone ripping off your ideas because if you understand how to properly position yourself around your story.
Understand Both Strengths and Weaknesses: It is good to have an impartial view of your own strengths and weaknesses when lay the foundation of selling yourself within the information product creation process. It helps you figure out where you are, what you lack and how to move forward so that you get as much growth as possible. It is more than important, it is urgent if you want to create fast success for yourself to have personal positive reinforcement and deep belief to provide yourself the support you need so that you can get over your own limitations to ensure that your information product is as valuable as it can be.
You also need to know exactly who your competition is so you can study them and use their methods to help you improve your own standings. Down recreate the wheel, but understand the wheel and position yourself going uphill from the competition. Check out which kinds of opportunities you’ve already got and try to figure out how best to use them while taking care to remember your strengths and weaknesses. This is a great way to figure out where you stand against your competition which helps you figure out how best to grow.
Launch on Time: No matter what, even if you haven’t officially announced your “launch date” you should launch the site when you’ve said you would. This will force you to stick to your goal and actually work on it. Thinking that “I’ll launch it when I think it’s ready to launch” will only hinder your efforts. You’ve got a responsibility that you need to live up to with your launch, and you can’t move back on that one. If you get close to your launch date and you are getting hung up on your self limiting beliefs in your information product creation, don’t worry this about getting it out there and not perfection. As long as it is usable you should launch it. Launching on time is the professional thing to do and it is more important than creating a “wow” effect in your site visitors. You can always update/upgrade your website when you have to, so there shouldn’t be any issue with that.
Analyze Your Own Concept: If you want to make your information product creation successful you need to understand how good your concept is: is it really going to work for your chosen audience or would something else be better? You already know about your competition; how does your concept measure up? If you haven’t come up with your own idea and are trying to work with someone else’s concept, do some more work on your own before your launch. People want original ideas because they’ve seen too many other me-too websites already.
Test Your Concept Before You Commit To The Information Product Creation Process: One of the biggest failures people have with information product creation is not testing an idea before putting a lot of effort into producing an information product. PPC to a small 5 page site with a landing page is a great way to test an offer before you even produce it. If people will sign up to get it, you can be sure that you can create an information product that will target eliminating the pain of your target market. The small amount of money will be invaluable in using crowd sourcing to direct the final outline of the information product creation process.
You’ll have lots of hurdles to clear after the launch of your information product and the only way to truly take care of them is to follow the advice in this article to work smarter. Plenty of people work hard, but it is the ones who work smarter who make real money online with the information product creation business model.
Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up
One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.
However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.
Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.
But why?
In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!
So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)
The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.
Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.
Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.
By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.
You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.
A Guide on Successful Product Creation and Internet Marketing
Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.
The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.
It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!
With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.
With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.
Considerable Factors Involved in Product Creation & Marketing
The niche you have chosen should allow creation of more than one product or service. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts, to complete turnkey solutions; there is no need to worry about spending time on the real products sold to the customer. The main ones are keyword selection, sales copy principles, graphics, affiliate programs, product creation, online payment processing, auto responders, and search engine optimization.
Once you’ve earned money from this type of information product business, you can invest in the creation of your own products if you want, or start offering more informational products that allow you to sell your knowledge. But the creation and production costs of a similar big ticket in sequence product, although higher, are still pretty low. A key by-product of this process will be the creation of 3-D, Computer Assisted Design art.
The Association for Financial Professionals permits the following activities for repatriating funds: Research and Development activities, advertising and marketing programs, hiring and training new recruits, acquiring patent and other rights to intangible property, improving transportation, funding capital investments with the purpose of job creation and job retention & funding product responsibility or environmental claims.
It prohibits certain activities like: Tax payments, Payment of executive recompense, Payment of dividends, Redemption of stocks, Debt investments and Portfolio investments. Therefore, before repatriating the money, you must consider whether it is worth or not.
Checklist on what artist and product development necessitate includes: Exceptional vocals, musicianship and/or songwriting skills, Continued education and enhancement of musical skills, Quality equipment, Performance ability, Image creation and maintenance, Plan of action, goal setting, excellent promotion materials including photographs, press releases and artwork, Business management skills, Marketing, Publicity and Promotion knowledge, Online and Offline Professional management, Basic knowledge of recording, producing, engineering, and mastering, Basic knowledge of manufacturing, distribution, and sales online, brick and mortar and air-play, Good choices in members, staff and advisors, Physical and mental preparedness, Basic knowledge of finances, accounting Law and legal issues etc.
The goals for doing so are for the product owner to: Communicate the whole, Determine and communicate when releases are needed, Determine what functionality is sufficient for each release & focus on business value derived from the releases. The delivery team on the other hand will see the whole, learn about the steps to realize the vision, learn the business priorities, provide technical input to the roadmap and provide estimates for the projected features. The salesperson must lead the prospect through the various decision criteria needed in order to secure a sale. Whether your idea is the development of a product, launch of a service business, or even the creation of an event or program for a non-profit, creativity is the root of all entrepreneurial efforts starting with the vision itself.
People quickly learn to spend their time on marketing and product creation, rather than repetitive tasks. Apart from empowering companies and individuals, there should be a particular focus on identifying labor intensive businesses that have the potential to make a significant and positive impact on employment creation as well as those businesses that have a product or service offering for export markets with the final objective of booming local economies.