10 Necessities for a Home Based Business
When you make the decision to earn income from the internet youwill need to go through a set up process to be ready forbusiness. Following are the basic steps in setting up for home businesssuccess. 1. Attitude The key to your business success is your attitude. Treat your business like a business. This is critical whether you are working part-time or full-time.One of my colleagues is a mother who works from home around herfamily. She has always put her family first whilst at ...
...the sametime developing her business. She says, "I work part-time, but Ihave a full-time attitude." Put another way, "If you have a hobby attitude you will have ahobby income, if you have a business attitude you will have abusiness income." You can be successful working part-time and you can besuccessful working full-time but it is highly unlikely that youwill be successful working in your "spare time". 2. Working Environment A space that you can call your own, free from distractions foryour scheduled time. A comfortable chair and organized desk. Stationery supplies asrequired. For example: - pens - highlighters - stapler - hole punch - sticky tape -note book(s) - a simple filing system - ring binders - manillafolders Consider the value of a broadband connection. Your time isvaluable and a broadband connection can allow you to get moredone in a given time frame. 3. Schedule Develop a schedule that works for you, your family (or"significant others") and your business. When you allot a blockof time for work then use that time for work. Equally importantis to schedule time for your other commitments - family time,self education ( reading, listening and viewing), "health time"(exercise, cooking and eating), and leisure time. During theseother times don't work. After all if one of the reasons to workfrom home is to spend more time with your family then you don'twant your working at home time to consume your family time. You are working for yourself and your schedule (by your choice)is your "boss". When you have people calling you or droppingaround unexpectedly or maybe out-of-town visitors may want tocatch up with you then you need to make a choice. Are youcommitted to your own business success? What will be your choicein these situations? Only you can decide what is important toyou. In a family environment you may need to negotiate with yourpartner and children to have your business time agreed upon,during which you will not be interrupted. Put this scheduleprominently somewhere so all family members are aware of yourwork schedule. 4. Describe Your Business Be able to describe your business concisely; a powerful one ortwo sentence description that someone can repeat in describingyour business to others. A unique and memorable tag line canalso be invaluable for promoting your business. 5. Know Your Product or Service Once you have selected your product or service to sell, it mayor may not be something that you use yourself but you need toknow your product intimately. If you are selling ebooks thenknow the content and its value. If you are selling software thenuse it know it "inside out". You will develop a reputation ofproviding quality information and because of your productknowledge you can become the preferred supplier. It is not practical to use certain products (for example a womanmay choose to sell man's shoes or vice versa) in which case theseller won't be a product user, however the seller can stillknow the benefits and features of the product intimately. 6. Administration Use good record keeping practices. This may involve a consultation with a tax advisor who can letyou know about the optimal way to set up your financial recordsand what records need to be kept. Your advisor will alsorecommend record keeping systems and you can find out whatsoftware may simplify this aspect of your business. Additionallyyour obtain advice on the best arrangement for your bankaccounts. You will most likely be advised to have a separatebank account. You will also need to keep track of your various logins,usernames and passwords. A very handy little software tool forthis is Treepad available as either the free Lite version(without password protection) or the commercial Plus or Bizversions. http://www.treepad.com There are other useful tools for this also from a simple papernotebook to free and commercial password keepers. One popularsolution is Roboform that will remember your login details andcan automatically fill out your login and other registrationforms. http://www.roboform.com 7. Computer Protection Your computer is the lifeline to your business dealings and mustbe protected including the data that is stored. You need a virus scanner, personal firewall, anti-spyware andanti-adware and preferably an email scanner with the ability todelete suspect of spam email from the server before it isdownloaded to your computer. Some suggestions are: AVG Anti-Virus: http://www.grisoft.com Spybot S&D:http://www.safer-networking.org Microsoft Anti-Spyware:www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspxAdaware: http://www.lavasoft.com/ Mailwasher Email Scanner:http://www.mailwasher.net 8. A Domain Name You will most likely need a domain name for your business andone cost effective registrar is GoDaddy, http://www.godaddy.com. 9. Payment Processing You will need a way to process credit cards; that may be usingservices such as: - PayPal https://www.paypal.com - Storm Payhttp://www.stormpay.com - 2 Checkout http://www.2checkout.com -Clickbank http://www.clickbank.com or others. This is the most economical way to get started. Once yourbusiness picks up you may need to look into your own merchantaccount for credit card transactions. Consideration may also be given to other forms of onlinecurrency such as eGold http://www.egold.com 10. Email accounts Once you have your own domain you can use an associated emailaccount. This can further assist in the promotion of yourbusiness and promotes a more professional business image. As a final comment on continuing in your internet business,conduct your business ethically, provide extraordinary serviceand be proud to put your name to the products or services thatyou are selling and you will be on track to developing asustainable long term internet business.
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