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_______________________________________________________________ A Home-Based Business Online _______________________________________________________________ Issue 166 : January 6 Sent to 15,001 Opt-In Subscribers Editor: Elena Fawkner Publisher: AHBBO Publishing http://www.ahbbo.com Contact By Email _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ IN THIS ISSUE _______________________________________________________________ 1. Welcome and Update from Elena 2. Home Business Idea of the Week 3. Feature Article - Are YOU Leaving Money on the Table? 4. Surveys and Trends 5. Success Quote of the Week 7. Subscription Management 9. Contact Information _______________________________________________________________ 1. Welcome from Elena _______________________________________________________________ Hello again and a warm welcome to all the new subscribers who have joined us since the last issue. I know the last thing you want to think about so early in a shiny, brand-new year is taxes. However, the tax year has just ended (here in the U.S., at least), and before too much longer we'll be facing that April 30 deadline. I for one am NOT going to do what I did last year and leave it until the week before the filing date to get around to my taxes. Learned THAT lesson the hard way! For those of you new to home-based or online business, tax time may in fact be a bit more pleasant this year, even if you're yet to earn a dime from your business. This week's article, "Are YOU Leaving Money on the Table" shows you where to find some deductions you may not have even thought you could claim. It's at segment 3. Having been taken to task for announcing the annual AHBBO 2-for-1 advertising sale while half the population was still on vacation, I'm extending it for another two weeks. From now until midnight (PST) January 19, whatever advertising you order you get the same again, absolutely free, no limits. This is your chance to get your 2003 advertising campaign off to a flying start, so don't miss out. Full details at segment 6. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this week's issue. Remember, AHBBO is for YOU! If you have comments or suggestions for topics you would like to see addressed, or would just like to share your experiences with other subscribers, I want to hear from you. Please send comments, questions and stories to Contact By Email . _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 2. Home Business Idea of the Week - Assembling Products _______________________________________________________________ There's always money to be made from one's crafts and hobbies, even if it doesn't seem so at first glance. There are small-scale manufacturing opportunities available to even unskilled workers that can be expanded over time. If you're willing to learn some basic crafts, you can turn those skills into a home-based business. First, consider your hobbies, or the crafts in which you're involved. Perhaps you enjoy making stuffed animals that children love. Or you enjoy throwing pottery or firing ceramics. Needlework, sewing, embroidery, knitting, jewelry making and tailoring may be among your talents that you can turn into extra income. Perhaps you're a good carpenter, and you can turn to high-quality cabinet making or furniture making. Maybe you can see a need for furniture repair in your area. Or perhaps you're excellent at crafting doll houses and miniature figures for which you can charge premium prices. You've seen all the good ideas that can be turned to your advantage with a bit of effort. You can make reindeers from firewood and tree branches, and sell at swap meets before the holiday season. Perhaps you're a computer programmer with some good ideas that will sell as shareware. All the good ideas in the world won't do a bit of good unless you find customers for them. If you don't think of yourself as a natural in sales, rest assured that you can learn effective selling skills. You may decide to sell in one or several different ways. Perhaps you want to start your own shop. Maybe your products are well suited to swap meet sales. You can sell the items to stores at a wholesale price. You can retail them yourself by advertising them locally or nationally. If it's a small item, easy to produce, you may want to take the approach of giving it away and charge only for shipping and handling. Advertise the giveaway in such national publications as The National Enquirer, which can generate thousands of sales. Or you can put your goods in stores on consignment, meaning that when they sell the items, you collect your money. Gaining the self-confidence that your craftwork is unique and high quality will help you to pursue more opportunities. You'll find that virtually by accident you've learned the skills end of the craftwork. Now all you have to do is to hone your business skills, and you're on your way. ----- This is just one of over 130 ideas from the new "Practical Home Business Ideas From AHBBO" e-book. Find out more at home based business ideas . _______________________________________________________________ THE AMAZING FORMULA THAT SELLS PRODUCTS LIKE CRAZY! FIND OUT HOW AT: _______________________________________________________________ 3. Feature Article: Are YOU Leaving Money on the Table? _______________________________________________________________ © 2017 Elena Fawkner For those of us in the U.S., tax time is almost here again. For those of you elsewhere, tax time is always around the corner. Oh joy, I hear you say. Well, if you're contemplating an online home-based business, it may be just that. Really. Here's how. Are you ready to start earning money with, say, affiliate programs or by creating your own information product, but haven't really got off the ground yet because you're stuck in the stage of thinking you have to learn everything there is to learn about internet marketing before you can start? (Which you don't, but that's a whole other article.) How much money have you spent on e-books and other information products in your quest for the holy grail? How much money are you spending on your ISP every month? How much money have you spent on what appeared to be promising online business programs only to see them bite the dust? And what about ALL that software you've bought but never used? Well, even if you haven't made a dime yet, if you have a genuine profit motive, start thinking outside the paradigm of the *would-be* online business owner and start thinking from the perspective of one who is *already* in business. What does that have to do with tax? Everything. If you have a genuine profit motive for what you're doing, then you're in business. If you're in business, you can deduct business-related expenses against business and, if you're a sole proprietor, personal, income. Including ISP fees, including information products, including "secret marketing site" membership fees. All of it. See where I'm going with this? Even fees for what turn out to be bogus programs can be deducted if you incurred them in pursuit of business profit. And while we're on the subject of being hoodwinked, let's just get that one out of the way right here. We're ALL suckered into falling for at *least* one - it's called the school of hard knocks - so don't dud yourself out of a righteous deduction just because you're feeling ever so slightly foolish for having been suckered, against your usually MUCH better judgment, into believing that what sounded too good to be true wasn't. Even though it was. Repeat after me - a deduction is a deduction is a deduction. All that's required is that you incurred the expense with the motive to make a profit. Now, a word of caution here. You can't deduct expenses incurred in pursuit of illegal activities so I wouldn't try and claim an investment in a pyramid or ponzi scheme on your tax return. But if all you did was fall for a sales pitch for a program that, if successful, would not have been illegal, and it was a business-related expense, go for it. So long as you had a genuine profit motive when you handed over the dough. It gets even better. (By the way, this is all U.S. stuff we're talking here. Check your local tax laws. Many countries will have something similar to what I'm about to talk about.) Here's where it gets interesting. If you work your business out of your home, in a room or a part of a room that you use *exclusively* and *regularly* for your business AND that area is also your principal place of business, you may qualify for the home office deduction. Even if you also work at a job outside the home. And when I say "exclusively" I MEAN exclusively - no children using your computer for their homework or to play computer games, no personal papers in your work desk, no late-night chatrooms, no television in the room. You may not be able to apply the home-office deduction against *this* year's income (as we'll see in a minute) but you will be able to apply it against profits generated in future years. So, why all the emphasis on "genuine profit motive"? The movement towards easily-started online businesses has sprouted an industry of so-called tax experts who would have you believe that anyone can reap the benefits of home business tax breaks simply by starting a "home based business". They basically try and convince you that anyone can pretend to be running a home-based business and thus qualify. Not so. You need to be running a real business, not engaging in a hobby or a sham. What distinguishes a real business from a mere hobby? You guessed it - a profit motive. Believe me when I tell you, if you're planning on taking business deductions, you'd better be able to prove to the IRS that you have a genuine profit motive. How do you do that? By keeping proper books and records. By keeping business and personal expenses separate. By keeping business and personal income separate. By running a genuine business, in other words. Here's how it works. Let's say you have a spare room in your house that you use exclusively as a home office. Over the past 12 months, you've bought a computer, desk, chair, printer and fax machine. You've decided that you want to start a home- based online business on the side while you continue to work in your job. You spend several hours a day researching ideas for your new business and you spend a small fortune on your high-speed internet connection, and various information products relevant to your area of interest. Because you're running a business, one of the first things you're going to want to do is get a system for your business records set up. Keep a record of all expenses as they're incurred so that when tax time comes around, everything is at your fingertips. I use Excel spreadsheets for this - one spreadsheet for every expense category. Here are the categories I use (use whatever categories make sense for your business though): Advertising and promotion Software* Web Hosting and Domain Name Registration Fees ISP/Cable Modem Fees Office Expenses Content Subscription Fees Telephone*** Bank Charges Books and Magazines Equipment** Furniture** Bad Debts Home Office Deduction * Usually has to be depreciated over several years unless it's software that needs to be updated frequently such as anti-virus software. ** You can either depreciate these items over time or you can write off 100% during the year of acquisition up to a maximum of around $20,000. *** If you only have one phone, you'll need to apportion expenses between personal and business. On the other hand, if you have a second line exclusively for your business, you can write off 100% of expenses for the second line. Every time I pay a business expense, I enter the details in the appropriate spreadsheet. Very easy. Then, when the time comes to file your tax return, you just need to prepare a Schedule C (for individual taxpayers). If your business makes a loss (i.e., the expenses you pay out are more than the revenue you bring in from your business), that loss is deducted from your income from all sources, thereby reducing your taxes. But, best of all, if you qualify for the home office deduction, you can take a proportionate share of your mortgage or rent payments and your utilities and apply them as a deduction against your business profits, but only to the point where the profit from your business equals zero. In other words, the home office deduction cannot be used to create a loss situation. But even if you can't deduct it this year (because your business has already made a loss), it's not lost. You can carry it forward to future years to be applied against future profits. So, as you can see, even if you're only in the information- gathering/learning stage of your business, if you have a profit motive you're nonetheless in business and you can and should be writing off your business expenses even if you're yet to start generating revenues. Make sure you keep proper records and substantiate all expenses though. The IRS is, of course, well aware of the potential for abuse of home business tax deductions and will be paying close attention. That's fine though. If you have a profit motive, you ARE running a business and you're *entitled* to take any legitimate deductions that are available to you. To do anything less is to leave money on the table. ------ include the following resource box; and (2) you only mail to a ------ practical business ideas, opportunities and solutions for the work-from-home entrepreneur. http://www.ahbbo.com _______________________________________________________________ 4. Surveys and Trends _______________________________________________________________ © 2017 Ryanna's Hope The following is an extract from the current issue of Larry Wack's excellent weekly, "Surveys and Trends". Subscribe using the link below for the full issue. ------ ------------------------------------------------------------ HOW TO KILL AN ONLINE BUSINESS ------------------------------------------------------------ E-buyers are unhappy with online service and are abandoning their transactions as a result. In a recent survey conducted by Critical Research, 93 percent of business users say they regularly encounter problems with online assistance. Current methods of online support only resolve situations roughly 36 percent of the time, according to researchers. The survey of 200 U.S. online businesses found that 95 percent of users ditched Web sites and abandoned transactions when problems arose. The most common trouble spots included: Signing up for a particular service (85 percent); Researching a company's product (81 percent); and Executing transactions (75 percent). Of the minority that actually find their Web-integrated help desk experiences satisfactory, 15 percent said they found help through e-mail, 22 percent dialed a voice line and 32 percent used Web chat or instant messaging. Buyers also are frustrated with amount of time online help desks take to answer a question or solve a problem, according to the study. Almost all of the survey respondents (90 percent) say responses to queries are unacceptably slow, and 81 percent complain that they receive inaccurate information when they finally receive a response. ------------------------------------------------------------ CUSTOMER INQUIRIES AND TIME LAG.... ------------------------------------------------------------ According to recent data from Jupiter Research, many companies fail to acknowledge receipt of customer email inquiries or if they do, fail to respond in a timely manner. Over 90 percent of the companies surveyed by the research firm said that they provided an email channel for customer inquiries. However, only 34 percent of companies acknowledged receipt of such emails, according to the study. Of those companies that do acknowledge customer inquiries, almost half use the response to direct customers to other channels. Around 52 percent of initial responses are answered within 24 hours, but only 32 percent provided a response within six hours, while one-third of companies took three days or longer to get back to customers. _______________________________________________________________ 5. Success Quote of the Week _______________________________________________________________ Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention. -- Greg Anderson _______________________________________________________________ 7. Subscription Management _______________________________________________________________ To SUBSCRIBE to this Newsletter:
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