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AHBBO Home Based Business Information Return to AHBBO Archives
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_______________________________________________________________ A Home-Based Business Online _______________________________________________________________ Issue 141 : July 15, 2017 Sent to 12,566 Opt-In Subscribers Editor: Elena Fawkner Publisher: AHBBO Publishing http://www.ahbbo.com Contact By Email _______________________________________________________________ 1. Welcome and Update from Elena 2. Home Business Idea of the Week 3. Feature Article - How Do I Start A Home Business? 4. Surveys and Trends 5. Success Quote of the Week 6. Advertise with AHBBO 7. Subscription Management 9. Contact Information _______________________________________________________________ 1. Welcome and Update from Elena _______________________________________________________________ Hello again and a warm welcome to all the new subscribers who have joined us since the last issue. This week's feature article is a plan of action for how to go from "Gee it would be so nice to work from home" to making it a reality. "How Do I Start A Home Business" is at segment 3. 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 - Online Researcher _______________________________________________________________ What is the single greatest commodity in demand online today? Information. The Internet is quickly becoming THE source for information on every subject under the sun. This has lead to an increasing demand, not only for people who can prepare abstracts for online application (condense lengthy reports, papers, etc. for online database and information services) but also for people who can carry out research on behalf of businesses using information available online (eg databases, indexes, Internet). As an independent or freelance online researcher, you provide information services in your chosen area of expertise to individuals and organizations of all descriptions from the small business owner who commissions you to carry out research and prepare a report on trends in consumer shopping habits, to the mid-sized corporation that doesn't have its own in-house research department and outsources its research requirements to independent researchers, to the major corporation that does have its own research department but utilizes independent researchers to handle overflow projects. Useful Resources: => Professional Association National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services 1518 Walnut Street #307, Philadelphia PA 19102. (215) 893-1561 => Website The Association of Independent Information Professionals http://www.aiip.org => Books Guide to Careers in Abstracting and Indexing Gale Directory of Online Databases ----- This is just one of over 130 ideas from the new "Practical Home Business Ideas From AHBBO" e-book. Find out more at Best Home Based Business Ideas . _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 3. Feature Article: How Do I Start A Home Business? _______________________________________________________________ © 2017 Elena Fawkner From time to time (at least once a day actually) I'll get an impossible-to-respond-to email that says something like, "How can I work from home?", or "I want to start my own home business. Please send info." or even, "Please send free info.". Naturally such vague, generalized requests are not, for reasons of time (among others), going to elicit a particularly helpful response but it does exemplify the mindset of a proportion of my site visitors - they think they want to start a home business but where on earth do they start? HOW DO I START A HOME BUSINESS? The best advice I can give to someone who asks a question as vague as this is that they're asking the wrong question. The first question they should be asking themselves is: "SHOULD I start a home business?", not HOW do they do so. The person who asks how to start a home business has not given much, if any, thought to what they might do as such a business otherwise, their question would be "How do I start an errand service home business?" or "How do I start a gourmet gift basket home business?". So, first things first. Why do you want to start a home business? What are the advantages as you see them? What are the disadvantages? What entrepreneurial qualities do you bring to the table that make you think you could make a success of your own business? What is your plan? What product or service will you market? Who are your customers? When will you give up your day job? Are you thinking about this because you just LOST your day job (if so, warning bells should be ringing very loudly!)? A home business is most definitely NOT for everyone and it's certainly not a solution to unemployment per se. There are financial considerations too, obviously. How will you support yourself until you generate a profit? Where will you obtain financing? For more thought starters, read "Look Before You Leap ... Is a Home-Based Business REALLY For You?" in the AHBBO Articles Library at http://www.ahbbo.com/lookb4uleap.html . Assuming you work your way through the above considerations and conclude that you do, indeed, want to start your own home business, then, and only then, should you ask "HOW do I start a home business?" There are as many answers to this question as there are individuals who ask it. There is no one answer that fits all sizes. Generally speaking, however, the process of starting one's own home business can be broken down into seven broad steps. => IDENTIFY YOUR PASSIONS If you're truly starting at ground zero and you don't already do something on the side that you'd kind of like to see if you could make fly, your first step is to decide what it is you'd like to do as your business. I'm a firm believer in following your passion, whether that be for gardening (start a herb and spice business or cultivate cuttings for distribution via mail order), lead- lighting (design and create stained glass lampshades), accounting (run a home-based small business accountancy service) or website design. It doesn't matter whether other people are equally as passionate about what you're passionate about. It's YOUR passion that counts and it's YOUR passion that will propel you towards success. Do something you love to do in other words. Make your work your joy and you won't be able to help but succeed. => IDENTIFY A NICHE MARKET FOR YOUR PASSION Now, it's one thing to know what you're passionate about, it's quite another to identify an unmet need in that field. But that's what you must do if you want to turn your passion into a truly profitable business venture. Identifying your niche is a pretty straightforward process: 1. Identify your general category and sub-category Let's say your general passion is gardening. Gardening is your general category. Let's also say that you're particularly interested in growing herbs and how they can be used for cooking and medicinal purposes. Herb growing is your sub-category. 2. Hang out with people interested in your sub-category In order to identify unmet needs in your sub-category (step 3.), you must find out from people interested in your sub-category what they're looking for that they can't find. A good way to find out is to hang out where they hang out - offline and on. Offline, you may belong to a local gardening club or cooking class at which you hear that so-and-so has been looking high and low for a certain type of specialty herb that isn't commonly grown in your country. Online, you may sign up for mailing lists and hang out in newsgroups to listen to what people are asking time and again. 3. Identify unmet or under-met needs in your sub-category If you follow step 2, chances are, if you hear the same things repeatedly, you've found potential unmet needs or needs that aren't being adequately serviced by your competition. After all, if the need is being met, it won't be the subject of repeated questions. 4. Inventory your experience, interests and competencies In order to decide what to focus on in particular out of a group of potential unmet or under-met needs, take account of your experience, interests and competencies. People are generally good at what they enjoy and are interested in, after all. 5. Fill the unmet or under-met need Once you've identified the unmet need(s) in your sub-category, you can start thinking about how your business can fill that unmet need. => SURVEY THE MARKET AND YOUR COMPETITION At this stage, you need to take your business idea and survey your niche market and your competition. If you have competition, can you be better? If your market is dominated by a few large, well-established players and you really don't bring anything new or different to the table, then the competition is probably going to be too stiff. On the other hand, if that competition is focused on the high end of the market leaving the lower end largely uncatered for, then this could well be an excellent niche for you. The bottom line is to identify your best competition in your niche and decide whether you can be better. Only if you believe you can be the best in your niche should you proceed. If not, keep looking until you find a niche perfectly suited to your particular blend of experience, interests and competencies in which you can be the absolute best. => BUSINESS PLAN Once you've identified your niche and surveyed your market and competition and are reasonably confident you can be at least as good as your best competitor, it's time to get down to brass tacks. This is where you take your business idea and shape it into a battle plan. Formulating a business plan is goal-setting for your business. For a more detailed treatment of writing a business plan, read "Putting the Plan Back Into Your Business Plan" at http://www.ahbbo.com/busplan.html . Once you've thought through and recorded your business plan you should have an extremely thorough understanding of your industry and the challenges you must overcome to make a success of your business. Take your business plan and establish objectives, goals (which support attainment of the objectives) and tasks (which support attainment of the goals). Put your tasks and goals into action to achieve your objectives. Decide where you want your business to be in five years time and work backwards until you have 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 year objectives and goals to support them and tasks to support the goals. The end result should be a daily to-do list of things that will directly lead you closer to the achievement of your goals and objectives. => ACTION Once you have your daily to-do list, DO IT! The best laid plans of mice and men are useless if not translated into action. It's action that will propel you and your business towards success. Mere thoughts and plans are necessary but insufficient. They must be translated into activity. => TRANSITION If possible, transition from whatever you're doing now into your business. Test the waters, in other words. If you're currently in a paid job, stay there and run your business part-time, taking the risk on someone else's nickel until you can be confident this thing's going to float. Know when you're better off devoting your full time and attention to your business (i.e., know when an hour of your time is worth more when spent invested in your business than your job) for that is the time to shift into full-time entrepreneurship. => MAKING THE LEAP Finally, make the leap with faith and courage. Sure, you'll have moments of self-doubt, thoughts of "can I do this?" when you're wondering where the next order's going to come from and you think back to the nice, safe, secure paycheck you used to be able to count on in your job. But recognize these insecurities for what they are. They are your mind playing tricks on you. You can do anything you set your mind to. You just have to want it badly enough. When the time comes to make the leap, do it and hold nothing back. Your success or failure is up to you alone. There are no excuses. So, in answer to the question "how do I start my own home business?", it's quite simple really. You do whatever it takes. ------ 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 _______________________________________________________________ Start your own on-line recruitment agency / Jobsite with Magic Object's Virtual Agency. Manage CVs and Job advertisements and automate the recruitment process. WorldPay integration is included for on-line payments, so you can start making money from selling jobs and advertisements. See for a demonstration. _______________________________________________________________ 4. Surveys and Trends _______________________________________________________________ © 2017 Ryanna's Hope WHAT ARE SMALL BIZ OWNERS DOING TODAY? Of the 501 small business owners/managers with less than 100 employees that were surveyed for the OPEN Small Business Network 2017 Monitor from American Express, 66 percent revealed that they have integrated the Internet as a tool to help them run their businesses. Other common online business activities include: * Making travel plans/purchasing office supplies, equipment or other business services (tied at 36 percent) * Conducting industry or market research (34 percent) * Marketing or advertising (29 percent) * Networking with other entrepreneurs (24 percent) * Purchasing goods from wholesalers (22 percent). CONSUMERS WANT COMFORT IN SECURITY Some consumers will never agree to transmit personal information across the Internet regardless of what assurances you supply. To capture these customers, offer alternative methods for buying your business's product and services once they have learned about your offerings and your company online. One page of your Web site can direct them to fax, phone, or mail for order fulfillment. Include a statement on your Web site that informs buyers about your policies. Two elements are important in this statement: what security you have in place to protect transmitted data and what you will and will not do with buyer information. Most customers feel more comfortable buying from someone who agrees not to release their contact information or buying patterns to outside parties. SO WHAT WILL IT BE? ONLINE OR OFFLINE? A Direct Market Association study found that nearly two-thirds of consumer-focused marketers use their Web sites for direct sales, while two-thirds of B2B marketers' Web sites aim for lead generation. Consumer sites, on average, also place heavy emphasis on using their site to perform customer service functions; B2B players' secondary goals are for branding and public relations. Other findings in the report suggest that marketers are about equally split between using offline and online tactics to drive traffic to their sites. About 58 percent of those polled said they drive traffic to their Web site using direct mail, while almost as many (56 percent) said they made e-mail marketing a major component of their promotional efforts. About 42 percent of the respondents said they use print ads and search engine optimization. Thirty-six percent also said they used online ads. A BOOMING NICHE MARKET! More than 1.2 million households plan to buy infant/nursery furniture this year, according to Furniture Today's exclusive consumer buying trends survey. That adds up to more than $300 million in infant furniture sales if consumers follow through with their buying plans. The two life stage groups that are the best candidates to purchase infant furniture are young couples and young parents. These two groups comprise 60% of the households planning to buy infant furniture this year. Young couples (under age 45 with no children in the home) are planning to buy at a rate 4.4 times higher than their presence in the population, while young parents (under age 45, youngest child under age 6) are planning to buy at a rate 2.6 times higher. One-third of young couples planning to buy infant furniture have household incomes under $50,000, while nearly one-fourth have incomes of $75,000 or more. Young couples are well educated with more than half of them having either a 4-year college degree or a postgraduate degree. In most cases, each member of the couple works, with 71% of the women and 93% of the men holding full-time jobs. AND...THE TREND WITH TEEN FURNITURE? Bedroom furniture for youth/teens means even bigger business for retailers than infant furniture. According to the consumer buying trends survey, 3.7 million U.S. households plan to buy youth bedroom furniture this year, amounting to $1.1 billion in furniture sales. Young parents and middle parents are the life stage groups offering the best opportunity for youth bedroom sales. Young parents plan to buy youth bedroom furniture at a rate 4.5 times higher than their presence in the population and middle parents (under age 45, youngest child 6 and over) plan to buy youth bedroom furniture at a rate 2.1 times higher. Together, these two groups account for 73% of the households planning to buy youth bedroom furniture, with spending plans topping $750 million. CAN YOU SELL ONLINE GROCERIES? Online Grocery Buying reveals that about 11 percent of Internet users surveyed fall into the category defined as Online Grocery Buyers, consumers who have purchased groceries online in the last three months. A further 11 percent are Deserters, defined as users who have purchased groceries online in the past, but have not done so in the last three months, and 78 percent are Offline Buyers, who have never purchased groceries online. The primary motivations to purchase groceries online are convenience-related, such as the ability to shop from home, have products delivered, or shop at any time during the day. The study also revealed that lower prices and wider product assortments are not the key motivating factors for Online Grocery Buyers. The study also highlighted the amount Online Grocery Buyers are spending on groceries, both online and offline - a mean monthly amount of $334. Grocers have the opportunity to build a more efficient operation and strengthen consumer relationships by shifting a greater portion of the $334 monthly spending to the online channel. Understanding consumer needs will be key to executing on this type of strategy. _______________________________________________________________ 5. Success Quote of the Week _______________________________________________________________ Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life ... When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. -- Henry David Thoreau _______________________________________________________________ 7. Subscription Management _______________________________________________________________ To SUBSCRIBE to this Newsletter:
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