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A Home-Based Business Online
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Practical home business ideas, strategies
and resources for the work-from-home
entrepreneur
August 27, 2000
Sent to 5,760 subscribers
Editor: Elena Fawkner
Publisher: Fawkner Publishing
http://www.fawkner.com
Contact By Email
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ATTENTION: You're receiving this ezine because you, or
someone using your email address, subscribed. There is no
other way of being added to this list. If you'd like to remove
your address from the AHBBO subscriber list, please see the
instructions in segment 8 below. Please note you CANNOT
be unsubscribed from AHBBO by replying to this email. The
AHBBO subscriber list is NOT made available to other
companies or individuals. I value every subscriber and respect
your privacy.
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This Week's Sponsor
============================================================
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this instantly-effective, easy-to-use technique? Find out now,
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IN THIS ISSUE
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1. Welcome and Update from Elena
2. Home-Based Business Idea of the Week - Personal Tour
Guide
3. Feature Article - Lightening the Load ... Getting Help
When You Need It
4. Pro-Motion Column
5. This Week's Subscriber Web Site Pick -
KeepsakesandMore.com
6. Contests
7. Advertise in A Home-Based Business Online
8. Subscription Management
9. Caveat Emptor
10. Contact Information
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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!
In the interests of reducing the sometimes inordinate length
of AHBBO, this week sees the first of a new streamlined
issue format. I have retained only the Home-Based Business
Idea of the Week, Feature Article, Pro-Motion Column,
Subscriber Web Site Pick and Contests as regular segments.
I will run the Web Watch and Letters to the Editor segments
on an occasional basis when I come across something of
particular importance to share with you or when you raise
an issue that you would like to see addressed in this forum.
I hope that this change will make it easier to get through your
email and free me up a bit to work on the new AHBBO website!
Speaking of freeing up time, that's exactly the theme of this
week's feature article. "Lightening the Load ... Getting Help
When You Need It" comes from recent personal experience
and I hope you find it helpful if you're one of the many becoming
increasingly overwhelmed with the time and energy it takes to
run an online business.
The AHBBO Build Your Own Website Tutorial ebook is nearly
ready for download. I have been experiencing some technical
difficulties which means it's taking longer than planned to make
the ebook available but it will be available some time this week.
When available, it will be able to be downloaded at
http://www.fawkner.com/byowt.exe.
Check the AHBBO website
at http://www.fawkner.com during the week. I'll post a notice
when the ebook is available.
Over 100 email addresses were deleted from the AHBBO
subscriber list following last week's issue because of full
mailboxes. PLEASE, if you have a free email account, clear it
out regularly or your address will be removed.
Also, as of the time of writing I appear to be having problems
receiving email. If your mail to me bounces, or you don't
receive a timely response from me, it's because of email
problems. Please keep trying.
Finally, advertisers, please note that the AHBBO 2 For 1
Summer Advertising Special ends September 10 so get
your ad order in early and take advantage of what is
effectively half price advertising!
As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this
week's issue.
Remember, this ezine 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-Based Business Idea of the Week - Personal Tour
Guide
============================================================
Do you live in a city or town that attracts large numbers of
tourists? If so, and you enjoy meeting new people, have you
considered setting up shop as a personal tour guide?
To start, you obviously need to have an intimate knowledge of
the places of interest in your area as well as some knowledge
of its history. Some cities or towns will lend themselves well
to a walking tour of the city center while others will require
some form of motorized transportation to ferry your guests
to the various points of interest. Be prepared to recommend
particular restaurants, hotels, theatres and the like. Your
guests will see you as an authority on the area and will
be likely to ask for your recommendations.
To generate custom for your tour guide service, target travel
agents in your area as well as relocation consultants. If you
are aware of any major businesses in your area who frequently
entertain overseas business colleagues, approach them with
an outline of your services. Often, overseas businesspeople
travel with their spouses and your service would be a welcome
complement to their itineraries. Also target convention
organizers. Quite often, spouses of convention delegates
would prefer to spend their time sightseeing rather than
hanging around the convention or the hotel pool.
Design and have a brochure printed and leave copies in places
you think people looking for tour guides will frequent including
tourist information centers and hotels. Leave your brochures
with the concierge.
------
There are many more ideas like this in AHBBO's Home
Business Ideas page at http://www.fawkner.com/hbideas.html
and Online Business Ideas page at
http://www.fawkner.com/obideas.html
with more being added
all the time.
============================================================
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------
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============================================================
3. Feature Article - Lightening the Load ... Getting Help
When You Need It
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© 2000 Elena Fawkner
If there's one immutable fact of life when it comes to this
business, it's that there's so much to do but so little time to
do it all in. At some point around the one year mark, if you've
been even moderately successful in your online business,
you'll find you've reached the limit of what you can do with
the time you have available. At that point you have a choice:
to deliberately retard the growth of your business to maintain
the status quo, or take on additional resources to help you
cope with a business that continues to grow beyond the
capacities of just one person.
That's just the choice I was faced with when I returned to
the full-time workforce last month after running my online
business on a full-time basis for two months. I realized
almost immediately that if I kept on the way I was, my
business wasn't going to go any further. It was taking all
my time to deal with the administrative side of the business
and that left none for the really important business-
development activities that kept getting pushed to the
back-burner until I magically found the time to get to them.
In this article, we look at getting help when you need it. And
no, I'm not talking about going out and hiring a wage-earning
full-time employee or even a part-time employee for that matter
although that, of course, is one option open to you. Instead,
with a little bit of lateral thinking you may well find you can get
the help you need for very little (if any) up-front cash outlay.
COMPENSATING YOUR ASSISTANT
Because (I assume) you're still running your business
on a shoestring, you can't afford to pay someone a wage
in advance of generating additional income. This means that
whoever you choose needs to be someone who's prepared to
work for a percentage of the profits of the business rather
than a wage. For this reason, the person you choose will
most likely be close to you ... a family member, spouse
or very close friend.
As for the proportion of profits that you pay to your assistant,
this is up to you and your assistant to negotiate and will
depend on several factors including the types of tasks your
assistant performs, the time they have available to work (and
actually do work) and the overall contribution they make to the
business. An assistant who takes an entrepreneurial interest
in the business and contributes to its growth in addition to its
maintenance should be rewarded accordingly.
TAX CONSEQUENCES
Be sure to get professional advice before you start your
arrangement with your assistant. You need to think about
tax and other issues such as whether your profit-sharing
arrangement might create a partnership rather than an
employer-employee relationship (this may or may not be
something you want). Also, assuming you're not intending
to create a partnership relationship with your assistant, think
about whether you want an employer-employee relationship or
whether you prefer your assistant to be an independent
contractor. There are tax consequences for each of the
above scenarios so be sure to talk to your accountant about
your options.
CONVERTING TIME INTO INCOME
It should be self-evident that you are going to have to
convert the time you free up with the help of your assistant
into income. In other words, if your business doesn't
generate any more income as a result of you taking on an
assistant, by the time you split your profits, you're going
to be behind. So it's crucial that you take the time you save
and spend it wisely. That means using your time on projects
that are going to increase the income of your business by
more than the cost of splitting your profits.
WHO TO CHOOSE FOR YOUR ASSISTANT
Now, who should you choose for your assistant? To start
with, consider who in your immediate circle has both the
time and the ability to help you in your business. It could be
a spouse, teenage son or daughter, parent, next door neighbor,
brother or sister, close friend or colleague.
In my case, my first choice for an assistant was my
computer-savvy mother but, because she is retired and on a
pension, she can't earn an income without jeopardizing her
retirement income. I therefore didn't consider her as a
real
possibility.
I then considered one of my sisters but, because
of technical problems (she didn't have a suitable computer
and wasn't in a position to get one quickly) that wasn't
going to work either. Then my other sister, not computer-
savvy but obviously a lateral thinker, suggested that, instead
of paying my mother her share of the profits in cash which
would have jeopardized her pension, why not pay her in airline
tickets from Australia to the US? Because I have recently
relocated from Australia to the US, this was a perfect
solution because it was expenditure my parents would
have incurred anyway. And, from my business's point
of view, because my mother works for the business, the
airfares the business pays for will be tax-deductible as
our visits will be, at least in part, business-related.
So, give some thought to your particular circumstances
and think laterally. Perhaps you have a teenage son or
daughter who is good with computers and is looking for a
way to earn additional income. Not only does appointing
them as your assistant achieve this goal, it also gives your
child crucial experience working in the ecommerce field and
that sure can't hurt!
Perhaps you have a close friend who is a single mother
and is looking for at-home ways to supplement her part-time
income. Perhaps a sibling is in a similar position. You
get the
idea. I imagine that most people know at least one person that
they could strike such an arrangement with.
TASKS TO DELEGATE
OK, so you've lined up your assistant. Let's turn now
to the kinds of things you can delegate to him/her.
As a general rule, you want to delegate those tasks that
are routine, repetitive and which maintain (rather than
grow) your business. Growing the business is your job.
That's what's meant by working "on" the business rather
than "in" the business.
Consider the following:
=> Processing Subscribe/Unsubscribe Requests
If you publish an ezine, then you know what an administrative
headache it can be processing all those subscribe and
unsubscribe requests even with the aid of automating software.
Despite your best efforts, and clear instructions in your ezine,
there are always at least a dozen people who can't seem to
figure out how to unsubscribe themselves and send you a
message asking you to do it for them. Then there are those
who write asking to be added to your ezine list because they've
been referred by a friend and don't have your subscribe URL.
So you add them manually too. Then there are those who want
to unsubscribe but keep trying to do so using an email address
other than the one they signed up with. They send abusive
emails to you when, for some mysterious reason they keep
getting your ezine. They, of course, think you're so desperate
for subscribers that you have set up your devious systems so
that once they're subscribed they're on your list forever.
Annoying as this is for ezine publishers, the real problem is the
time it eats up dealing with this stuff. So delegate this task
to
your assistant.
=> Processing Advertising Orders
Another routine task that can be delegated to your assistant
is the processing of advertising orders in your ezine. Set up
your systems so that all orders go straight to your assistant
(with a copy to you so you're in the loop) who then schedules
the ad, confirms the booking with the advertiser and then
formats the ad ready for the next issue.
=> Sending Your Ezine
Actually sending your ezine to your list is something that
you can delegate to your assistant, too. Just email your
ezine to your assistant when you've finished it for sending
to your list. You may even leave your assistant to insert the
classified ads.
=> Submitting Your Articles
Another routine task that your assistant can take care of is
article submissions. I have a list of article submission
services that I submit my articles to on a weekly basis,
as well as a handful of publishers who have specifically
requested to receive them. My assistant sends for each
article after it is written (they're all available on autoresponder)
and submits it to the article submission sites/lists I
specify. A longer-term project is to seek out, on a regular
basis, new article submission points. That, also, I have
delegated.
=> Submitting Your Ezine
Similarly, I have delegated the task of submitting my
ezine to the various ezine announcement services that
are always springing up all over the place.
=> Negotiating Ad Swaps
If you're an ezine publisher, you know that receiving ad swap
proposals from fellow publishers is a frequent occurrence.
Delegate the negotiation of these swaps to your assistant.
=> Web Site Updating
Depending on how computer-savvy your assistant is,
they may also be able to take on some simple web site
updating for you. We're not talking about major design
changes here, just making routine updates to add your
latest ezine, article or advertising information, that sort of
thing.
~*~*~*~*~*~
By delegating these routine administrative tasks and any
others that may apply to your particular business, you will
save yourself several hours of work every week. Don't
squander this time! Now you have the time you need to
overhaul your site, write the next month's articles for your
ezine, investigate and respond to the half dozen joint
venture proposals you've received this week, create that
ebook you've been meaning to get around to writing and,
most importantly, *promoting your business*! As stated
earlier, you MUST convert your newfound time into dollars.
If not, your business is just going backwards ... the very
circumstance you sought to avoid when hiring your
assistant.
------
**Reprinting of this article is welcome!**
This article may be freely reproduced provided that: (1) you
use the autoresponder copy which contains a resource box;
and (2) you leave the resource box intact. To receive a copy
of this article by autoresponder, just send a blank email to
mailto:gettinghelp@fawkner.com
.
============================================================
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------
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============================================================
4. Pro-Motion Column - Answers for the "Pro in Motion"
============================================================
jl scott is attending to a family emergency. Her column will
return in two weeks.
============================================================
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------
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5. This Week's Subscriber Web Site Pick -
KeepsakesandMore.com
============================================================
Hi Elena,
I'd very much like to get in on the action of getting my site
seen by more people. It's one that I did myself, so I'm not
sure just how good it is but would like your opinion.
My business involves using photographs of adults and/or
particularly children and putting them on really adorable
backgrounds and printing them out. I also do personalized
invitations, birth announcements, etc.
My web site really hasn't done anything, most of my
business has been done locally and from referrals, and craft
shows that we do. Any input would be very helpful.
At the moment, I can't afford to take credit cards because the
web site isn't getting the hits or interest. I've registered with all
the search engines but only get a few stragglers now and then.
My work is very good and everyone that I've done work for loves
it but can't seem to get started online.
Thanks so much for your ezine, I really appreciate it.
web site: http://www.keepsakesandmore.com
Mary M. Cope
------
Hi Mary:
You haven't told me how long your site has been up so it's
difficult to say why you haven't experienced the success
you're looking for. If all you've done is register your site
with
the search engines, though, that could explain it. My own
experience is that the search engines are very much a
secondary source of traffic unless you happen to be one of
the fortunate few whose site appears in the first 30 listings.
Quite frankly, I simply can't afford the time and effort that
would require.
The bulk of the traffic to AHBBO comes from AOL, would
you believe? So try getting yourself listed in their directory
for a start. Apart from that, do you publish your own ezine
or write articles? These are by far more effective techniques
for driving traffic to your website than simply listing your site
with the search engines. Also, seek out complementary
websites and propose joint ventures whereby you each send
traffic each other's way. This type of arrangement, known
as reciprocal linking, will drive a surprising number of visitors
to your site.
As for the website itself, it's clean and easy to navigate. I
think, though, that you'll attract more traffic if you include
free content that will attract the demographic you have in mind
for selling your artwork. I think your business concept is
wonderful but it's so unique that your main problem is likely to
be it's not something people are going to be searching for
because they don't know such a thing even exists! On the
other hand, I think you've identified a real niche so you should
do extremely well online once your site starts generating serious
traffic. So, add relevant general type content to your site to
attract visitors. Once at your site, they'll look around some
and hopefully order from you.
One final comment. I found your pages somewhat slow to load.
That's because of your use of images, I think. If possible, try
shrinking the size (in bytes) of your images and they will load
faster. Also, and this goes for everyone, invest in your own
domain name and get set up to accept payment by credit card.
It's not a major investment. A domain name is only $35 per year
and webhosting can be found cheaply. Some hosts charge as
little as $10 per month (although, as a general rule, you get what
you pay for when it comes to webhosting -- to a point at least).
As for credit card payments, the expense only comes in when
you need your own merchant account. Start out using Clickbank
(http://www.clickbank.com) instead,
a credit card processor.
Apart from a one-time set-up fee of (I think) $40 or so, your only
other payment is in the form of a modest commission which is
deducted by Clickbank from the order amount. They issue
checks every two weeks and I've always found their service
completely reliable. (No affiliation.)
------
If you want your site seen by thousands, write and tell me
about it! But make sure it's one you've created yourself
or have had created especially for you. No self-replicating affiliate
sites please.
mailto:elena@fawkner.com?subject=website_pick
============================================================
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------
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============================================================
6. Contests
============================================================
=> Multiply Your Chances to Win
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Create your own odds to win valuable prizes you need
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=> REAL 'Net Profits
AHBBO also co-sponsors another great monthly contest called
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This package is worth well over $250, and it can be yours
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The winner for August is David Spevack (pnoted@........com).
Congratulations David! I'll be in touch shortly with details
how to claim your prizes. The winner for September will be
drawn September 24, so if you haven't entered yet, register
now for four free chances to win!
============================================================
7. Advertise in A Home-Based Business Online
============================================================
AHBBO SUMMER 2 FOR 1 SALE ... LAST WEEKS!
The AHBBO buy one get one free summer advertising
special expires on September 17. Until then,
whatever advertising purchase you make, single
classified, ad pak, super ad pak or exclusive mailing,
you get the same again, absolutely FREE! So shake
some life back into your business during this slow,
lazy summer with half-price advertising in AHBBO.
A zero tolerance policy applies at AHBBO in relation to
undeliverable mail. This means that the recipient address
for emails returned "undeliverable" (including where the
recipient's mailbox is full) is automatically deleted from
the AHBBO subscriber database.
This policy has been introduced to more accurately reflect,
in the subscriber numbers, the number of eyes who will
actually see your ad. Because AHBBO classified ad rates
are calculated on a $CPM basis, this policy is intended to
maximize the return on your advertising dollar.
Current ad rates and placement details are at
http://www.fawkner.com/adsubmit.htm
. Choose from single
ad placements, Ad Paks (4 ads for the price of 3), Super Ad
Paks (7 ads for the price of 5) and exclusive mailings.
============================================================
Do you like this ezine? Recommend-It(r) to a Friend!
http://recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=446574
============================================================
8. Subscription Management
============================================================
Please note: email addresses for ALL returned mails are
automatically deleted from the AHBBO subscriber database.
If you have a free email account and want to continue
receiving this ezine, please make sure you clear out your
mailbox on a regular basis!
To SUBSCRIBE to this Newsletter
http://www.fawkner.com/subscribe.html
To UNSUBSCRIBE from this Newsletter
mailto:subscribers@fawkner.com?subject=unsubscribe
(Processing of unsubscriptions is automated. Please make
sure that your email is sent from the account you subscribed
with otherwise you will not be unsubscribed. If you've tried
to unsubscribe but keep receiving AHBBO, please make
sure you've tried to unsubscribe with the address you
subscribed with before contacting me.)
To CHANGE your Subscription Address
mailto:subscribers@fawkner.com?subject=change_address
and in the body of the email tell me what your old address
was and what it needs to be changed to.
If you find this newsletter valuable, please forward it
in its entirety to your friends, family and associates!
============================================================
9. Caveat Emptor
============================================================
Although all of the information presented in AHBBO is
published in good faith, neither the publisher nor the
editor accept any responsibility as to the accuracy or
otherwise of the information presented. By making use of the
information contained in AHBBO the reader assumes all risk
that certain information may prove to be incorrect.
All advertisements are accepted in good faith. However,
advertisers are solely responsible for the content and
accuracy of their classified advertisements and no
warranties are given, nor responsibility accepted, by the
editor or the publisher in relation to any classified
advertisement appearing in this publication. ALWAYS carry
out your own due diligence!
============================================================
10. Contact Information
============================================================
Elena Fawkner, Editor
A Home-Based Business Online
Contact By Email
http://www.fawkner.com
============================================================
All Rights Reserved