Home Business Idea - Candle Making

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                              A Home-Based Business Online
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                     Practical home business ideas, opportunities
                         and solutions for the work-from-home
                                          entrepreneur

                               Issue 150 : September 16, 2002

                           Sent to 13,380 Opt-In Subscribers

                                     Editor: Elena Fawkner
                                Publisher: Fawkner Publishing
                                    http://www.ahbbo.com


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                                         IN THIS ISSUE
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1.     Welcome and Update from Elena
2.     Home Business Idea of the Week
3.     Feature Article - But What Do I Sell?
4.     Surveys and Trends
5.     Success Quote of the Week
6.     Advertise with AHBBO
7.     Subscription Management
8.     Caveat Emptor
9.     Contact Information

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1.     Welcome from Elena
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Hello again and a warm welcome to all the new subscribers
who have joined us since the last issue.

"So, you want to start your own online business. You know
you have to create your own website, start your own ezine
and generate traffic to your site before you can make sales.
So far so good. But ... sales of what, exactly? What do
you sell?" This is probably the most common question of the
would-be Internet entrepreneur. Fortunately, there are
plenty of answers to the question. "But What Do I Sell?" is
this week's feature article 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 .

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2.     Home Business Idea of the Week - Candle Making
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I arrived home from work one night a few months ago to find
a flyer outside my door from another tenant in my apartment
building inviting me to a candle party that Sunday night.

Having a spare couple of hours that Sunday night, I wandered
up to take a look and was astounded by the range of products
available.

There were candles of every imaginable color and design,
candles with fragrances that are released by the heat of the
flame, candles in the design of Jack o' Lanterns, beautiful
votives hanging from ornate metal frames and much more.

I got talking to the woman who designed all these candles
and she told me that she started out making candles on her
kitchen stove as a way of making money while she was home
caring for her young children. Word spread and over time she
began getting orders from people wanting her to design
special candles for their homes and people wanting to give
them as gifts, and, finally, she began receiving enquiries from
retailers looking for her to produce unique items for resale in
their stores.

Now she has a staff of three, and she focuses on candle
design and marketing her business while her staff (three
mothers of young children looking for a part-time home
income) do the manual work of creating the candles and
shipping them.

This woman earns more in a year from her candle making
business than she did in her full-time job before she quit to
have her family. And she doesn't have a website. Just
imagine what you could do with a business like this if you
did what she does AND promoted your products with a well
designed, high-traffic website.

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This is just one of over 130 ideas from the new "Practical
Home Business Ideas From AHBBO" e-book. Find out more at
http://www.ahbbo.com/ideasbook.html .

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3.     Feature Article: But What Do I Sell?
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© 2002 Elena Fawkner

So, you want to start your own online business. You know
you have to create your own website, start your own ezine
and generate traffic to your site before you can make sales.

So far so good. But ... sales of what, exactly? What do
you sell?

Fortunately, the options are many and varied. Basically,
though, everything falls into one of two categories ...
products or services. We're going to take a closer look at
a few relatively easy options.

=> PRODUCTS

What kinds of products can you sell from your website
assuming you don't already have something available?
Your best bet is anything that can be delivered digitally
such as software and information products.

When it comes to selling software or information products,
you have four basic choices:

1. you can create your own product from scratch, e.g., by
writing a software program, a cgi script or an e-book;

2. you can join affiliate programs and sell products already
created by other people and earn a commission for every
sale;

3. you can join a multi-level marketing (or network
marketing) plan; or

4. you can acquire resell rights for products already created
by other people and keep 100% of the profit.

Option 1. is a must-do. Eventually. But when you're
itching to get started, you don't want to have to wait the
3 or 4 months it takes you to write your ebook before you
can launch your online business.

Option 2. is great for a quick start but you're working on
commission. Someone else is getting the lion's share of the
profit for your hard work.

Option 3. is a good choice if you're a natural networker.
For more information about MLM and whether it might be
right for you, check out "Not MLM! ... Why Ever Not?" at http://www.ahbbo.com/notmlm.html .

Option 4. (along with option 3.) is where the real money
is, at least compared to option 2. Acquire the resale
rights as well as the product and you're not working on
commission any more -- you're working for serious profit.

Where do you go to acquire products that can be
delivered digitally with full resale rights?
=> SERVICES

What kinds of services can you sell from your website?
How about advertising space in your ezine or on your
website? How about a members-only area of your site,
access to which requires payment of a membership fee?

=> Advertising Space

Since you really need to be publishing an ezine on a
regular basis to stay in contact with, and generate, web
site visitors, it makes sense to make money from something
you already have to do anyway. Selling advertising space
is a good revenue-generator.

Don't try selling your ad space until you have a minimum of
1,000 subscribers or so. Until you get to that point by all
means offer free ads in your ezine though. That's a good
way to generate subscribers and get your readers used
to seeing ads in your publication. Ad swapping with other
publishers during this period (and beyond) is also a good way
to generate new subscribers.

Once you reach the 1,000 mark, you can start offering
your ad space for sale. The days when you could publish
an ezine with a classified ad section of 20 or 30 ads are long
gone. Ezine readers are much more savvy and discerning and,
as a result, ezine advertisers are much more selective and
will look for ezines that run few ads and which place them
strategically amongst the content, or "meat" of the ezine
itself rather than being stuck in a great glob that nobody
reads at the end.

Think also about sending solo mailings to your list as
another source of revenue. Be particularly circumspect
when it comes to these mailings, however. Solo mailings
are very effective when targeted to the right audience
and so advertisers love them. Ezine subscribers have
varying attitudes towards them though. Some will
immediately unsubscribe from an ezine that sends solo
mailings. Consider it a cost of doing business. Others will
accept them so long as the ezine itself is worth receiving.

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to
pricing your ads. Basically, you want to achieve some
measure of equilibrium between supply and demand. If
you have more demand for your ad space than supply,
increase your prices until demand is in line with supply,
do not increase the number of ads. The more ads you
run, the more you dilute their effectiveness for your
advertisers and the less likely your advertisers are to
place repeat business with you. In other words, by
taking a short-term increase in profits, you sacrifice
the longer-term profitability of your business. You're
cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Conversely, if you can't sell all your ad space, reduce
your prices. Try and get to a price point where the
demand for your ad space is roughly equal to your
supply. If you have an occasional ad spot vacant,
don't worry - just run an ad of your own instead. But
if you regularly find yourself with half your ad inventory
unsold and you're not running an excessive number of
ads, this is a signal your ads are overpriced and it's time
to reduce your prices or make the strategic decision to
run your own ads instead of others'. In fact, in many
instances you'll make more money from your ad space
by advertising your own products and services than you
will from selling the ad space itself.

How to set your price? As I said above, there's no hard
and fast rule. Whatever brings about equilibrium between
supply and demand. I used to charge $5 per 1,000
subscribers for a single classified but found that as my
subscriber base grew, along with my ad prices, this
formula didn't maintain equilibrium between supply and
demand. Now my single ad prices are somewhere between
$2.50 and $3.00 per 1,000 subscribers. Experiment with
your own prices until you find the right formula for your
publication.

Your pricing will also be influenced by how specific or
general your target market is. If you publish an ezine on a
relatively esoteric subject with a small but highly targeted
market, you'll be able to sell your ad space for a higher price
than you will if you publish an ezine on a really general
subject (such as "internet marketing") with an extremely
large but also undifferentiated market. For this reason,
it's not the size of your list that dictates your advertising
pricing, but rather how targeted your list is to the subject
matter of your ezine and your advertisers' products and
services.

Similar principles apply when it comes to selling advertising
space on your web site.

Bottom line: advertisers want and will pay for results, not
how many subscribers you have on your list.

=> Paid Subscriptions

Paid subscriptions are another good way of generating
income, whether they be for your ezine or web site.

As far as your website is concerned, by utilizing password
protection you can effectively cordon off areas of your
website for paying members only. This requires some
technical set-up but your webhost will generally offer some
sort of basic password protection capability. For more
advanced systems, you'll need to get hold of a specially-
designed cgi script for this function.

When it comes to pricing your subscription services,
although no doubt there are exceptions to the rule, the
better approach is to charge a monthly access fee rather
than an annual fee. A monthly structure allows you to set
a relatively low initial price, thereby making the decision to
sign up more of a no-brainer for your subscriber, and it also
gives you a recurring monthly income. It's also possible to
charge more overall than you could under an annual
structure. For example, most people would not hesitate to
pay, say, $9.95 for monthly access to a site they perceive
as valuable, especially knowing they can cancel at any time.
But those same people may hesitate if that initial investment
was $120 ($9.95 multiplied by 12 months).

With the appropriate payment processor and software,
subscription fees can be set up to be automatically charged
to your subscriber's credit card each month unless and until
they cancel.

=> THE ROLE OF CONTENT

These are just a few of the options available to you to
generate income from your own online business. The bottom
line with respect to all of them though is the quality of your
content. It doesn't matter how good your product line is if
people have no reason to visit your site in the first place.

So, put first things first. Pick a subject matter for your
site that you are passionate about. Do the hard work of
creating a truly valuable resource for people interested in
the same thing. Publicize it to death. Publish an ezine on the
topic, again with high quality content, to draw them to and,
more importantly, BACK to, your site again and again and
again. Then, and only then, will you have a chance to get
your product or service in front of them. Then, and only
then, will you have a chance to make the sale.

There's no disputing that the main reason we go into business
is to make money. If you don't have this as your objective,
then you're engaging in a hobby, not running a business. But
when it comes to doing business online, the reality is that you
have to give before you can get. So give your site visitors
what they're looking for. Do that and they'll visit you again
and again and refer their friends. Do that and you'll actually
have customers to sell your products to. Don't do that and,
although you may have the greatest product or service in the
world, no-one but you will ever know about it.

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** Reprinting of this article is welcome! **
This article may be freely reproduced provided that: (1) you
include the following resource box; and (2) you only mail to
a 100% opt-in list.

Here's the resource box to use if reprinting this article:

------

Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based Business Online ...
practical business ideas, opportunities and solutions for the
work-from-home entrepreneur.
http://www.ahbbo.com

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4.     Surveys and Trends
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© 2002 Ryanna's Hope

The following is an extract from the current issue of Larry
Wack's excellent weekly ezine, "Surveys and Trends". Follow
the link at the end of the segment to subscribe for the full
version.

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NICHE MARKETS FOR ENTREPRENEURS

According to America Research, recent surveys show what Americans
are doing most with their time on the Net. Entrepreneurs can see
the various niche markets here and determine if you have, or can
get, something to sell any of the segments.
Percent
1. To do personal research 54.2
2. To send and receive E-mail 51.6
3. To do research for business purposes 42.6
4. To look up information on products 42.2
5. To research for children's homework assignments 34.4
6. To obtain health information 31.9
7. To check on local and national news 31.4
8. To play games 30
9. To locate peoples' names and addresses 28.7
10. To keep up-to-date on the latest technology 28.4

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WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR CUSTOMER CONTACT?

Modalis Research surveyed 1,000 US consumers between April and
May 2001 and found that 98% of respondents have used the internet
for some form of customer service help. The most popular customer
service element consumers desired on a company's website was the
general telephone number -- 86% sought the number online.

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5.     Success Quote of the Week
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Life's strict rule is this: You get more of what you focus on.
Ignoring this, we abandon our healthiest, concentrative
energies and court emotional upheaval.
-- Marsha Sinetar

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6.     Advertise With AHBBO
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Ezine (electronic magazine or newsletter) advertising is
the most cost-effective and targeted form of advertising
online today. This is because the ezine's editor has already
done the hard work of bringing together a large group of
readers highly motivated by the subject-matter of the
ezine itself.

Therefore, assuming you place your ad in an ezine with
a subject matter that fits with what it is you are
marketing, you can be confident of reaching a select
group of highly targeted prospects for your product or
service.

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7.     Subscription Management
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8.     Caveat Emptor
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Although all of the information presented in AHBBO is
published in good faith, I accept no 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.

**I do not endorse any advertisements unless stated to the
contrary. Your money, your decision, your responsibility.**

All advertisements are accepted in good faith. However,
advertisers are solely responsible for the content and
accuracy of their classified advertisements and I give no
warranties, nor accept any responsibility, in relation to any
classified advertisement appearing in this publication. ALWAYS
carry out your own due diligence! Remember, if it sounds too
good to be true, it probably is.

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9.    Contact Information
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Elena Fawkner, Editor
A Home-Based Business Online
Contact By Email
http://www.ahbbo.com

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