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A Home-Based Business Online Issue 108 : November 12 Sent to 11,563 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-Based Business Idea of the Week - Contractor Referral Service 3. Feature Article - How Do I Start A Home Business? 4. Surveys and Trends 5. Motivational Tip for the Day 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. I've been receiving more than the usual number of emails recently from people suddenly thrust into the ranks of the unemployed and deciding, by default, to start their own businesses from home without having any real idea or conception of what's involved. "How Do I Start An Online Business?" is this week's feature article. Thanks to Louis Fearnley who this week recommended I recommend to you an excellent site, Woody's Windows Watch (), an extremely valuable resource for anyone using Microsoft products (and, let's face it, who isn't?). "Woody" is none other than Woody Leonhard, author of a multitude of authoritative tomes on all things Microsoft. So, thanks to Louis, I do, indeed, recommend this site. I also want to briefly recommend to those of you who publish your own ezines and articles great new submission software. It works like the good search engine submission software programs out there except it's dedicated to sites and directories that accept ezine listings, announcements and article submissions (which, as you know, is one of the major keys to generating traffic to your own site or ezine). For more info, visit . I got my copy this week and it's excellent. It's reasonably priced and will save you hours each week. 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 . Dear Mom...This is a letter from my heart to yours. I'm a mom with three kids. I know what it feels like to have to work outside the home and feel torn between your need to work and your need to be with your kids. Now I've found a way to make money at home and be there for them. I want you to be able to find it, too. Please...read this now. 2. Home-Based Business Idea of the Week - Contractor Referral Service I've been putting up with a leaking shower head for weeks now because I just can't seem to find the time to get someone in to fix it. Every time I decide to do something about it I open up the Yellow Pages to find a local plumber but am confronted by so many choices I really don't know where to start. So I put it aside until I "get around to it". If truth be told, I can't be bothered with the hassle of finding a contractor who can come out and fix my problem at a time that actually suits ME! I don't want to hire some expensive plumbing company that requires appointments days in advance and have to hang around the house for half a day because they can't give me an exact time of arrival. All I really want is a local handyman who can call around on Saturday morning before I head out to do my grocery shopping. And there are plenty of people like me out there. Just think about the kinds of services the typical household needs from time to time. There's plumbers, electricians, gardeners, glaziers, carpet/furniture cleaners, appliance repairs, cleaning services, painters and babysitters to name just a few. At the same time, local tradespeople are wanting the local work that's currently going to the big companies. Many of these tradespeople would be prepared to pay you a commission or a booking fee for referring customers. You may even offer an attendance service where you attend at the customer's house while the work is done to avoid the customer having to take time off work or lose a Saturday morning. So line up a group of reference-checked tradespeople and then start advertising your referral service in the classified ads of your local newspaper, by letterbox drop, flyers in the local supermarket, even a Yellow Pages listing of your own. ----- There are many more ideas like this at the AHBBO Home Business Ideas page at free home based business ideas with more being added all the time. STEPS FOR SUCCESS - THE SIX HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL WEBMASTERS "The Most Powerful Direct Response Marketing Site on the web today!" This site contains Marketing Techniques, Tips, Strategies, and Everything you could ever need to make money from home! FREE - No Obligation. I will show you how to make THOUSANDS Per Week just by visiting free home business opportunities 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 Look before you leap . 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 how to write your business plan . 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. So, 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 what it takes. ------ ------ entrepreneur. AHBBO free home business ideas 4. Surveys and Trends © 2017 Ryanna's Hope => THE CONTINUOUS MOVE TOWARD "PERSONALIZATION" According to the Q4 2017 Online Merchandising Research report from the e-tailing group 92% of US retail websites provide visitors with some form of a personalized "my account" feature. Most also offer benefits for creating an account, like e-mail or newsletter updates (91%) and exclusive offers (80%). => WHY MANY WON'T BUY FROM YOU....THE "HIDDEN" COSTS! The latest report from Vividence finds that 75% of US internet users abandon their online shopping carts before executing their transactions. Vividence surveyed 719 people while they used shopping carts on e-commerce sites and determined the main reason e-shoppers give up is due to high shipping and handling charges (72%). Additionally, 43% say they find the total cost of their purchase too high and therefore they leave their transaction. Editor's [i.e., Larry Wack of Ryanna's] Note: I think you'll find it's a violation of FCC regs to "profit" from shipping and handling prices. It could result in a stiff fine. Editor's [i.e., me] Note: Yes indeedy. => WHAT ARE YOU SELLING? AMERICAN CONSUMERS WANT "COMFORT" RIGHT NOW While Americans still seem willing to leave home to go to the movies, they would rather spend their $10 on something that's going to make them laugh or feel warm and cuddly. "We're retreating to the film equivalent of macaroni and cheese," said James Rocchi, senior film critic for the online DVD rental company Netflix. In a survey of 4,000 of its customers, the company found an increased interest in comedy films and less appetite for action and drama. But while sales of luxury goods have softened, home entertainment and housewares may get a boost from America's urge to nest. In fact, sales of throw blankets, craft products, flat shoes and comfortable clothing seem to buck the trend. "We might see more sales at places like Bed Bath & Beyond or anywhere else we can buy things that make us feel comfortable." 5. Motivational Tip For The Day © 2017 Jan Tincher If you visualize success as the outcome, what do you think will happen? Success? It's inevitable, right? Well, kind of. That is, unless you had negative thoughts before and after the visualization -- which many people do. If that happens, the minute the negative thought comes in, replace it with this: *I now release the pattern in my consciousness that is creating resistance to my good.* Pretty soon you won't be having the negative thought anymore. You can then bask in your success. In fact, I recommend it. The more you *bask,* the better you feel about the situation. The better you feel about the situation, the better you will handle it. Good luck! (Or should I say, Good Basking!) ----- Learn unique strategies and techniques for personal success from Jan Tincher online at 7. 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