Many begin the dream of becoming an entrepreneur by running their business out of their home. Reason can range from saving on expenses, or they simply do not need a lot of space to run their business. For Jennifer Manriquez of the Bilingual Fun Co., she found working from home provided a perfect balance between family and career. “At the moment, the home-based setup is the right balance for me. With my young children’s busy schedules and daily lives, the flexibility it provides me is definitely worthwhile.”The reality of a home based business owner is facing the day they outgrow their home office. Unfortunately for some, that day arrives much faster than expected. Therefore, it is important to remain sensitive to the signs that your home is no longer the place for an office. Have a plan in place to identify the warning signs so that you can be prepared.Product based businesses can easily expand beyond the walls of a home. When the dining room table and/or family room have become your warehouse, this may be a sign you need a separate warehouse or possibly expand to a store front.The flow of customers and vendors through your front door may also be an indication that an alternate location may be needed. The increased traffic may be an issue for your family, but many neighborhoods and homeowners associations do not permit this type of traffic. It can also be an issue with your business and/or homeowners insurance and the amount of liability coverage for which you are protected.An outside office may be more conducive if you struggle separating yourself from your work. If you find you are sneaking into your office after dinner to catch up on a few things or you spend a few hours here and there on weekends working on projects. For some, it is easier to have a defined separation between work and home locations.As your business grows, there may come a point that you need to add staff. A home-based business can pose many challenges if you need your employees to work in close proximity to yourself. As Jennifer Manriquez sees in her plans, “I envision more space for additional employees one day. I have found that I am more productive if I am able to delegate some of the tasks that are very time consuming. I would like to have an office space specifically for my own staff so that they have the resources, materials, and space for completing the necessary work”. Again, your homeowner’s policy may not cover liability exposures for your employee’s, therefore; you will need to have a separate work location once you bring employees onboard.When you get to the point of exploring possible locations, assess what type of an office you need. Look down the road for future needs to prevent frequent moves. Will you be adding staff within the next year or two? Will you need additional space for additional equipment as your business grows? If so, keep that in mind so you have a location for expansion, otherwise, you will incur additional costs and headaches in moving.Consulting with a commercial real estate agent will provide you with the expertise to find a location to suit your needs and help negotiate the best cost per square foot. They will also help navigate the many contractual agreements to consider in a lease, such as, build-out expenses, utilities, security, maintenance, and rate increases. Successfully choosing your new location for your business will help your business become more successful.
Home Based Business Tips – How To Use Article Marketing To Increase Your Success
If you have your own home-based business, you know how difficult it can be to drive targeted leads to your website, and you are on a never-ending search for the most cost-effective and efficient way to get the right people to your business and to turn them into subscribers. With so many options out there, both paid and free, it is difficult to figure out which are worth the money and which will help your business grow the fastest.
For my business, the best technique as far as building my customer list and income has been article marketing. Not only is article marketing the best strategy for driving targeted leads to my online business, but it is completely free, which does wonders for my bottom line.
If you want to see how article marketing can improve your home-based business, take a look at the following three benefits of article marketing as they relate to your home-based online business:
#1 – They drive only targeted leads to your business
The one difference between all types online marketing and article marketing is that an article will bring only targeted leads to your business. Since someone who reads through your article and clicks on the link will only do so if they are truly interested in the content provided, this will weed out anybody who will not be interested in your business, increasing the conversion rate for your business.
#2 – Articles have instant credibility built-in
Not just anybody can produce a good article about their business, so when someone takes the time and effort to create a high-quality piece of content, they are building their own credibility.
#3 – An article pre-sells the customer by demonstrating your level of expertise
As a potential customer reads your article, they are in a way interviewing you and your abilities. If they like what you’ve offered, they are in a sense pre-sold on your expertise, and this will increase the success of your business.
Information Product Creation: Never Compete on Price Because There Is Only One You
Information product creation requires extensive preparation, no matter which niche you work within and you want to make sure that your information product has a successful launch. That probably sounds scary and intimidating but here’s the thing: this is a one time effort and it will pay off in a foundation that is strong enough to get your ideal clients to invest in your high-end programs and services without the perils of a traditional funnel. This article will teach you a few of the things that you need to remember if you’d like to invest in yourself and start on the information product creation path using your unique talents and abilities. Remember that you never have to worry about anyone ripping off your ideas because if you understand how to properly position yourself around your story.
Understand Both Strengths and Weaknesses: It is good to have an impartial view of your own strengths and weaknesses when lay the foundation of selling yourself within the information product creation process. It helps you figure out where you are, what you lack and how to move forward so that you get as much growth as possible. It is more than important, it is urgent if you want to create fast success for yourself to have personal positive reinforcement and deep belief to provide yourself the support you need so that you can get over your own limitations to ensure that your information product is as valuable as it can be.
You also need to know exactly who your competition is so you can study them and use their methods to help you improve your own standings. Down recreate the wheel, but understand the wheel and position yourself going uphill from the competition. Check out which kinds of opportunities you’ve already got and try to figure out how best to use them while taking care to remember your strengths and weaknesses. This is a great way to figure out where you stand against your competition which helps you figure out how best to grow.
Launch on Time: No matter what, even if you haven’t officially announced your “launch date” you should launch the site when you’ve said you would. This will force you to stick to your goal and actually work on it. Thinking that “I’ll launch it when I think it’s ready to launch” will only hinder your efforts. You’ve got a responsibility that you need to live up to with your launch, and you can’t move back on that one. If you get close to your launch date and you are getting hung up on your self limiting beliefs in your information product creation, don’t worry this about getting it out there and not perfection. As long as it is usable you should launch it. Launching on time is the professional thing to do and it is more important than creating a “wow” effect in your site visitors. You can always update/upgrade your website when you have to, so there shouldn’t be any issue with that.
Analyze Your Own Concept: If you want to make your information product creation successful you need to understand how good your concept is: is it really going to work for your chosen audience or would something else be better? You already know about your competition; how does your concept measure up? If you haven’t come up with your own idea and are trying to work with someone else’s concept, do some more work on your own before your launch. People want original ideas because they’ve seen too many other me-too websites already.
Test Your Concept Before You Commit To The Information Product Creation Process: One of the biggest failures people have with information product creation is not testing an idea before putting a lot of effort into producing an information product. PPC to a small 5 page site with a landing page is a great way to test an offer before you even produce it. If people will sign up to get it, you can be sure that you can create an information product that will target eliminating the pain of your target market. The small amount of money will be invaluable in using crowd sourcing to direct the final outline of the information product creation process.
You’ll have lots of hurdles to clear after the launch of your information product and the only way to truly take care of them is to follow the advice in this article to work smarter. Plenty of people work hard, but it is the ones who work smarter who make real money online with the information product creation business model.