Small Home Business: Keys To Finding A Great Business!

With many home business opportunities available today, how do you find a truly great business? Rather than take a gamble with your future financial security, read on to find out exactly what to look for when choosing a home business.

1. How big is the market?
The larger the market, the more potential sales you can achieve. Look for a business where age, income and culture do not overly influence the customer’s requirement for your product or service. The more people interested in your products or service, the more money you will make.

2. What is the industry trend?
What is the general direction of the industry in which your business will operate? Is the industry expanding, staying level or shrinking? You will need to look for an industry that is expanding as well as a highly desirable product or service.

3. The nature of the product or service itself
Is the product one that people will use often? Look for a product that is consumed (used up) and needs to be replaced regularly. This will give you repeat orders from the same customer and create a steady flow of income.

4. How is the product delivered to the customer?
This is an important point as you will want to leverage or use your limited time in the most effective way possible. If you physically deliver to your customers, you significantly limit your income and market potential. No business, even your own will pay you for delivery. Businesses pay on generating sales!

Look for a business where the products can be delivered electronically over the internet, or are delivered directly to the consumers by the parent company - without you having to be involved, other than placing the order.

5. Is there a proven business system?
Is there a successful business system you can plug into? Let's face it, you want to get up and running and be making money as soon as possible, not creating a business system! Or, worse still trying to make a bad business system workable!

6. Is there a support system?
Is there someone to help you until you grow your business and learn your business to stand independent? Once you get started, are you going to be left alone or will there be someone there to guide you?

7. Is the company credible?
Is the organization stable and have a track record of delivering on their promises? Have a good look at the people who are in charge and ask the following questions. How long has this organization been in business? Have they been able to establish a loyal customer base so far? Do they meet all government standards and qualifications?

Once you start looking, you will see there are many different types of home business opportunities. Armed with these success factors you are well equipped to sort out those work at home business opportunities that have the best potential of providing you with true financial freedom.
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Eugene Rivera is an internet marketing protégé. He is the webmaster of Secrets of Online Success. Learn about all the money making techniques to achieve success on the Internet. Click on our webpage at http://www.secretsofonlinesuccess.info
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Adsense Is Essential For Content Sites for 3 Reasons

To know why Adsense is essential for your content sites is to know first how this works.

The concept is really simple, if you think about it. The publisher or the webmaster inserts a java script into a certain website. Each time the page is accessed, the java script will pull advertisements from the Adsense program. The ads that are targeted should therefore be related to the content that is contained on the web page serving the ad. If a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying the search engine for the click.

The search engine is the one handling all the tracking and payments, providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive and targeted ads without having the hassle to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor the clicks and statistics which could be a time-consuming task in itself. It seems that there is never a shortage of advertisers in the program from which the search engine pulls the Adsense ads. Also webmasters are less concerned by the lack of information search engines are providing and are more focused in making cash from these search engines.

The first reason why Adsense is essential for content sites is because it already has come a long way in understanding the needs of publishers and webmasters. Together with its continuous progression is the appearance of more advanced system that allows full ad customization. Webmasters are given the chance to choose from many different types of text ad formats to better complement their website and fit their webpage layout.

The different formatting enables the site owners the possibility of more click through from visitors who may or may not be aware of what they are clicking on. It can also appeal to the people visiting thus make them take that next step of looking up what it is all about. This way the people behind the Adsense will get their content read and making profit in the process.

The second reason is the ability of the Adsense publishers to track not only how their sites are progressing but also the earnings based on the webmaster-defined channels. The recent improvements in the search engines gives webmasters the capability to monitor how their ads are performing using customizable reports that has the capacity to detail page impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Webmasters and publishers can now track specific ad formats, colors and pages within a website. Trends are also easily spotted.

With the real-time reporting at hand, the effectiveness of the changes made will be assessed quickly. There would be time to sort out the contents that people are making the most clicks on. The ever-changing demands would be met while generating cash for the webmasters and publishers. The more flexible tools are also allowing webmasters to group web pages by URL, domain, ad type or category, which will provide them some accurate insight on which pages, ads and domains are performing best.

The last and final reason is that the advertisers have realized the benefits associated having their ads served on targeted websites. Thus increasing the possibility that a prospective web surfer will have an interest in their product and services. All because of the content and its constant maintenance. As opposed to those who are no using Adsense in their sites, they are given the option of having other people do their content for them, giving them the benefit of having successful and money-generating web sites.

Adsense is all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more target the search engines’ ads will be. There are some web masters and publishers who are focused more on their site contents and how best to maintain them rather than the cash that the ads will generate for them. This is the part where the effectiveness is working its best.

There was a time when people were not yet aware of the money to be achieved from advertisements. The cash generated only came into existence when the webmasters and publishers realized how they can make Adsense be that generator. In those days, the content was the most important factors that are taken quite seriously. It still is. With the allure of money, of course.
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Eugene Rivera is an internet marketing protégé. He is the webmaster of Secrets of Online Success. Learn about all the money making techniques to achieve success on the Internet. Click on our webpage at http://www.secretsofonlinesuccess.info
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Elements of Decision Making in a Home Based Online Business 3

Information You Need To Make Decisions

There is no disputing the fact that to make decisions, you need information. Without information, you are guessing in a vacuum. If you guess instead of decide, you are reducing your chances of success with your business.

Company Decision Making

A large company will probably have, or at least should have, quite sophisticated management information systems. The systems will be computerized, bringing information from all the key areas of the business. The management team will have a process for reviewing and monitoring that information, through the circulation of summary reports, meetings (regular and ad hoc), and other means of communication.

Those same sources of management information will be used as a basis for important decision making. Past sales reports; cost reports for different products, manufacturing processes, and cost centres; market intelligence; material cost reports; supplier reliability reports. Depending on what type of decision is being made, some or all of these, plus more, may be taken into account.

There is no doubt that such information should be crucial to making key decisions in that business. However, some companies fall into the trap of allowing the information system to become an internal industry in itself, with no checks and balances. If a company becomes complacent, if the whole process becomes routine and habitual, then the value of those systems dissipates. It turns the information systems themselves into a bottomless pit for management time, bringing no valuable return.

Let me illustrate. In the early 1990's, there was an internationally known British company, which, like most companies, had a budget setting process each year. That was an important time for decisions; absolutely critical in one of the most competitive markets in the world. That particular company was near the top of the tree, if not at the top. It had won a reputation for modernization, innovation, and efficiency, in an industry bogged down by state intervention across the world.

The whole budget setting process went on for many months before the start of the financial year. Every manager of every department was geared up for it, and it had become a highlight of management activity. So how did they go about deciding the next year's budget for each department?

Across the board, in each department, their starting point was the current year's budget. Each manager would add a bit here and there for anything new they needed to spend money on. We're talking many millions of pounds here. Then the Finance Director and Chief Executive, as they went through their budget setting meetings, would get individual managers to knock off a bit to make the cost base look better. So, they would end up with a budget very much like the last, regardless of whether the last budget was nonsense.

One year the Chief Executive decided the whole system was flawed. He threw out the system of top down budgeting, and forced every department to start from zero. They now had to justify every penny they spent to get their budget for the year. Out went the complacency and blind acceptance of what had been happening in the past. From then on, the management were forced to justify what they were going to spend. Each item of expenditure became a decision, rather than a habit. Habits continue unless you decide to stop them. Fewer habits and better decisions ultimately means higher profitability.

I can say with confidence that such examples of poor use of management information systems is common. Often, too, users of those systems come to accept them as gospel truth, when in reality there may be errors in the figures or they may include a lot of estimates. They may, on the face of it, appear to be sophisticated, but under the surface they are often not.

Applying Company Lessons to Your Own Business

So, why have I spent so long writing about large companies when you are probably just a one man band?

First and foremost, you will have an advantage over many others if you are fully conscious of the fact that you are making business decisions. I have given the illustration because you are more likely to remember that than a whole load of theory. It is a hook for your memory, which I hope may aid you in remembering as you go through your business life:

I need to make decisions based on good, accurate information, and not let my decision making becoming a habit that skirts the truth.

It is amazing how differently you may view a situation given hard facts, rather than just your memory and perception, mixed in with emotion and mood.

It is not possible, in a short article, to give a comprehensive list of all the records you should keep, and how you should use them, to aid your decision making. Whatever you do, do not become over enamoured with any systems you set up to get the information you need. You need accuracy and relevancy; you need only the information necessary for the decisions you are likely to need to make.

In your business, you know your cost base, markets, clients, customers, suppliers and the way they interact within your business. Think for a while what type of decisions you are going to need to make, and then ensure you will always have up to date and accurate information in order to make those decisions. Here are a few closing tips:

¢ Much of the information you will need will be of a financial nature. When you set up your accounts for statutory purposes, use a software package, like Quickbooks, that allows you to break down figures into cost categories, products, markets etc. For example, if you have a bill from an advertising medium you have used for more than one product, ensure you can input not just the total (for statutory purposes) but can then allocate the costs to each product A, B and C etc. That will give you a lot of information that can be summarized quickly for decision making. Similarly with sales income or commissions. A cheque from Clickbank may include several products; ensure you break it down.

¢ Try to master the use of spreadsheets. They can be used for simulations or what if? scenarios in decision making, and once set up can be very powerful assistants.

¢ If you do use spreadsheets, ensure they are 100% right before using them for decision making. Complex spreadsheets in particular can harbour mistakes in formulae that have not been immediately evident. If information is not accurate, it is dangerous or worthless, usually both.

¢ If you are spreading your time between separate sources of income, try to keep a rough record of time spent on each. As a sole proprietor with no staff, time can be particularly critical; you only have a limited time each day to work, you want to make the most of it.

¢ Try to set aside some quiet time when there is a need to make a significant decision of any sort. Think first about the information you need to make a good decision, and only when all that is in place should you decide. That will help neutralize moods and emotions that may distort your decisions.

¢ If you have a decision to make, and find you do not have the necessary information from your records, ask yourself if you need to alter your own record keeping for future decisions.

What I have aimed to do with this series of articles is to increase your awareness of the need to separate business from personal decision making. In your own business they do overlap, but you will make better decisions if you not only separate them, but treat them differently also.

I have also tried to encourage you to be aware of the need to gather relevant information that you may require in the future for making decisions. Often, being prepared right at the beginning will make things a lot better for you later on.

As your business grows, you may need to think about some of the more sophisticated and statistical decision making tools and techniques. I will not go into those here, just ask you to remember the lesson from the British company I mentioned earlier. Bigger is not always better. Accuracy and relevancy are always better.
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Eugene Rivera is an internet marketing protégé. He is the webmaster of Secrets of Online Success. Learn about all the money making techniques to achieve success on the Internet. Click on our webpage at http://www.secretsofonlinesuccess.info
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Elements of Decision Making in a Home Based Online Business 2

Areas of Decision Making

When you have your own business, each decision that you make may have an impact on the business's profitability. If you were previously an employee, and not involved in your employer's decision making processes, then this may all be new to you.

It is important that you make the transition with an acute sense of awareness of:

1· how and why you normally make decisions, and have made decisions in the past;

2· why making your decisions in your own business can and should be different to your decisions in your personal life;

3· the need to separate, in your own mind, business as opposed to personal decisions;

4· the benefits of sharpening your business decision making; and, the dangers of allowing your business decisions to just go with the flow as they probably do in your personal life.

Often, people make decisions without even being aware of it, and then carry that practice into their first business. Being more aware of the mere existence of particular decisions will set you apart from many other small business owners, and that can only be good for competitiveness and profitability. Once you are aware, then and only then can you go into the next stages of a decision making process:

a· pinpointing the need to take a particular action;

b· gathering sufficient information to assess options open to you in taking, or not taking, that action;

c· assessing the risks and uncertainties of a decision;

d· reviewing, with a clear and open mind, all the relevant information, and consciously coming to a decision;

e· setting up a means and plan to monitor the outcome of that decision.

f· setting up a means and plan to monitor the success of the decision making process itself.

The corporate world is littered with examples of large companies who have got into serious financial problems due to bad decision making. This particularly occurs where there is investment in new products, markets or machinery. The fault can lie not just with the idea and the decision, but the decision making process itself.

Hurried decisions, insufficient information, biased assessment, lack of complete investment appraisal, ignorance and over optimism can all play their part in bringing a company to its knees. Such failures can and do happen even with a company staffed by professionals in all the necessary areas of expertise.

You, probably, are not able to employ experts and professionals to assist you in your decision making. However, you have other things in your favor, the most obvious of which is incentive. Each decision you make affects your business and your income. So long as you are aware that a decision is needed, it is then within your control to ensure that the decision you make is, more likely than not, going to be a good decision.

Before you even start your business, you have some very big decisions to make, such as should I have my own business at all?, or what sort of business should I have? Now, having taking that major decision to get started, you want to get the best out of the business, and that means making the best decisions for the circumstances that prevail.

Decisions in every part of your business are important, but the following can be amongst the most critical:

o· Investment in equipment, or other capital investment of a material nature.

o· Investment in software.

o· If and when to pack up the day job.

o· Outsourcing part/s of your workload.

o· Setting priorities for budgeting finances.

o· Withdrawal or reinvestment of profits.

o· Product lines to sell.

o· Product lines to withdraw.

o· What types of marketing to use.

There are, of course, many more. You will be aware of the most important decision making areas in your own business. You would then be well advised to focus on those areas, and condition yourself to giving very careful and conscious thought whenever a significant decision is due.

A business decision should not be spontaneous and made in a vacuum. It should be fed by a network of information flow, and that is something that is best prepared in advance. This decision making infrastructure will be discussed in the next issue.
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Eugene Rivera is an internet marketing protégé. He is the webmaster of Secrets of Online Success. Learn about all the money making techniques to achieve success on the Internet. Click on our webpage at http://www.secretsofonlinesuccess.info
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Elements of Decision Making in a Home Based Online Business

Why is Decision Making Important?

This is the first in a series of short articles on decision making, as it may affect the progress, or otherwise, of your home based online business. The main purpose of the articles is to get you thinking, more than you might have done, about decisions that affect your business. It is not possible in short articles to cover what is really an endless subject, but I hope by the end of the series you will be more conscious of the decisions you make which may affect:

1.The profitability of your online business.

2.The scope for expansion.

3.Your efficiency.

4.The productive use of your time.

5.Your family.

6.Your enjoyment of working online.

plus many other aspects of working at home online, in your own business.

Why is decision making important? You only need to consider that for a moment to realize: that it is a dumb question. From the moment you wake, you are passing through a series of tens of thousands of little decisions. You are not very aware of most of them, they are routine, semi or sub-conscious decisions. Any one of those little decisions could have a major influence on the future path of your life.

For example, you are in a hurry and decide to cross the road at a certain point. A car comes hurtling around the corner, and knocks you into the air. Thankfully you are still alive after you land, but you are taken to the hospital and stay there for a couple of weeks, at one point in Intensive Care. You are employed, but your employer is not sympathetic, will not pay you, and for a few days you lie there worrying about losing your job. You have no insurance, so how will you pay the bills?

Was crossing the road at that point, at that time, a bad decision? On the face of it, yes, it was stupid to say the least. But what if, in the two weeks in hospital, you fall in love with a nurse? Later, you marry and have several wonderful children? Was that still a bad decision, crossing the road then and there?

Not only did you meet your future spouse, the person in the next bed turned out to have some good business ideas they wanted to put into practice. You got chatting about them as your condition started to improve. The two of you found you saw eye to eye on lots of things, and it was clear that you would both benefit from the synergy of working together on a business project. The other person had the ideas and money in place, but needed you as a partner to take it forward. When you were both fit and well again, he subsidized you while the business was set up. It prospered, and within months you were earning 4 times your previous income. Was that still a bad decision, crossing the road then and there?

That is fiction, but is it unrealistic fiction? No. There are probably many thousands of very similar stories. And there are countless millions of true stories about seemingly little decisions that have altered the course of people's lives.

What I have been referring to are almost random events. I say almost because the decision to cross the road was not random. An adult crossing the road like that had sufficient information to make a correct decision. They did not make use of their knowledge and information. As decision making goes, it was a bad decision, regardless of what random events followed.

Making decisions in your every day business needs to be more focused, more scientific, and much more aware, than you may have been used to in your life as an employee. Most of us have, at some stage, passed through a zombie like existence of repetition, working for a company or other organization. It may even be that you have had little scope to make decisions other than when and where to cross the road, what to eat for dinner, what to watch on tv, and what to wear today. Now, though, with your own online business, there is massive scope for making key decisions, every day. How you do that will have a serious impact on the future of your business.

I believe that just by being more conscious of your decisions, your business will benefit, and so will you. Relying on the business equivalent of crossing the road at the wrong time, meeting the love of your life and your perfect business partner, is not an option if your are serious about your business. You cannot rely on random events, although undoubtedly some random events will affect you in the future. Business is often a percentage game, and you want to make decisions that tilt the odds in your favour.

Decision making in business is about bringing together as much relevant information as possible, in a structured and understandable way, and consciously reviewing that information before arriving at a decision. It is about assessing possible outcomes, probabilities, future trends, past experiences and all other relevant factors. Ignoring those factors may not put you in hospital, but would harm your business.

I will cover elements of business decision making in future articles. In the mean time, if you are in search of a new loved one and business partner, please do not step out in front of a car. Your local hospital may not be the place where they are currently waiting for you.
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Eugene Rivera is an internet marketing protégé. He is the webmaster of Secrets of Online Success. Learn about all the money making techniques to achieve success on the Internet. Click on our webpage at http://www.secretsofonlinesuccess.info
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A Computer Business Opportunity Provides a Huge Profit Potential!

The Computer Business Opportunity field, home based businesses, and Internet businesses have all gotten some negative feedback in the past. Even five years ago, people were being scammed and separated from their money by early "work from home businesses" who were out to make a quick buck selling off an idea or cheesy product. Now, however, there are more and more legitimate jobs in the computer business opportunity field than ever. Scams are still out there, so be careful what you get into.

Outsourcing and work from home opportunities are becoming a common way of life in many corporate circles. For example, virtual office assistants will do typing, transcription, memos and other necessary office administration duties, straight from home. This is often called telecommuting. Documents and files can be emailed, phone calls are minimal, and with the newer PDA's messaging can be instant. For the home worker, the benefits of such a position are invaluable - better pay, fewer hours away from home, no worrying over the rising cost of gasoline, no traffic jams twice a day, and no costly wardrobe.

In the computer business opportunity field the home based computer worker will have a few extra responsibilities that are usually taken care of by a regular employer. Working from home means you are responsible for your own taxes, insurance, and saving for retirement. These are all very easily taken care of with a little research. The benefits of managing your own home based computer business will far out weigh the extra attention you will have to give to your own payroll.

For the company that is outsourcing, the benefits are just as great. With no office space to rent, no employees to manage, no benefits packages to administer, no vacations to pay or wasted time with office politics and drama. Corporations of all sizes stand to benefit from outsourcing to someone in the computer business opportunity field. The competition for such positions is great enough that you will often find companies outsourcing simply to get better quality of work for a better price.

There are dozens of other opportunities in the computer business opportunity field that do not require terrific office skills. The sales industry is also outsourcing a great deal of its market as well. Anyone with sales experience can work as a salesperson, consultant, or open their own product line from the ease of their home. This often can pay better than the commissions some companies pay. With the rising cost of expenses, even working part time for your self on the computer can be very profitable to earn extra money.

Computer consulting business opportunities abound on the Internet. If your have design or web content experience, you are in a field rich with home based business opportunities. Freelancing and contract work are often more popular these days due to the high cost of maintaining qualified people in these specialized fields. Web site design is a competitive but lucrative computer business opportunity due to the dramatic increase in Internet usage by small businesses to promote their products and services.

Of course, there are other profitable endeavors such as survey taking, affiliate programs, writing copy for advertising, graphic design, computer repair business, and many more fields. With all the jobs out there, you should not have trouble translating your current skills into a profitable home based computer business. The Computer Business Opportunity field is the way of the future!
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Eugene Rivera is an internet marketing protégé. He is the webmaster of Secrets of Online Success. Learn about all the money making techniques to achieve success on the Internet. Click on our webpage at http://www.secretsofonlinesuccess.info
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