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Archive for May, 2010

Here’s something that most online business owners struggle with – Working too hard for not enough return. Eve when the return’s are good, the hours can be grueling.
As an Internet marketing mother, I can’t afford to be sitting at my computer 24/7. I chose to run an online business because I want to be home with my kids, but at home glued to a computer screen isn’t like being at home.
Even if you don’t have a kid or a spouse, a business should not become your entire life.
It’s a recipe for burn out and a dismal life that revolves around a computer. At first, building your business and working really may seem exciting, but then you look up and realize there’s nothing else in your life.
So, how do you work smarter and not harder? In other words, how do you make more money with less personal time invested in your business.
To me, in comes down to 4 key points:
• Value your time
• Leverage the strengths and time of others
• Implement Passive Income Models into your Business
• Don’t be afraid of technology
Here’s some more thoughts on each of those:
1. Value Your Time:
You need to set and limit your working hours. You probably run your business, so you can stay home with your family&/or have more freedom. Well, being a prisoner to your computer doesn’t do either of those things for you.
In addition, when you limit your work time, you are more productive. If you have only 3 hours to get work done, you’re more likely to stay focused and do what you need to do. If you have set aside the whole day to work, you’ll probably slack off and hang out at forums, check your stats endlessly or find other distractions. Sorry to say – that’s NOT working.
2. Leverage The Strength & Time of Others:
Don’t think of yourself as a solo entrepreneur…think of yourself as a team. You can leverage the strength and time of others by:
- Outsourcing: Never try to do it all yourself!
- Partnering with others reaching the same target market as you: Your competition doesn’t need to be your enemy. Make them your partners instead!
- Recruiting and training an affiliate force: Just setting up the script for your affiliate program isn’t enough…set up a stellar program instead.
- Being part of mastermind group that shares business strategies and experiences.
3. Implement Passive Income Models Into Your Business:
Outsourcing and having your own well-managed affiliate program are ways to generate passive income. Other ways to add more passive income to your online business are:
- Join affiliate programs: You don’t have to fulfill all the orders and provide customer support.
- Learn search engine optimization (SEO): Search engine optimization is an excellent source of highly-targeted traffic for your website. Just think, people enter a keyword phrase for something they want and voila, they find you.
- Implement pay-per-click strategies: Just like with search engines, you can get highly-targeted traffic to your website, but you have to pay for it. But setting up a cost-effective and profitable campaign can do wonders for your business. Try Adwords of Yahoo Search Marketing.
- Use autoresponders: Effectively automate your follow-up process with our prospect and customers.
- Backend Sales & Upsells: When someone is already going to buy from you once, they’re more likely to buy more. Make sure you make extra offers.
4. Embracing Technology:
This one might be tough for some non-technical people. Honestly, I’m not very technical and I get intimidated by technology…but I do know that if I can automate something in my business, it saves me time and money. That’s why I have a programmer on hand to help me with stuff like this. I don’t have to implement the technology myself. I just use it to my advantage in my business.
Some uses of technology can include…but the possibilities are ENDLESS
* Autoresponders
* Shopping carts
* Membership sites
* Automating content addition to your sites
* Making customer/prospect management easier and more profitable
* Customer feedback, comments, reviews
* Affiliate program
* Tracking advertising and split testing
So please, stop doing so much work! Your business, family and friends will thank you for it!

This can be harder than it sounds and is probably the most important decision you’ll make with your work at home internet business. There are two major considerations in choosing what your website will be and both are extremely important. Some will argue that one is more important than the other, but in they end they are equal.
The first thing to consider when picking a topic for your site is picking a topic you enjoy. What’s that have to do with making money online you may ask? Well, if you don’t like it, you won’t spend time on it. Yes, the desire for money will help some, but your success online is in direct proportion to how much time you spend on it. Quite simply, if you like something you will spend more time on it. Don’t ignore my advice here, be sure to identify your hobbies and interests and pick one of them to make a site about. The more popular the better.
I gave a hint at the end of that last paragraph about the next consideration. It’s popularity. Let me explain exactly what that means in this context as it’s a little tricky. To give you the full story though I have to jump ahead a little.
Once your site is up and running you’ll need to get some ads on it. Online advertisers pay for visits to their site and exposure of their ads. They amount they pay varies wildly based on topic and the number of bids for your ad space. Yes, that’s right, advertisers will bid for ad space on your site. It’s very much like an auction, the highest bidders ad is the one that gets shown. So, the more popular your site (and topic) the more advertisers will bid on it and the more money you will make from the ads.
There’s a catch to this though. Not really a catch I guess but more of a flip side. Your site is probably not the only one out there on it’s topic. There’s probably quite a few websites out there that will be in direct competition with you. That’s OK though, remember McDonalds and Burger King. The down side though is that the more popular your topic the more choices advertisers and web surfers will have. This has the effect of lowering the amount of money you will make.
As you can see, knowing how popular your topic is is very important. There are two ways I recommend in researching this. One is our free keyword search tool located at the work at home site referenced below. You can enter up to three keywords or phrases into it and it will show you how popular they are as well as list similar ones. It’s a very useful tool. The second way is a pay way but it offers much more. It will show who is using the keywords and what other keywords they are using. You can put a website in and the will show you what keywords they are using, how popular they are and even how successful they are. It’s an amazing service and worth every penny. You can check it out there as well.
Back to picking your topic. The trick is to pick one that you like and is popular, but not to popular. Once again this is an important step, but don’t take to long on it. There’s still a lot of work ahead.

It is not always easy to divide your time between caring for the kids and working on your home business. With your kids running around the house or following you around asking 20 questions per minute, it is not always easy to get things done at home. If you really want to get something done and earn some money from your home business, you should learn to manage your work schedule. To help you get something done around the house, here are some tips for you.

Ensure Cooperation From The Family

You cannot work well if your family will not cooperate. To make sure that everyone understands that you are working, call a family meeting and explain the situation to the kids. If you have kids who are old enough to understand the situation, make sure that you talk to them and enlist their help in keeping the little ones away form your work area. Older kids are responsible towards their younger siblings and you should encourage them by giving them the task to keep their younger siblings out of your way during your work time.

If you do not have older kids who could help keep the other kids out of your work station, you better put a lock and key into your office to ensure that no one can get inside the room and mess with your work. What if you only have a corner of the house as your office? How can you keep everyone out? If it is impossible for you to keep everyone out of your work station, make sure that you put your work in a safe place after you are done. Be sure to have filing cabinet with a lock where you can store important files. Do not leave anything on top of your table if you do not want to end up losing them or have your little artist doodle on your files.

For your computer, make sure that you put on a password that is difficult for your kids to crack.  If you are using a desktop computer, be sure that you cover the screen, keyboards and CPU every time you finish working so that your little kids will not be tempted to tinker with it. For you laptop, put it inside your filing cabinet or somewhere else safe when you are not using it. Always remember that when it comes to your computer and your files, it is always better to be safe than sorry.

If you have installed a special phone for your home business, make sure that everyone understands that the phone is strictly for business. If you have teenagers in the house that couldn’t put the phone down for hours, make sure that they understand that your office phone is off limits. It will not do you any good if your clients cannot reach you because your phone is always busy.