A book can transform a person’s view about himself/herself, to enhance his/her potential to become a better person. A highly valued and quoted book is Napoleon Hill’s masterpiece “THINK AND GROW RICH“. If anyone who is serious about starting a new business, to improve himself/herself, it is a must-to-have piece. Before purchasing any book, buy this one first.

Think and Grow Rich

Post from: Internet Business Tips

Some people do not like working at home. They actually need the interaction with other people, or they feel more comfortable being told what to do, or they want to enjoy the night at ease without thinking too much about the home business… Plus, the whole society has encouraged us to “get a decent job” by working from 9 to 5. Working at home? It just seems to be too unprofessional in the eyes of many people.

Is it true? Absolutely not. As any person who is interested or already a home business owner knows, working at home may be easy from the outside look — well, you can work in pajamas, you don’t need to worry about other people’s objection or criticism, you work at home, at your comfort, at your pace… If the person is serious, s/he knows that a home business is more than a real “common” job because there are always something to do, something to learn. You spend extra hours to learn, to work, to finish one project and then start another. It is an endless race you have to catch up, with your competitors, and with yourself.

So, why do you want to work at home? It is a question we need to ask before we start a home-based business. You want the freedom to be your boss, to choose the place, the time to work, to select the people with whom to work with.  However, you should be prepared for a temporary lack of money, understanding, recognition, and heavy work load, at least until the business gets into its track.

To start a business is like nurturing a baby — you have to be there all the time.

Only when the business is running well, mature enough, you can start enjoying all the benefit we like about a home business.

I don’t want to make it sound hard for starters, but it is the case, and you’d better get ready for some sleepless nights and cutoff weekends.

Of course, those who choose to work at home always have a dream to fulfill in addition to the freedom that you are your own boss. A dream is the driving force for any success, including home business. With this dream, a common person can reach a high level given the right assistance and tools and eduction. Ask yourself what dreams you have, and then work hard to achieve it.

Post from: Internet Business Tips

“The shortest path between two points is a straight line.” Does it sound familiar? Yes, we have all studied it as one of the basic principles of geometry.

The straight line is the shortest route, following the shortest route usually take the least effort and least time. If we want to go to Paris from Atlanta, you will try find the simplest and most direct way, but not via Sydney. By the same token, if we want to achieve a goal, you would like to find the simplest and direct route.

Unfortunately we tend to add unnecessary steps when we try to get what we want. For example, I want to finish a report by the end of the day. I clean my table, take out a pen and a pencil to do mind mapping, I switch on my computer and I decide to do some research. I go to the internet and I find many resources relevant to my study and many not so relevant but interesting to read. I read the relevant materials, I also read the materials not so relevant hoping to get some inspiration. Time flies away, and the report is still unfinished…

Sometimes, when we try to get something done, instead of doing it, we tend to wander around preparing for the start, talk with other people for advice, read extensively for information, or pray for a solution. These extra steps are unnecessary, and sometimes they become the obstacles to get the things done. We should also be aware that even if we see the direct line between the start and the destination, the distractions we receive everyday can make the line no longer obvious. That is why regular reflection and goal setting is important.

Find the straight line, follow the straight line, life is much simpler and less stressful.

Post from: Internet Business Tips

Here is a podcast from Sherman Hu, “Solid Strategies in Blogging for Traffic, Credibiligy & Sales“. You can download it and play it again and again when you drive, rest… It features clear, well-explained strategies in blogging. I think it is a great resource to learn how to use blogging for traffic, credibility and sales.

Post from: Internet Business Tips

Ghostwriting can be rewarding in two ways.
a) You get a chance to research and write about all types of topics that you wouldn’t normally have a chance to learn about. The old theory in writing “write what you know” doesn’t apply to ghostwriting since your clients will dictate what topic you will write about.

b) You can make a decent living at it.If you’re new to writing, it may take a while to get clients but it is possible. It just takes a little hard work and perseverance. There are several ways to get clients. Here are a few.

1. Bid on writing jobs on contracted work site such as Elance.com, Guru.com and Getafreelancer.com
You basically sign-up as a service provider to begin bidding on projects posted by clients. If you win the bid, you do the writing project as a ghostwriter.
2. Place ads for your ghostwriting service on free classified ad sites. It doesn’t cost anything to
post ads on these sites and is a good way to get your services out there in front of potential
clients.

3. Post responses in forums with a signature that defines your ghostwriting service and an email address or website URL. Something along the lines of “Affordable Ghostwriting Services,[your website url] or email for more details [your email address].

4. Introduce your services in forums where you are allowed to do this. Many forums have a section where you can introduce your business. See out writing forums for this.

5. Have business cards created showcasing your ghostwriting business. Pass them out every chance you get. Put them on bulletin boards in supermarkets etc. You can create your own or have them made.

6 Write a press release announcing your services. There are plenty of no-cost or low-cost distribution services on the web to get the message out for you. Ghostwriting may not be for everyone because you don’t get credit for your work, the client does. If that doesn’t matter to you and you like writing on a variety of topics, it can be an enjoyable way to earn some money.

Copyright 2005-2007 Lorraine Cote
Lorraine Cote is the CEO and Owner of The Write Touch 4U, Copywriting Service. She is also a published freelance writer who has written over 100 ebooks & articles on various topics for clients as well as all types of other written materials. She also has 16 years experience in the corporate world as a Trainer and Business Writer and dabbles in Internet Marketing. Visit her at http://www.thewritetouch4u.com or visit her blog at http://writetouch4u.blogspot.com

Post from: Internet Business Tips

By: Tammy Embrich

Are you finding lack of time for your online business becoming more and more evident?

Are you finding it more difficult reserving well-needed time for your children and family?

Well, you are not alone. All too often, many home based business owners (unintentionally) fail to prioritize their time efficiently. I think time is about the most valuable and limited resource that we possess.

Balancing our personal and professional lives is indeed quite a challenge. This important task can be accomplished by taking a look at some significant small steps.

Goals

What are your business and professional goals?

Turn your dreams and intentions into reasonable, achievable goals by writing each goal down beginning with the most important and ending with the least important ones.

Purchase a special journal or diary all your own for this purpose. Keep this journal close by, on your desk at all times.Write down what you want to achieve yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily. Plan long projects by breaking them down into bite-sized pieces and dedicating so much time each day for achieving your goals.

Put Together A Work Routine Schedule And Stick With It

Keep A Business Daily Planner On Your Desk. Prioritize your home business according to specific deadlines. Make a note of tasks that need to be completed on a daily basis.

For example: Make a note to do your website updates on Mondays, Make important phone calls on Tuesdays, Do your business research on Wednesdays, and so on.

Carve out a reasonable schedule for yourself and base it around your business needs and goals. The most important thing about a schedule is of course sticking to it. Staying focused and consistent is the key element to achieving success in any home business.

Make Time For Yourself And Your Family

This is the most important issue home based business owners face today. You must reserve special time for yourself and for your family. If you don’t make time for yourself, you run the risk of business burn out. You need time to yourself to feel refreshed, energized, and ready to tackle the next task that needs completing.

Take at least one half hour to a full hour each day solely for yourself. Take a walk, take a drive, take a nap, read a good book, watch a good movie or favorite program, schedule lunch with a friend. This is so important to you and also your business If you have children at home, you need to also involve them in this important time.

Take your little ones to the park, the zoo, out for lunch, anything…just as long as you take this special time just for you and your children. Always take time out for that special bedtime story, helping with homework, making that special breakfast, or just talking and cuddling. Isn’t this the main reason for deciding to work from home…staying home with your kids and spending quality time with them?

Always schedule specific times with your kids, and also with yourself….this will help avoid getting over-stressed and over- worked with your home based business. Children like routine. You will also find that following a routine schedule will make you more productive and successful with your business.

Article written by: Tammy Embrich
Tammy Embrich is an Internet Marketer and is the
Owner of: WAH Opportunities
Owner of: Real WAH Jobs
And owner of Cookin At Home

Tammy’s two WAH websites focus on free telecommute job leads and more.

Post from: Internet Business Tips

If you see this article, you are among the people who dream to have their own successful business. But, how to start? In order to achieve our goals, what are the steps or formulas we can use? How much money and time do we have to invest? … Those are the questions which have become obstacles for many of us to proceed to pursue the idea.

Now with the booming of internet, an easier way to start a home business has emerged: to start a home business on the internet. The reasons are obvious: the start-up costs are minimal compared with an off line brick and mortar business– we know even a small retail shop will cost very much, let’s list only the necessities: space rental, furnishing, telephone, water and electricity. 

With internet business, you can start, test. If it goes well, you can continue; otherwise, you can quit without losing too much money.

Then, the next question will be: what kind of online home busines can you start?

First, you can sell goods, either on Ebay, or on your own website. Ebay has been an excellent platform for anybody to sell, but if you tried already, you must have found out that it is not easy to make money on this well-known auction site. The professional Ebayers and the price-driven picky buyers have made it very hard for new sellers to make a dime, if they manage not to lose(considering the fees to pay to Ebay). On the other side, starting to sell on your own site helps avoid the fees, but to establish the reputation and traffic takes more time and effort from the business owner. To manage an online shop requires more learning too. Both approaches require the business to have certain inventory. The business owner has to understand the market, know the channel to get the goods and be familiar with the shipping options. 

Secondly, you can promote other people’s products, that is so called “affiliate” products. Yes, you don’t need to have any physical goods, you don’t need to deal with product ordering and shipping, you don’t need to take care of the customer service. All you do is to advertise, to promote the goods and make a commission from them. A lot of affiliates are known for making millions of dollars. But you have to find the right products, the right ways of promoting and willing to spend some in advertising.

Thirdly, you can sell your own product, e.g. the self-made jewelry, hand-made crafts, etc. You can also sell your digital products such as an ebook. OK, with this approach, you don’t need to buy goods and then sell them. You have 100% of the profit. But you still need to work hard on advertising to get people know your products.

None of these methods are simple,  although all of them are achievable.

Do the research, find out what you are interested in selling and what you are good at doing.  Learn as much as you can. Then the next, and the most overlooked while important, step is to learn how to generate traffic to your business and how to convert the traffic into sales. This is often the hardest part of setting up an online business. This is an ongoing process while a lot of people ignore until they find out that their beautiful goods are not known to the world and nobody is paying visits or buying anything from the shop.

In most cases, a website is necessary for an online business. You can easily get this done by hiring a web developer. Nowadays if you want a standard website, it won’t cost much. But the important point is that you should also learn some basics so you can change the layout, the prices later by yourself.

Then you need find a web host. This is also easy since there are so many hosting services available in the market. Same rule applies here: you have to know what you want, and what you need and then compare. Do some research and compare carefully. You should keep it in mind that once you decide the domain and hosting service, it is not good to change it often later. So find the right one from the beginning is crucial.
Here I listed some points to show the basic route to start an online business. But you should take the action and make your own journey. Yours can be different from the others, don’t compare with others but yourself. Learn from the mistakes the other people have made and try to avoid them. Well, if you also made mistakes during the adventure, it is the cost of learning. Valuable and beneficial for your future growth.

I wish you success.

Post from: Internet Business Tips

I am not a well organized person. Whenever I see something inspiring or interesting, I find a piece of paper and jot it down. As a big fan of Note-it notes, I stick the note on my laptop, on my desk, on my plans, … almost everywhere.

It is easy to throw away the to-do-list. But it is not easy to organize the little gems scattered here and there. Luckily I have found a very useful handy freeware, Stickies.

As you can see, the stickies look like the real note-it notes, but in electronic formats.

You can enter all kinds of info you want to remind yourself, just as you normally do as with the normal note-it notes. You enter items, you can cross them out when they are done, you can update them. You can have several notes stuck on your monitor. You can keep them open, you can hide them. All very handy.

I have found it a huge way of organizing my findings, thoughts and ideas. And I am happy that I don’t rely on the note-it notes that much any more. Well, I guess I have saved some money plus a part of a tree.

If you are interested in downloading is, here is the link.

Post from: Internet Business Tips

by Cynthia Minnaar

It can be a bit of a juggle finding enough hours in the day around your day job to successfully start and build a work at home online business, so herewith some tips to make your online home business building process smoother.

When starting a work at home online business and going through the training there always appears to be so much to do and of course we want to get everything set up as quickly as possible in order to start making money online.

However, you may find that a lot of the information that you are provided with is totally new to you and so before being able to implement the tasks you may need to learn some additional skills and so you need to try and avoid suffering from information overload.

By trying to get as much done as possible in the few hours available without having a total understanding of what you are doing will only lead to confusion and frustration. It can become overwhelming, so you need to focus on one task at a time and try and stay organized and work as efficiently as possible. Making use of To-Do Lists helps – you could have an urgent list, important list, daily, weekly and monthly lists.

It is highly likely that you will want to implement some changes to your website but at this stage your knowledge of html is really minimal, so you first may need to spend some time learning html before you move on to the stage of being able to successfully make changes to your website.

You will also be eager to start driving traffic to your work at home online business website and may want to implement a pay-per-click advertising campaign but your experience in this area of advertising is also lacking. Again you would need to spend time learning the ins and outs of pay-per-click before starting a campaign otherwise it could end up costing you dearly.

There are many internet marketing methods that you would no doubt be introduced to during your work at home online business training, such as article marketing, email marketing, forum marketing, blogging, traffic exchanges, safelists, pay per click, classified ads, ezine advertising, social bookmarking, etc. Avoid trying to implement them all at once. Choose one and focus on it until you are having success then move on until you have 2 or 3 methods that you are skilled at.

You may like to initially focus on building your list by getting subscribers to sign up for your work at home online business ideas newsletter. You can do this by buying leads, placing classified ads with your autoresponder email address in it rather than your website address, put an exit pop up on your home page, put a newsletter sign up form on all of your web pages, etc. Each new subscriber you get to your newsletter means that you are making progress.

You could for example then move on to learning how to write and distribute articles which is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your website as you will be building back links to your website which will result in higher positions in the search engine results

Building a work at home online business is a step-by-step process and takes time. It is rather like building a house, you cannot put the roof on until the walls are built and you cannot build the walls until the foundations are laid and so building an online home business needs to follow a similar logical process.

Don’t rush, take your time and get to grips with the information provided in order to build a solid foundation to your online home business. Choose the internet marketing methods that are most effective for you and build your work at home online business one step at a time instead of trying to implement everything all at once.

About the Author:
Cynthia Minnaar is the owner of www.cyns-home-biz.com. Subscribe to her Free Online Home Business Ideas Newsletter and learn how to start and build a work at home online business.

Post from: Internet Business Tips

I have to admit that I am not an organized person. I often get lost in various tasks and therefore got distracted. Then recently a friend sent me the link to Mark McGuinness’ e-book “Time Management for Creative People“. I thought it would be a normal e-book on time management, so I did not give too much attention at the beginning. One night I started to read it, and I could not put it down. It is a great book with great resources.

The index of the book contains

1. Why you need to be organised to be creative
2. Prioritise work that is ‘important but not urgent’
3. Ring-fence your most creative time
4. Avoid the ‘Sisyphus effect’ of endless to-do lists
5. Get things done by putting them off till tomorrow
6. Get things off your mind
7. Review your commitments
8. Resources to help you get things done

The point that we have to be organized to be creative makes a lot of sense to me. It also gives us a direction to improve our time management capacity.

I don’t want to say too much of the book so you will enjoy reading it better. However, when you finish reading it, I believe that you would feel the same urge to implement the mentioned tips.

I wish you a successful new year of 2008!

Post from: Internet Business Tips