The Real Deal About Starting a Home-Based Business

From the outside, it may look like the perfect ideal that anyone wants. For example, I’ve had people tell me that I’ve got the best of both worlds; that I have a home-based business as a freelance writer and I get to be with my kids all the time. They perceive that my freelance writing career comes with no worries, there’s not much ‘running around’ to do because my home-based business is a pretty ‘straight-forward’ one and that my kids are angelic all the time.

How I wish it was all true.

You see, as a freelance writer with more than ten years of experience in my pocket, I dare say that anyone with a home-based business can tell you that it’s impossible to start a business, yes, even if it’s just a small home-based business, without some planning. Because there’s a certain amount of passion and emotion that you’re going to be pouring into this home-based business of yours, you’ll certainly be yanking all your hair out trying to make sure that there aren’t any loopholes and that it would run as smoothly as a yacht on a hot, sunny, cloudless day.

Never truly prepared for your home-based business
As with becoming a parent, you can never be truly prepared for your home-based business. That’s the sad truth about life, about a freelance writing career and also about your home-based business. What you’ve planned for your home-based business may not roll out the way you have planned it to roll out and along the way, you will discover that you could burn all those strategic marketing and online marketing plans that you’ve painfully drawn up without causing a dent in the way your home-based business works.

But does this mean you ought not plan your business at all? That if you’re a freelance writer like me, you can start pounding on every door that you see, asking to be hired as their writer or blogger?

Essential to write a marketing and business plan even for home-based businesses
Far from it, I’m afraid. As unpredictable as it is, it’s still essential for home-based business owners to write out and plan their home-based business’ marketing strategy. No ship can sail without knowing where they’re heading and if you head in blindfolded, you’d better be ready for a surprise, then. It’s ‘good luck’ to you!

And if you’re thinking, ‘I don’t have anyone to answer to apart from…well, myself, what’s there to worry?’ but that’s what the whole worry is about. This makes your whole home-based business a very direction-less and eventually a very messy one. And the worst thing is that one fine day, you would start comparing your own home-based business with others and realize that they’re doing much better much faster – where did you go wrong and then you remember the marketing plan that you burned.

The way the home-based business works will change all the time
But this is the way business works – you’ll need to change and revise all the time but it DOES NOT mean that you can do away with planning out your home-based business. There are consequences to think about, a back-up plan and a strategy that you can fall back on.

One fine day, you will revise your home-based business, work on it, see that something’s not working, revise it, work on it, do it….well, until you feel that everything’s okie dokie.

And then something goes wrong.

Believe or not, this is the way the world works…this is the way your home-based business will work as well. And you’ve got to learn how to deal with this…but not without a marketing strategy and a home-based business plan.

Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.

A Guide on Successful Product Creation and Internet Marketing

Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.

The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.

It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!

With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.

With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.