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| Is A Free Home Based Business Opportunity Really Free? |
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Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Is it really a free home based business opportunity? Can I make money without paying anything at all? - Those are about the most often repeated queries put forward by people who are hoping to find a way to make money at home online. People who see an advertisement for a free home based business opportunity want to be reassured that "free" means it will never cost them a penny to run their home based business and that they can easily make money at home online without investing anything. I'm amazed they could even start to believe such a thing could be possible. When people ask me the "is it really free?" type of question, I give them an honest answer. The answer to both question is usually "yes, but…" and they tend to be disappointed and feel that they've been tricked and that the advertisers lied when they offered a free home based business opportunity. It is true that fortunes can be made from a free home based business on the Internet and it can be easy to make money at home online but that is not the whole answer. I am completely anti-hype but I don't think all Internet advertising is as misleading as people often claim. If you consider the average Internet advertisement, its wording is no worse than the standard "up to 50% off" claims we take for granted in offline advertising. We know that only a selected few items will actually be reduced by 50% and we don't feel at all cheated if we find a bargain with just 20% off its usual price. The thing is, people see things differently when they are searching the Internet for ways to make money at home online, their expectations are far higher, they are more willing to believe improbable claims and their disappointment is, therefore, quick and keenly felt.. If you tried to tell the same people that they could make money at home with an offline business without incurring any costs, they would laugh you out of the auditorium. However, the Internet is a strange environment and people need to get acclimatised before they can recognise a legitimate way to make money at home online and to understand what is "free" in the context of a free home based business opportunity. After just a small amount of experience, people will realise that the free home based business opportunity is going to cost them money one way or another if they want to see profits accumulating at any significant rate. The ones who persevere also eventually realise that the cost of running a free home based business online is far less than the cost of running an offline business. Let's think seriously about starting a business. First, how about an offline business. Suppose you decide you want to open a shop and sell dresses. Before you see any profit at all, you will have to pay out for premises (rent and taxes), services (fuel, water, phone), stock, insurance and advertising. If you are going to continue with your current employment while you build up the new business, you will also need to find staff and add wages to your list of expenses. Now let's think about our free home based business opportunity on the Internet. You need to budget for a product (the equivalent of the stock of dresses), a website (the equivalent of the shop premises) and advertising. The list is shorter and now the Internet home based business opportunity is looking like a much better deal by comparison. The products can be obtained either free of charge or for a small price, the cost of a website is small change compared to the cost of premises, this will be a home based business, so you won't incur any additional service charges or insurance. An Internet home based business can be set up to run 24/7 with just a couple of hours work a day, so you can continue to earn money at your currently employment without having to spend anything on staff wages. That just leaves advertising costs. Advertising your free home based business is the thing that's going to take up the biggest part of your budget. If you were opening your first shop on a limited budget, you would not be able to afford large premises in the prime part of the busiest shopping district where you would benefit from passing trade. You would have to be content with a small side street based shop and, to make customers aware of your business, you would have to advertise. In order to get a steady stream of visitors to your shop, you would need to advertise consistently and continuously. You would need to place your advertisements where they can reach your target market and you would need to make sure your advertisements appeal to your prospective customers so that they would be prepared to make the detour from the main street to check out your products. The Internet works in the same way. Nobody will know about your new free home based business unless you tell them. You can have the best website in the whole word but, if you don't advertise it, it would be like keeping your shop door locked, the blinds closed and the lights off. No visitors means no potential sales and that inevitably means no profit. You have no advertise, simple as that. There are many free advertising resources available online for your home based business but you need to be selective as, although there are some very good free advertising resources, the results to be obtained from the free companies are not always as good as paid advertising. Another factor to consider is that using the free advertising resources can take up a lot of time and you need to place a value on your time and decide how it can be spent to best effect. A free home based business opportunity does sound like the ideal thing for the numerous people who are looking for ways to make money at home online but are unwilling or unable to spend any money to do it. Many people leap into the first free home based business opportunity they see advertised and just as quickly give up when they find out they need to invest time and money in order to make money at home online with an Internet based home business. If these people would think things through, they would realise that starting an online home based business is far less costly than starting an offline business and the stage of getting into profit can come very early. Even if a free home based business it is not entirely free to run, being your own boss rather than being someone else's employee is priceless. ------ Elaine Currie has a Work At Home Directory at her Plug-In Profit Site to help everyone who wants to work at home: http://www.huntingvenus.com Promoting Your web site with out spending a cent If you are using the web since a little while, you would have come across many ezines.These are on web site promotion, web site designing, search engines,health,sports,computers...You name it... They will be there. When you subscribed to an ezine it will come to your inbox at particular intervals according to it's publication interval. Most important content of the ezines are Articles.These are short discussions on various topics that related to those ezine. Why should you write articles for ezines? • Very effective way of your web site or product promotion.After search engines ezines are the effective way of getting good amount of targeted traffic to your site. • No cost involved.All you need an idea to write an article. • There are more than 90,000 email news letters(ezines) around the internet and 95% of internet users have email accounts. • You can get Targeted visitors.For example you have a search engine submission software that you are selling from your web site.You can write an article on differences between the search engines and directories and submi it to an ezine that is focused on search engine optimization, the readers of that article comes to your web site.The reader who is interested in search engine magazines certainly will be interested in submission softwares. • You will develop link popularity.With your article submissions to ezines and web sites, you have to add a resource box with your contact details.So when ever somebody published your article on their web sites, they are also including your resource box, increasing your popularity. How to write ezine articles? PICK A TOPIC AND DO SEARCH IN YOUR FAVOURITE SEARCH ENGINE---> WRITE DOWN THE RELEVANT MATTER ON ONE OR TWO PAPERS WITH SUBHEADINGS. WRITE A FAIR COPY---> AND SUBMIT TO EZINE DIRECTORIES OR PUBLISH IN YOUR OWN EZINE. STEP ONE:Pick a topic of your interest that is focused on your service or web site. Go to your favourite search engine and do search for it. Probably you may get hundreds or thousands of web pages. Because you are going to write a short article it will be enough to go to first 20 - 30 pages. STEP TWO:Take a pen and two or three papers.Write down STANDARD subheadings like: • Definition • Where you can find it • Purpose • How it works • Benefits • Tips • Any advantages or disadvantages • Ending If you want you can change the subheadings or add/remove them. So start with Page 1 in your search results.Read the matter. Pick some relevant points and write it down under different subheadings.Then go to page 2 on search results and do the same. By the time you finish your 25 pages you will be ending up with good amount of matter. Check it and rewrite the subheadings and the matter if you want.This takes long time to writing and rewriting.So what you can do is when you are getting matter from search results, you seperate it according to your subheadings.This saves you lot of time. Now open your Notepad and type the matter with 65 characters per line. Where to submit your article? You can submit your article to ezines.Find an ezine of interest at ezine listing directories: http://www.ezinelocater.com/ http://www.freezineweb.com/ You can also submit them to content web sites like: http://www.ezinesearch.com/search-it/ezine/ezine-add.html http://www.ideamarketers.com/ http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/articles/submit.shtml Tips before submitting your article: 1.Select your audience. 2.Try to be brief and clear.DON'T write a topic which you don't know by yourself. 3.DON'T give your article a feel of sales page. 4.DON'T put affiliate links in the body part of your article. 5.DON'T forget to keep resource box at the end of article.Follow the guidelines in displaying your resource box. 6.Keep a interesting headline.Because people scan through the topics.So try to grab their attention. 7.Highlight the text using arrows,astericks etc. 8.Spell check before submitting. 9.Allow space between paragraphs.Try to keep the matter in short paragraphs. 10.DON'T submit the same topic to more than one ezine in the same week. ----------------------------------- By: Hamoon Arbabi Source: http://homebusiness.nexuswebs.net Multiply Your Sales Would you like to multiply your web site sales? Or course you would, who wouldn't? :) Then take a close look at the following 10 killer ways to multiply your sales... 1. When you make a sale, always follow-up with the customer. First you should follow-up with a "thank you" email. Then, a few days later, you can follow-up up and as them if they are satisfied with their purchase or if they have any questions. After a certain time, you should follow-up and ask them for their feedback, good or bad and possibly for a testimonial. All your follow-up messages can include a small advertisement for other products you sell. If you use a fn automated system to do this, it will not even take a minute of your time to do all the follow-ups. 2. You could upsell to your customers. When they're at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order. Or you can upsell your visitors from a standard version to a professional version of your product or service. 3. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into four sales. This can be easily done placing a refer-a-friend form on your order "thank you" page. 4. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made. For example... do that in one of your follow-up messages mentioned in the first point above. 5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. You could include an ad on or with the product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product. You could also product licenses in bulk at a discounted rate to resellers. Then they can sell it at retail price and keep to profit. 6. You could cross promote your product with other businesses' products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you. This is a great way to joint venture with other businesses as it is mutual beneficial for both sides. 7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in the package. This will attract them to buy more products from you. Of course you can also include coupon codes in one of your follow-up emails. 8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for the original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy the extra add-ons. If you create an online catalog for delivery by email (again, this is good for another follow-up email), I recommend to use Adobe Acrobat to create a PDF catalog. This way your customers will be able to read it, no matter what operating system they use on their computer. 9. Sell gift certificates for your products. You'll make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, when the recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site. To do that online, you could simply send the customer a personal coupon code, that they can on to the lucky person. 10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order. Online you could give them free versions or trial copies of your other products, together with their paid product. ----------------------------------- By: Hamoon Arbabi Source: http://homebusiness.nexuswebs.net |
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