Six Things Every Top Home Business Needs!
You are poised to take the leap into owning and running your own top home business, and still there's an air of uncertainty as you begin the endeavor. Did you cover your bases? Is there some crucial step you may have missed? Are you really ready for this? To answer some or all of these nagging doubts let's quickly review six basic principles that every top home business needs to have in place, and why they're important.
1. A Functional Website – If you are doing business on the Web, you need to have a fully functional website that you own. Don't attempt to run your business off of a free web site or blog: this is a recipe for disaster. While you may save a few bucks, you will suffer in many ways, the most drastic of these occurring when the owner of the site (Wordpress.com, Blogger, whoever) decides to take your site down without recourse. Voila! You're out of business! Spring for your own web hosting and put up a basic site or blog or both. You won't regret this! Moreover, you'll gain an air of legitimacy not available when using a free site.
2. Your Own Business Strategy – While it's all fine and dandy that you've found a business model you'd like to go with, make sure you have a plan and a strategy specific to your objectives for this business. Make goals and projections, and plan for how you'll meet those. While at the beginning it may seem like you're picking numbers out of the air, having written goals is a proven first step to success. Everyone needs a map of some sort when starting out.
3. The Basic Tools of The Trade – Make sure you're equipped with enough tools to get the job done. You don't need the best tools every time, but the key here is to ensure that you can do your job well with what you have. Get a computer with as much memory as you can afford, whatever productivity software you need to do the job (there is a lot of freeware you can use here as well!) and a smart phone is a good idea too these days.
4. Adequate Startup Capital – Don't let this one scare you. This doesn't have to be a lot of money, but if you intend to bootstrap your top home business with completely free methods, just be aware it will take a great deal longer to reach critical mass, and see some real results. Having some working cash on hand for things like pay per click advertising, outsourcing of content, technical tasks and tools can be a big help early on.
5. Multiple Contact Points – Make sure your customers and potential clients can reach you; this means email, Twitter, Facebook (Fan Pages) and yes, even a phone number if that's appropriate. This is a big competitive world, and if they can't get hold of you, "Next!"
6. A Basic Understanding of Marketing – Knowing how you intend to market your products or services and having some measure of knowledge about those methods can be a big help. This will help you determine if certain campaigns aren't working and why, and what you can do about it.
If you can say with confidence that these six items are as covered as possible at this point, you can be that much more assured that if you jump in the deep water you won't sink!
1. A Functional Website – If you are doing business on the Web, you need to have a fully functional website that you own. Don't attempt to run your business off of a free web site or blog: this is a recipe for disaster. While you may save a few bucks, you will suffer in many ways, the most drastic of these occurring when the owner of the site (Wordpress.com, Blogger, whoever) decides to take your site down without recourse. Voila! You're out of business! Spring for your own web hosting and put up a basic site or blog or both. You won't regret this! Moreover, you'll gain an air of legitimacy not available when using a free site.
2. Your Own Business Strategy – While it's all fine and dandy that you've found a business model you'd like to go with, make sure you have a plan and a strategy specific to your objectives for this business. Make goals and projections, and plan for how you'll meet those. While at the beginning it may seem like you're picking numbers out of the air, having written goals is a proven first step to success. Everyone needs a map of some sort when starting out.
3. The Basic Tools of The Trade – Make sure you're equipped with enough tools to get the job done. You don't need the best tools every time, but the key here is to ensure that you can do your job well with what you have. Get a computer with as much memory as you can afford, whatever productivity software you need to do the job (there is a lot of freeware you can use here as well!) and a smart phone is a good idea too these days.
4. Adequate Startup Capital – Don't let this one scare you. This doesn't have to be a lot of money, but if you intend to bootstrap your top home business with completely free methods, just be aware it will take a great deal longer to reach critical mass, and see some real results. Having some working cash on hand for things like pay per click advertising, outsourcing of content, technical tasks and tools can be a big help early on.
5. Multiple Contact Points – Make sure your customers and potential clients can reach you; this means email, Twitter, Facebook (Fan Pages) and yes, even a phone number if that's appropriate. This is a big competitive world, and if they can't get hold of you, "Next!"
6. A Basic Understanding of Marketing – Knowing how you intend to market your products or services and having some measure of knowledge about those methods can be a big help. This will help you determine if certain campaigns aren't working and why, and what you can do about it.
If you can say with confidence that these six items are as covered as possible at this point, you can be that much more assured that if you jump in the deep water you won't sink!
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