Quick and Easy Ways to Make Money from Home
Home Business Guide to Easy Money
Because tens of thousands of people all across America want to know how they can work at home and earn enough money to run a household, there is a special need for this report. Today the need for women to work out of the home is stronger than ever. According to recent surveys, almost 70% are married and contribute up to 50% and more to the family income. Because family responsibilities play such an important part in the lives of men and women, millions of individuals and couples are seeking ways to make money at home.
In the past decade, money-making home-based opportunities that match a person's skills, interests, abilities, and ingenuity have become almost limitless. The purpose of this report is to show you that it's simple and easy to join the ranks of success-minded people by choosing a work-at-home program that suits your interests and needs. Business histories have shown over and over again that the rewards and advantages of working at home can go far beyond a person's wildest dreams! In fact, it's perfectly possible to launch a small business in your garage, backyard, basement, or a room in your home, and become a giant corporation.
Your first step will be to study the company listings in this manual, and then contact those that interest you. It's possible that you may not be interested in many of those listed in this brief report. But others may serve as that great motivation that makes you look further with a renewed determination. Once you develop that mind-set, persistence will follow and then nothing will stop you from achieving your goals.
When you write to any of the companies listed in this manual, you should include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. That will give the impression you are serious and insure that you receive a speedy reply.
Become a Goal Setter
If you expect any level of success you must set goals. If you expect to be successful, you must determine what that means to you and the best way to achieve it. There are two basic steps you can take to convert goals into achievements:
You can decide on a specific dollar amount; and
You can set a time frame for obtaining the dollar amount you want.
Your goal should be specific and indicate What, When, and Where. After making a list of every possible way you might accomplish a goal, select the method that best suits your situation.
Important Considerations You Must Ask Yourself
"How can I support my family while I build up by business?" This question must be worked out according to each individual circumstance.
Many people start out on a part-time basis after their regular jobs to see how much they can handle. Then, when their incomes reach a certain level they will switch over and go full time.
"What are my abilities?" To determine your abilities you will have to take an inventory of yourself. Decide what you enjoy doing the most and what you "feel" you would be good at. Examine every possibility and include every skill you have no matter how slight.
"Is there a market for the produce of service I have chosen?" Be cautious before you invest any money! Check it out by making inquiries directly to the company, competitors, or firms who are marketing a product similar to the one you are interested in. Test it on a small scale. Check it out thoroughly.
"How long will it take this business to reach the financial goal I must have?" It's really a question of knowing how much time you can dedicate to your business, and what your profits are for that time. From there, a little simple addition will tell you how long it might take to reach a particular financial goal.
Success is Having the Courage to Begin!
Starting a business at home is a economical way to start a small business that can easily grow into a larger one. Many entrepreneurs have proven that you don't need a huge manufacturing plant to develop a successful business. Some of the most successful businesses in existence today started in a spare room or garage. It isn't how you start out that is important. What really matters is, do you have the courage to begin.
Selecting the Right Product or Service
Take a close look at your interests and abilities, and then decide what type of marketing you want to do. For example, do you want to assemble items and sell them back to the manufacturer; do you want to sell directly to people; or would you prefer selling wholesale to retail outlets? If you prefer doing piecework or assembling items for manufacturers, make certain it's something you enjoy working with. If you enjoy one-on one-sales, then test the product out on your friends, relatives and neighbors. The object is to find out what has the most appeal.
Develop a Good Marketing Technique
A good marketing technique is one part of a business plan that is absolutely essential to its success. In fact, the ability to properly market a product or service is actually more important than the product itself. Even an inferior product can be a financial success if marketed properly. Seek out the advice of everyone in your field. Explain your needs and ask them questions. Experience is the best teacher. With good advice and a salable product, you should be able to develop a winning marketing plan.
Financing Your Home-Business Venture
The first place to look for financing is right at home. Take an inventory of items you don't need and have a garage sale. Most people are pleasantly surprised at how much cash they can raise in a single weekend. Next, turn to members of your family or close friends who have faith in you and want to see you succeed. Offer to repay them through profit-sharing. Go to individuals in your community who believe in your personal worth. If you have a good credit history, your banker should consider you a good financial risk. Two other excellent sources would be your local Small Business Administration (SBA) and Chamber of Commerce. SBA has low-interest loans available for qualified applicants and your Chamber of Commerce can assist you with referrals and other helpful information.
How to Start a Profitable Home-Based Business
In these days, it's becoming increasingly difficult to make ends meet with just one source of income. Thus, more and more people are investigating the possibilities of starting their own extra-income business. Most of these part-time endeavors are started and operated from the comfort and privacy of the home.
Most of these people are making the extra money they need. Some have wisely and carefully built these extra income efforts into full-time, very profitable businesses. Others are just keeping busy, having fun, and enjoying life as never before. The important thing is that they are doing something other than waiting for the government to give them a handout; they are improving their lot in life, and you can do it, too!
The fields of mail order selling, multi-level marketing, and in-home party sales have never been more popular. If any of these kinds of extra income producing ideas appeal to you, then you owe it to yourself to check them out. But these aren't the only fields of endeavor you can start and operate from home, with little or no investment, and learn as you go.
If you type, you can start a home-based typing service; if you have a truck or have access to a trailer, you can start a clean-up/hauling service. Simply collecting old news papers from your neighbors can get you started in the paper recycling business. More than a few enterprising housewives have found success and fortune by starting home and/or apartment cleaning services.
If you have a yard full of flowers, you can make good extra money by supplying fresh cut flowers to restaurants and offices in your area on a regular basis. You might turn a ceramics hobby into a lucrative personalized coffee mug business. What I'm saying is that in reality, there's literally no end to the ways you can start and operate a profitable extra income business from your home.
The first thing you must do, however, is some basic market research. Find out for yourself, first-hand, just how many people there are in your area who are interested in your proposed product or service, and would be "willing to stand in line and pay money for it." This is known as defining your market and pinpointing your customers. If after checking around, talking about your idea with a whole lot of people over a period of one to three months, you get the idea that these people would be paying customers, your next effort should be directed toward the "detailing" of your business plan. The more precise and detailed your plan - covering all the bases relating to how you'll do everything that needs to be done - the easier it's going to be for you to attain success. Such a plan should show your start-up investment needs, your advertising plan, your production costs and procedures, your sales program, and how your time will be allocated. Too often, enthusiastic and ambitious entrepreneurs jump in on an extra income project and suddenly find that the costs are beyond their abilities, and the time requirements more than they can meet. It pays to lay it all out on paper before you get involved, and the clearer you can "see" everything before you start, the better your chances for success.
Now, assuming you've got your market targeted, you know who your customers are going to be and how you're going to reach them with your product or service. And you have all your costs as well as time requirements itemized. The next step is to set your plan in motion and start making money.
Here is the most important "secret" of all, relating to starting and building a
profitable home-based business, so read very carefully. Regardless of what kind of business you start, you must have the capital and the available time to sustain your business through the first six months of operation. Specifically, you must not count on receiving or spending any money coming in from your business on yourself or for your bills during those first six months. All the income from your business during those first six months should be reinvested in your business in order for it to grow and reach your planned first year potential.
Once you've passed that first six months milestone, you can set up a small monthly salary for yourself, and begin enjoying the fruits of your labor. But the first six months or operation for any business are critical, so do not plan to use any of the money your business generates for yourself during that period.
If you've got your business plan properly organized, and have implemented the plan, you should at the end of your first year be able to begin thinking about hiring other people to alleviate some of your work-load. Remember this: Starting a successful business is not a means towards either a job for yourself or a way to keep busy. It should be regarded as the beginning of an enterprise that will grow and prosper, with you as the top dog. Eventually, you'll have other people doing all the work for you, even running the entire operation, while you vacation in the Bahamas or Hawaii and collect or receive regular income from your initial efforts.
Turn Any Hobby into a Part-Time Business
If you are planning on beginning a business, your best bet is to start out part-time while you are still earning a full-time income at your present job. If you are like most people who are existing from payday to payday you don't have a lot of money to invest in a full-time business. No need to worry! Just use your favorite hobby as your business base and grow from there! There's no telling where you'll be at 2 or 3 years down the road. Perhaps you can even tell your present boss to "take that job and shove it." Wouldn't that be great?
Using your present hobby or favorite pastime as your business base has many benefits. Why? Because ANY business you decide to become involved in should be doing something you LOVE, something you believe in, something that you would work at NO MATTER what income it would generate. This will give you the stamina to see your business through the beginning hard times and times when there is more work to do than you can handle. We all know the feeling of doing a job that we hate to do. There is no way we can give it 110% of our abilities because we procrastinate getting through it and just want to get it over with. That's why it is vitally important to dearly love the product or service you have chosen to build your business around.
Do you like cooking? Start a recipe newsletter for others who like the same thing and sell your recipes by publishing a simple booklet. Do you enjoy making crafts? Sell them through mail order (be sure and mark up the price for shipping and handling). Do you enjoy working on cars? Print and distribute flyers in your neighborhood listing your prices. Offer a coupon discount for the customer to use on their first auto repair job. Do you enjoy writing? Write a small booklet or how-to manual and sell it through mail order or to multi-level enthusiasts. Do you enjoy computer programming? Write a program and sell through shareware groups or even to mail order computer owners.
Yes, just about anything you love doing can be magically transformed into a business opportunity for you. Some items may only sell well in your neighborhood, while some products and services do well in mail order. If you decide to sell through mail order, all you need to do is write a simple ad and have it typeset. Start out with a smaller classified,1-inch, 2-inch or 3-inch ad. Ask the customer to send a "first-class stamp" or "$1.00" for more information. When they write you, include an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet detailing your prices. Make sure you have a small order form to make it easy to order your product or service. And of course, include a cover letter stating that you appreciate their inquiry and look forward to doing business with them in the near future. You'd be surprised how many sales have been lost because a business didn't take the time to write a cover letter and personalize the mailing.
Also, start educating yourself by reading and researching other home-based businesses. Before I opened up my business I read national publications like "Small Business Opportunities," "Entrepreneur," "Home Office Computing," and "Spare Time Magazine." Although there were some full page ads in there filled with hype (claiming to make me $1 million dollars with a sheet of paper), the articles are excellent. Don't spend more than $3 for information in the beginning of your business because if a company is legitimate you should be able to call them and discuss the opportunity over the phone with them. Businesses that claim to put you in business overnight should never demand a large amount of money from you. On the contrary, legitimate businesses have nothing to hide and will not charge you more than a few dollars in postage to learn the "whole" story behind their claims. Instead , use these publications, as well as books from the library on starting a business to further your knowledge of the world.
Another good move on your part is to invest a few hours by attending a meeting that is sponsored by SCORE from the Small Business Administration in your area. It's free, and the valuable information you obtain from actual people who have been in business before is something that will be extremely valuable in the months ahead. Just call the SBA to find out more information.
Yes -- it's that easy! Of course, this is only the beginning. As with any hobby, it will take time (probably many months) to realize a profit but think of it this way: Most people that have a hobby know they have to spend money to take part in their hobby. It only makes sense to invest money in advertising your hobby to others so you can eventually make some of that money back in sales for your own business!
Making Money with Home-Made Booklets
Self-publishing home-made booklets and/or manuals is probably the easiest way to break into your own Information Marketing business. Even if you do not have training as a writer, you still can research and compile information on interesting subjects.
You can self-publish just by typing your book or manual and having a competent typesetter place it in camera-ready format for you. Once the book or manual is ready for printing, ask your typesetter to print out one copy on their laser printer. You'll probably have to pay extra for the copy, but it's cheaper in the long run. You will not want 50 or 100 copies, since you will be testing the market to see how much interest is generated. When you receive the orders, you can make the copies prior to shipping.
If you choose to, you may print and bind several copies and you can begin marketing them. Advertise the book or manual in the mail order publications or other publications geared toward the target market you are attempting to sell to. (In other words, don't sell a book about collecting dolls in Sports Illustrated.) Send sample copies to publishers who offer reviews and write-ups to take advantage of free advertising. You could even send a free sample to the publisher of a well-known tabloid and ask for a plug if they enjoyed the book.
Most mom-and-pop operations will allow you to place your book in their store for 40% to 50% of the cover price. This way, copies that don't sell won't cost you anything. All you have to do is check up on them once or twice per week and make sure they are easy to find on the rack to attract the eye of the potential customer. And if your booklet is filled with recipes or local folklore, local businesses will be thrilled to promote and carry your book on their shelves. Local people love to read books about their community and keep them as collectors items.
By marketing your own product, orders will come directly to you or be controlled by you. If you sell through the mail, you simply mail a copy of your book or manual with a cover letter thanking the customer for their order. Believe it or not, it's that simple! And best of all, you keep all the profits which is better than sharing the money with another publisher who drop ships for you.
Yes, there will be some costs involved in advertising, printing and mailing to promote your self-published book or manual; but do you know the costs involved in sending drafts out to publishers for acceptance? Believe me, it runs into the thousands! And big companies who will publish your book for you start out with costs of $10,000.00 or more without the guarantee that you will even make one sale!
One of the easiest types of books to publish and sell through the mail are 5"x 8" booklets. To get a sample of one of mail order's most popular 5"x 8" publications, send $2 to Graphico Publishing, PO Box 488, Bluff City TN 37618 and request a sample copy of The Grape Vine Journal. Examine how it is put together and how it is printed.
If you really want to save money and put your own booklets together, simply have them printed and shipped to you. Then, you will collate the pages in the proper sequence, staple them in the middle (called saddle stitching), fold in half and you're done.
The only office tool you need to invest in is a long-armed stapler. One can be purchased at your local office supply store or through Quill or Viking (two main mail order office supply companies.) The current price is around $40.
A good printer may specialize in low-cost printing of booklets but if you want to do-it-all-yourself, any good mail order printer will print them and ship them back to you. All you pay for is the 2-sided printing price, and shipping.
Plan your next book, manual or other publication and enjoy the benefits of keeping all the proceeds. It's really a fantastic way to make some extra money while still keeping your job and your steady income.
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