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Earning Money at Home

Starting an business on a shoe string budget

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Starting an business on a shoe string budget

When you are just starting out, every cent counts. In fact, even when you are well established, every cent still counts. 

Hold on to your job.

Countless businesses have folded because of cash flow problems. Unless you are able to go for 1 year without any income, and still have the money to run your business, I suggest you do not quit your day job first. 

Work in your regular job by day, and slowly build your business up on week ends and at night. If you need more commitment to your business, then consider taking a part time job to pay for your daily expenses, while you build your business until it can support itself and bring in an income for you.

Plan

Never start your business without a detailed business plan. Include how you plan to make money from your business, the costs and how much you can realistically sell your product. Do research on your target market and your competition.

Keep your overheads in mind and keep them as low as possible. Think of how you could cut costs, but be realistic. Do not be penny wise pound foolish though.

What are you selling? Services? Knowledge? Products?

Be especially careful if you are selling physical goods. Bear in mind the shipping costs as well as the cost of producing each item. What if your customer bought your goods with a stolen credit card? You have to bear the loss, which would be the shipping cost as well as the cost of producing the goods.

Automate

It is far cheaper to rely on computers and the internet rather than to hire people. If you can't afford to feed yourself, how can you afford staff on a payroll. 

For sales, you can do it yourself, or build a web site to sell your product. That way, you don't have to pay heavy rental fees for a retail outlet. If you have some money to invest, and are not that good with computers, I would suggest you get Site Build It which would help you with everything, from URL registration to secure transaction processing to search engine submission. No risk involved there as they guarantee your money back anytime you are dissatisfied with their product. They stake their reputation on it.

If you are an IT professional and love the challenge of building your own and troubleshooting alone, then you might want to build it yourself. Read How I built my web site But you need to be really good to set up a secure transaction processing application. (I gave up when it came to that and used merchants with affiliate programs instead, and I am an experienced IT professional).

Another thing though. If you want to sell successfully through the internet, read the e-book Make Your Site Sell 2002 and apply what you learn from it on your web site. I bought a copy of it and find it to be a valuable resource.

Get some spreadsheet software to handle your accounts. Buy packages to handle your admin. You definitely would need a word processor. Mail merge facilities in most word processors are great for handling your mass mail to your customers. If you are IT savvy, you might even get some database software, like MS Access or similar software to write simple applications to simplify your work.

Work Smart!

Outsource

You can't possibly do everything yourself. Either you hire someone to handle some of the work, or you outsource. Basically, you should stick to what you are good at. In my case, I love writing the articles and designing my web site. The rest, from hosting the web site to purchasing and shipping and selling the products, I outsource. You can get hosting services and domain registration at very good prices at adgrafix

Shop around first. Surf the internet for information and check out the companies you plan to use. If you are using site build it , most of that work is done for you. It comes with hosting services, search engine submission and most the other stuff which I ended up out sourcing. If not, then do your research to get the best deal possible.

Good Luck!!

 

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Earning as an Affiliate

New! An affiliate's secret to success

How to succeed as an webmaster

Why most affiliates do not make much money

Earning money as an affiliate

Sales conversion for affiliates

The truth about Affiliate Marketing

Building your web site

How to build a website to bring in customers

How I built my web site

A word to the webmaster

Hosting your site

Pitfalls to avoid in building your new web site

Resources

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