Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Good Business Ideas For The Home Business Entrepreneur

The idea of making an income from home is very appealing, especially if you have the drive and ambition to start your own business. However small or large your entrepreneurial dreams, there are plenty of good business ideas to be explored.

Forget the "Get Rich Quick" schemes or the promises of steady income for very little time commitment and "all you have to do" is invest in an upfront program (when something seems to be too good to be true, it probably is), and focus on creating your own business doing something you love. While there are good business ideas that have made money for some you need to find a business that excites and energises you. With the right motivation and a sound business idea you'll have the tools for success, and the ability to persist with your business over the long term.

Good business ideas for home business entrepreneurs fall into three broad categories:

1. Virtual Services

With the massive increase in outsourcing of certain tasks or jobs, there are many opportunities to offer your services virtually. This means you can work at home and provide services such as admin, writing, marketing, design, information technology or social media to companies. Either on a project basis or as their virtual PA (personal assistant), marketing officer or social media expert.

As a virtual PA you will handle all the tasks a PA would, logging expenses into a spreadsheet, booking trips, organising calendars, booking training, preparing materials for presentations and events, but based at your own home.

With systems and tools such as Google Docs, Dropbox and other online sharing tools, you can easily share information and provide documents, spreadsheets and reports remotely for your clients.

As a freelance writer you can offer to write articles, reports, edit content, post blog comments, handle forum marketing, provide blogging, tweeting or HubPages content, the options are limitless.

If you have knowledge of SEO (search engine optimisation) you can provide a service building backlinks for your clients' websites and blogs.

Find clients by promoting your services on a Facebook fan page and by contributing to relevant discussions on Facebook, blogs and forums. Or you can find freelance work through sites such as Elance, Guru or PeoplePerHour.

2. Local Services

Use your skills and experience to offer services to local businesses. If you have even the most basic marketing, online or social media skills you can offer to be their marketing or social media expert. Charge on a per job, hourly or monthly retainer rate, depending on your local market and the expertise you're offering.

Many local businesses are good at what they do but struggle to find new clients and promote their business effectively online. Stop in and chat with some local businesses and show them how you can help them get more customers, by improving their online marketing or social media.

A good tip is to get the local papers, school, church and parish newsletters and see which companies are advertising. Contact them and chat with them about how you can help them get more business, or save money.

3. Online Business

Online businesses are booming as demonstrated by the explosion in the numbers of people online and using Facebook. Home business entrepreneurs are finding opportunities online like never before. Start with a hobby, skill or something you feel passionate about and look at ways to make money from it.

Good business ideas include becoming an infopreneur. Create information products to share your ideas and experiences with others to help them solve a problem, or meet a need. This can be by way of a blog, community or forum website, membership site, ebooks, reports, newsletters or online training.

Information can be provided in instantly downloadable formats so customers get the information they want straight away, and you make money every time your product is downloaded.

An information business is easy to set-up, low risk and you can test your ideas on a small scale before creating more comprehensive products. Promote affiliate products to test your market or make money selling products on eBay or Amazon.

If you're selling physical products you can use drop-shipping to automate the fulfilment and shipping of your products so you never have to handle products. The drop-ship company will handle the invoicing, payment and shipping of the product. All you do is promote the product to the customer.

2 comments:

  1. The idea of making money from home is very attractive, especially if you have the desire and aspirations to begin your own business.
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