1. Pick a Niche

If you are a collector of celebrity Bobbleheads, then consider making this your niche. You want to pick something that doesn’t require any licenses or inspections to sell. With that being said, you want to stay away from pharmaceuticals and the like.

2. Look for Dropshippers

A dropshipper is a wholesaler who will ship the items you sell to your customer for a fee. They will put your company name on the package so it appears that you sent the item. This is incredibly helpful if you are just starting out or want to test a business idea as it eliminates inventory. Eventually, you will want to keep your own inventory, but again the idea is to bootstrap your way into the business.

3. Create an eBay store

Go to ebay.com and open up an eBay store. It allows you to keep products in your store and they do not expire like an auction does. There is a monthly fee which is based on a 3-tier service structure. I would suggest going with the $15/month store as you are just testing to see if you can successfully sell the product.

What I can’t stress enough is that you want to start small and work your way up. Don’t go ordering thousands of dollars worth of inventory if you don’t even know if you can sell the product profitably. Feel free to contact me or leave comments if you would like more information or feedback on an idea that you have.

The answer can be somewhat subjective. Some businesses have done very well without a formalized documented Business Plan and some Businesses have went under without one. There’s probably a lot of data out there proving the case for for one or the other, however, I’m going to give you my opinion on the matter.

Write the Business Plan.

You’ve probably heard that no one reads it. You’ve also probably heard that it has been responsible for thousands of dollars worth of loans, etc. First and foremost, the Business Plan should be for you. It is a way to formalize your idea for a business that you want to start. It also takes vague idea to a solid, business strategy that has a reasonable chance of success.

I recommend writing two types of Business Plans. The first one should be about a page long and should be able to describe what your business sells, what differentiates you from your competitors and how you plan to reach your target customers. The second one is the Formal Business Plan that contains the executive summary and whatnot. This one would be at least two dozen pages and would be very detailed.

In the end, I really do recommend that you write one, if nothing else it will keep you focused and it would provide you with a plan and a direction for your business to follow in order to be successful.

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Thinking about starting a home business? Do you already own
a home business but need cash? Perhaps you can qualify for a
small business loan.

However, before you attempt to borrow any money, you first
have to figure out how much money you need. The easiest way
to do this is by putting together a business plan. A good
business plan is critical to your business success.

It can be a simple one page outline or it can be many pages,
but it should spell out exactly how much money is needed and
what it will be used for; your potential market and
customers and potential for growth; what makes your business
unique from others; and a rational and conservative
projection of your business’s cash flow.

Your plan will also help you set business goals and define
the steps necessary to help you reach those goals. It is a
guide for you to refer to on a regular basis to help
evaluate your business progress and help keep you focused on
your priorities.

Besides, a business plan is almost always required when
applying for a bank loan. If you need assistance in writing
a business plan, your local library should have several
books on the subject. You can also try Amazon.com. In
addition, you should be able to get help on writing a
business plan from one or more of the sources listed below:

1. The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers numerous
loan programs to assist small businesses. It is important
to note, however, that the SBA is primarily a guarantor of
loans made by private and other institutions.

http://www.sba.gov

2. The Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) is a
volunteer management assistance program of the SBA that
provides one-on-one counseling, workshops, and seminars.
SCORE has chapters throughout the country. Many work in
conjunction with local Chambers of Commerce. SCORE and Visa
have also joined forces to help home-based and small
business owners. Contact your SBA office, local Chamber of
Commerce, or the following websites for more information:

http://www.score.org

http://www.visa.com/smallbiz

3. Talk to your local bank. Find out what they require for a
business loan application and also if they are participants
in the SBA loan programs. Be diligent and shop around for
the best loan packages, and make sure you fully understand
the terms.

4. You may be able to borrow from insurance policies, IRAs,
401k’s, stocks and securities, etc. Check with your
insurance agent. Also, investigate what the policies are
regarding borrowing from your mutual funds or retirement
account. Before borrowing, make sure you fully understand
the pay-back terms and any potential penalties.

5. Apply for a home equity loan. Borrowing against the
equity on your home is permitted in all states except Texas.
Just make sure you’re diligent about paying back the loan or
you could end up losing your home.

6. If you’re a woman, you may be eligible for a Specialty
Loan. These types of loans are now being offered by local
banks. Who knows? Filling out a one-page application just
might get you an unsecured credit line or loan ranging from
$2500 to $50,000.

7. Try borrowing from family members and/or relatives. If
you have a good relationship with your family, perhaps you
can make a persuasive argument for them to loan you money
for your home business. Just remember, borrowing from family
or relatives shouldn’t be treated any differently than
borrowing from a bank. It’s just as important to pay them
back on time as well.

About the author:
Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer,
publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be
reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

Visit his website at: http://www.lets-make-money.net

It is true that you are your own boss, but if you work
from 9 to 5 one day, and then don’t get up until noon
the next day, people won’t take you seriously.

When you are setting up your home business, the first
thing that you should do is to pick a schedule and
stick to it. This way your customers know when they
can reach you. This is good for business, and will
help keep your customers coming back.

When you sit down to plan out your business hours,
figure out a starting time and a closing time, and
factor in time for lunch as well.

If you were working in an office environment, you
would take a lunch break so set an acceptable amount
of time to be at lunch and stick to it.

You don’t have a time clock that you have to go by,
but you will have customers who are counting on you to
be available during the hours that you set.

Just as it’s important to stick to your time for
starting, it’s just as important to stick to your time
when you will be closed for the day.

It’s easy to want to check your email, but unless you
are talking to a customer when the time comes, don’t
spread yourself too thin by going over time.

Having a home business can be frustrating at times,
especially if your friends and family aren’t
supportive, so it’s always a good idea to get in touch
with others who are going through the same types of
things that you are going through.

One of the best places to go for home business support
is the Internet. It’s full of message boards and
forums for people who are in the home business and who
are talking about the ins and outs of working from
home.

One thing that should be noted is that this is not a
place to go and promote your home business, although
there are probably threads that allow you to do that.
Everyone on the message board or forum has a home
business. This is a place to go and talk to other
business owners and to find out what works and doesn’t
work.

The first thing that you will want to do is to
introduce yourself. Usually it’s acceptable to say
what type of business you have as part of your
introduction, but make it short. After you have
introduced yourself, go through the different threads
to see if any of the questions that you have are
already being discussed.

Be sure to check the board or forum rules, but it’s
pretty much universal what is expected of those that
join the boards, and what is allowed.

Learn to reboot

I know this one sounds strange but hear me out. Every day you probably have occurrences that upset you, make you mad, stress you out, etc. I bet you wake up the next day, and those negative feelings about what happened previously are still there or they crop up throughout the day. You must learn to let those feelings go. Preferably, you would want to do this after the event, but if you can’t then you want to do it before you go to bed. Just let it go. Think of it in terms of a computer. If you keep a computer running for a long period of time, it collects crap in its memory and doesn’t run very well. But if you reboot the computer every day, it gets rid of the crap in its memory and runs like a charm. That’s what you have to do, reboot.

Let things slide off of you

Again this sounds strange, but I will explain. If you’ve ever seen a duck in the rain, you might have noticed that its feathers are not getting wet. This is because there is a coat of oil over the duck’s feathers that prevent them from getting wet and thus preventing them from flying. This is what you have to do. You have to create a coating around yourself (psychologically of course) that prevents harmful, mean, nasty comments from getting inside you where your emotions takeover (and thus increase your stress). This way, you can deal with these sorts of things with your logical and reasonable parts of your head and not your heart.

What’s the worst that can happen?

You have to ask yourself in every stressful situation “what’s the worst that can happen?” If you lose a client, what’s the worst that will happen? You will lose money; and they might talk badly about your business to their friends or contacts. However, you can always make more money by acquiring new clients or customers. There are probably millions of people in your country and there are billions of people on the planet. Ask some of them if they are in need of your services.

These changes probably won’t eliminate your stress overnight. You will need to practice them every day. But if you do, I will guarantee that you will be feeling a lot less stress.

In the midst of the current economic crisis, I feel that it is important to emphasize that everyone should be thinking about starting up multiple streams of income. This means that, on top of your current job, you should have some sort of home business set up that you can run part time as well as possibly having investments in equities and real estate. By having these other streams of money, you can weather things like a layoff or some sort of disability.

With this in mind, I have created a free report that you can download which I feel will briefly outline some of the things you need to know in order to start your own business. I have included a sign up portion below, or you can sign up with your email address on the top right hand corner of the page.

Sign Up Below To Get Your Free Home Business Start Up Report!

When I asked a few of these people about why they are not earning any money, I found out why!

People, you have to do something to earn something! Just because you have joined a MLM or affiliate program, don’t think that by sitting back you will earn a pile of  money.

Here are some tips on how to get you started making money with your home business.

1. When you first start with a work at home business, set out at least a couple of hours a day devoted to your business.

2. Spend the first day advertising your business on the free classified websites, there are literally thousands of these sites to advertise on.

3. If you have a website for your business, then spend day 2 submitting your website to all of the search engines, Yahoo, MSN, and Google.

4. Day 3 start submitting to ezines, this is a very good way to promote your business.

5. Day 4 start by writing an article to use in the yahoo groups or http://ezinearticles.com/. With this article your can promote your website at the end of the article.

6. Day 5 submit your business to the various business message boards, there are lots out there that let you post an ad for your home business.

7. Day 6 you will want to start advancing up and checking for “Leads” that are interested in starting a home business. When you find a good source you will want to start emailing them. To do this you will want a good auto responder to handle the high volume of emails.

8. Day 7 you will want to start this process all over again.

You can do these steps in any order, but remember persistence is the key. Spend an hour a day for the first 30 days on these 7 items. Each day promote your business in a different way.

Within 30 days you will start to see the rewards of your work that you only spent 7-10 hours a week on!

Further more don’t expect to get rich overnight. The businesses offering “pie in the sky” so to speak do yourself a favor and stay away from those type of offers.

Something to remember is that you are ‘at work’ in
this area. An ideal solution is to have every
distraction taken care of. This means that you have
someone looking after your child, if possible. If your
child is younger than school age, hire someone to look
after them during the day.

This may seem strange since you are working at home,
but would you take a baby into your office with you?
Probably not - your boss wouldn’t allow it. Having
someone look after them while you are working ensures
that you will get everything done during business
hours.

If your children are school age and old enough to
understand, let them know that you are working, and
that you should only be disturbed if it’s an
emergency. If they are still young, have someone watch
them after school.

This may seem like an unnecessary expense, but if you
are talking to someone on the phone they won’t take
you seriously if they hear a crying baby in the
background, or children fighting. You want to make
yourself seem as professional as you can so that
people know they can trust you.

A traditional retailer’s business model will assume
that the retailer can purchase the correct goods at a
discounted price and sell them for a mark-up to make a
profit.

The model will also project a specific amount of foot
traffic and what the revenue per customer will be. A
poorly thought out business model can be the downfall
of a business, especially a small, home-based
business.

The business model design should include the modeling
and description of the company’s value propositions,
target customer segments, distribution channels,
customer relationships and value configurations.

Also included should be the company’s core
capabilities, partner network, cost structure and
revenue model.

If you are seeking out finances for your business, it
is important that you have a well-structured business
model.

This business model will show potential lenders a few
things about you and your business. First, it will
show just how serious you are about your new business
venture. It will also show potential lenders how well
your business may prosper.

Lenders do not want to take on a high risk like a new
small home based business without knowing that there
is an actual need for what the business is providing.

There are many professionals available to help you
write your business model for a fee, but in the long
run of things, it may be the best money you spend to
get your business up and off the ground.