With the development of new technology and communications equipment, home businesses are now a growing segment of the economy.

Starting a home business can give you a sense of independence, allow you to make business decisions, eliminate long commutes, and allow you to spend more time with your family and friends.

With the increased popularity of home businesses, there is a wide variety of information available on the Internet and in books, newspapers, and magazines. Separating fact from fiction can help you to understand the truth about starting a home business and make a decision about how to proceed.

One of the biggest myths about starting a business from home is that it will be easier to work for yourself rather than someone else. While you may be able to make your own decisions and accept the type of work you enjoy, starting a home business will probably be more difficult than working at a job.

When you are employed by someone else, you have responsibilities, but the ultimate responsibility for the profits and running of the business belongs to the owners and executives of the company.

When you start your own business, everything that needs to be done will be your responsibility, from complying with the law to providing service to clients. This is what makes starting a business more difficult than you might think.

Many information sources state that it is not necessary to form a business entity when you work from home. You can operate as a sole proprietor in some cases, but forming a legal business entity can be necessary in other circumstances.

Forming an entity allows you to separate your personal assets from your business assets and can also help you limit personal liability. If you don’t form a business entity, what will happen if you make a mistake on a project and your client sues you? If you’re a sole proprietor, your personal assets will be at stake and, if the claim is large enough, you may be risking your home. If you form a business entity, only the assets of the business will be at stake.

Another myth about home businesses is that you don’t need well-developed human relations skills since you’ll be working alone. Not only is this not true, but you may need good communication and interpersonal relations skills more than ever as a home business owner.

Your business success will depend on your ability to market your services and provide a high level of customer satisfaction. These tasks require you to develop networking skills, have the ability to communicate effectively in writing and in person, and have the skills needed to resolve conflict and resolve problems. Having good interpersonal skills will help you to become recognized as a trustworthy and professional business owner.

Starting a home business is hard enough without having to sift through fact and fiction when you’re starting out. Keep these myths and mind as you do your research and get your business off the ground. Hard work and commitment can put you in a position to achieve success and run a profitable business enterprise.

Don’t be fooled into complacency when you start your home business. You MUST put in the hard work and effort and your business will flourish!

Copyright 2006 Rasheed Ali

Starting your own small business is a process that takes a great deal of drive, hard-work, and determination. To be able to take on the responsibilities that go along with starting your own venture you must plan your every move. When first starting a small business it is important to make the correct decisions in the beginning so that you can hopefully ensure your success later on down the road.

There a great deal of steps that a first time entrepreneur should take to make sure that their venture starts of running smoothly, continues to run smoothly, and achieves a great deal of success down the line.

Create a Business Plan:

When deciding to start a small business you want to make sure that you know what type of industry that you would like to go in to. You should write a business plan that explains what your venture will entail so that you and others will be able to evaluate the nature of your business. Having a written plan will help you to get an idea of what you will be doing as an entrepreneur and also lets others see if it is something that they would like to invest in. In this plan you will state what your marketing strategies will be and the goals that you plan to attain. It will also state how you plan on accomplishing these goals.

Funding:

If you have made the decision that you would like to go into business for yourself you are going to have to find a way to finance your company. Before you even begin your small corporation it can be a smart idea to begin saving money well in advance. This will make the amount of money that you must pay back to others a great deal smaller than it would be if you borrowed the funds. Besides money that you have saved on your own there is also the option to receive financing for your enterprise through family, friends, bank loans, or investors. If you decide to accept money from family, friends, or investors it is often the case that they will want to have partial ownership in the company for their portion of funding. If you take out a loan from the bank it can be an oppressive expense seeing that you do have to make payments, taking away from revenue for the company.

Starting out with a well thought out business plan and the proper funding can make establishing a small business a successful feat.

According to the “Marketing Essentials” school book, a mission statement is “A brief paragraph or two that describes the ultimate goals of a company.” What is your company about? What is your intent by being in business? What do you stand by when you do business?

Asking yourself the questions above can help you determine what you want to communicate to a general audience about your company and it’s goals. A mission statement can help you determine a tag line. A mission statement can be presented on your Web site, in your business plan, marketing plan, displayed on your wall in your business, presented in a press release or any other number of advertising and marketing efforts.

Many times, a small business is a one-man show, so why develop a mission statement? Having a brief description of the ultimate goals of your company and why it exists helps you develop your 30-second elevator speech, present succinct communications to your audience, and identify your products or services being offered. In essence, developing your mission statement helps you think more clearly.

My mission statement originally was “to provide reasonably priced professional writing and graphic design services to new and small businesses.” First, I made sure I was priced reasonably, then I targeted my audience of small businesses and further developed the messages I would communicate based on the audience. As my business has developed and I have found different audiences, my mission statement has adjusted to “provide reasonably priced professional technical and marketing writing and graphic design services to businesses of all sizes.”

A mission statement generally reflects the goals of a business. My goals adjusted slightly in that my target audience became broader in order to include larger companies that I can do contract work for in either technical documentation or marketing writing. That slight change enabled me to see where I needed to update my Web site and change the information presented, or at least how the information is presented.

Once you have researched, developed and written your mission statement, it’s done, right? Wrong. Just as your business and marketing plan is a living, dynamic document to be re-evaluated on a regular basis for a number of reasons, your mission statement needs to be evaluated and reviewed on a regular basis as well. With your business growth changes may occur, or you may need to be reminded of your focus, purpose, and mission on a regular basis in order to make decisions that are best for the business direction.

Sometimes small businesses are a work in progress. Remember that when you are a new entrepreneur, you don’t always know everything and as you receive feedback and input from your audience, peers and yourself, listen to that information to help develop your goals and focus, which eventually strengthens your mission statement as you improve your direction. Word of caution: Don’t allow others’ opinions to make your goals and mission statement seem like a moving target. The purpose of that mission statement is to communicate to them and others where you are planted in your direction and business focus as well as what is important to your business.

The Abunza business opportunity has been around now for a couple of months and I have to say, it’s now one of the more popular internet home businesses online today.

But what’s this Abunza company? What does Abunza sell and can it compete against the other high ticket programs? The co-founders, Michael Spire and Sebastian Saldaarriaga, had chosen the name “Abunza”, which means “abundance” in Spanish. In their opinion a business opportunity nowadays has to have four essential elements.

- Good support for the members and pre-enrollees

- Mentoring, especially for the newcomers in the home business

- A Program that has been proven and tested

- Direction and focus is essential

They focus the opportunity on both the English market as well on the millions Spanish speaking people on the internet. The product itself is a digital information library, along with travel rewards in both English and Spanish on a wide variety of subjects.

There are two different ways that you can earn money with the Abunza business opportunity.

Retail Sales – Make 100% commission from every product sale. You own complete resale rights.

Resale Rights – When you sell a complete digital library package for $1197.00 (remember the monthly fee of $54.00), you earn $947.00 on the first level. Abunza will also pay you $250.00 every time one of your tier one team members makes a sale.

Being an Abunza member, you can get support from the Abunza Dream Team for calling back your prospects, in either English or Spanish. This allows you to be making money 24/7. You can focus yourself on marketing your business and the rest will take care of the call center. You are only contacted when money is transferred to your bank account.

Although the pay plan is average and there is only the $1197.00 package, there is nothing really bad about Abunza. You can have success with this business opportunity. There are no passing up sales to your sponsor and with the overrides, your sponsor never break away from you.

No one is able to predict when the storm that hit the global economy will recede, though economists are optimistic that very soon, things will look up. But, the disturbing fact is that many people are already out of employment and this number is increasing. There is no wonder many of them are opting for home-based businesses. But, even in home-based businesses, there are challenges. Finding a customer base for your home-based business is necessary because without customers, you can not succeed in it. Social networking sites are a good source through which you can find new customers for your business.

Of course, the products and services you deal with play a role in determining your success in your business. For example, if you are into the real estate business, finding buyers in the present economic situation is an arduous task. But, if you want to buy properties, this is the right time and you can flip those properties when the economy looks up and make a huge profit. If you are into some other business, you can follow these tips for generating cash as well as revenues to run your business.

The best idea to generate immediate cash for your business is to sell off some of the equipments you do not need often or you may not require at all. You can sell them with the help of Amazon.com or similar sites. You can also have your own e-commerce website. Since Internet has the power to reach hundreds of thousands of customers, selling them quickly is quite easy.

You can use the power of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and so on. These sites are gaining more and more popularity and their reach is phenomenal. A multitude of customers can be reached through these sites. By sending suitably-worded messages and through article marketing using these sites, you can build a strong customer base. You can earn a good revenue by selling more and more of your products and services by expanding your customer base.

You can extend discounts and special offers to customers so that they can be lured to buy your products and services. You can get “repeat business” from the existing customers and you will also get many new customers. You can get more number of customers through word of mouth advertising also.

This is the age of advertisement and publicity. Big corporations and businesses are spending millions of dollars on advertisements. Since you are doing a home-based business, you can not spend huge sums on advertisement. But, at the same time, you can not afford to ignore the power of advertisement. You can find many sites on which you can advertise your products and services free of cost. Social networking sites are the best ones you can try because their reach has been increasing phenomenally. You can also create web pages about your products and services and popularize them by article marketing, blogging and so on. You can think of many innovative solutions to advertise your products.

By adopting the above steps, you can succeed in your home-based business. Focus is the key with which you can find many ways to popularize your products and services.

There was a time when Small business and ERP didn’t go together. Or at least the perception was they didn’t.

If you look at the number of big ERP vendors now going after the small business ERP pie you will know that isn’t the case any more. Whether or not they can truly service the small customer will remain to be seen. There is no doubt more and more SME’s are looking for integrated systems to improve communication, reaction time and overall processes.

The good news for the companies is that there are many vendors out there big and small that are catering to the fact the budgets and staff is smaller. If you look at our offering, ERP123, you will see many tools designed to bring this big business functionality to even the smallest of businesses.

There are tools like Training DVD’s for implementation and training, online meetings and training session as well as new more sensible approaches to implementation and programming. All of these things are driving the price down not to mention with the added competition the initial software price is coming down.

Further to that just like the computer or any other technology the price is coming down over time. There is no reason for any small business to have to pay 100-200k just for software. Then of course there is implementation.

The need for IT expertise in the smaller implementations are becoming less and less, and it a good thing because smaller organizations don’t even have IT internally. A technical mental midget like myself, for example, can install our software, simply by inserting the disk. Everything else gets done automatically. Or to make it easier on your organization you can have your data store of site so you don’t even need to pay for servers.

Innovation, competition and the realization that the SME markets is 85 percent and growing, of business out there, are all driving factors that make ERP more reachable to even the smallest of business. Competition is furious and there has never been a better time to start your small business down the ERP path.

If you do decide to look at ERP be mindful of the issues, not only price but also these 7 key issues:
1. Do you have buy in for this from the top or your organization?
2. Do you have a team to assess the software before buying?
3. Always, always test the software and your processes within it before you buy?
4. Does your vendor have the knowledge to aid you through the process?
5. Is the software flexible enough to be changed if your process does?
6. Do you have the staff administratively to handle implementation and training?
7. Can the software be deployed based on your business needs?

ERP is for small business we see it every day, but like any other decision if you don’t make the right decision it can be costly.

An interesting discussion came up at the Warrior Forum today. Somebody asked what the best product was to sell. I didn’t stick around to see what any of the responses were because I wanted my reaction to be as free from influence as possible. So I’m going to share with you my feelings as to what the best product is to sell if you are thinking of starting your own home business. The answer may or may not surprise you.

Okay, here goes. Ready? The best product to sell is the one that your target market wants. Okay, I know, you’re really disappointed in that answer. But guess what? That’s the best answer that anybody can give you regardless of what you might think. But I’m not going to just leave you with that answer. I am going to explain. So sit back, relax, and take notes.

We live in a messed up world, like it or not. There are more problems in this world than any one of us can count. From health problems to financial problems to you name it. We are a world in misery. And when people have problems, guess what? They’re not happy. They want to solve their problems. Even I have problems, as successful as I am running my own home business. Not everything can be solved by money. As a matter of fact, I don’t know one person who doesn’t have a problem of some kind. Okay, so what’s the point?

The point is this. For every problem there is a solution. Some of the solutions are easy, such as taking a pill and others are not so easy, such as working out for two hours a day. But for most problems in this world, there are solutions. Some are free, meaning we can do them without having to spend any money, but some are not free. We have to dig into our wallets and pay for the solution. Those are the products you can usually find in stores or online. THOSE are the best products to sell. There is no such thing as one being better than another.

Not everybody has acne, so an acne treatment will only appeal to those with acne. Not everybody is in debt, so a guide to get out of debt will only appeal to THOSE people. But every product out there has a market. There is somebody who needs it. So pick a product that YOU can best relate to. If you can speak about it intelligently, you’ll have the best chance of selling it. It’s no different from recommending a movie to a friend of yours. Just be yourself.

People make running a home business too complicated. It’s not. It’s simply supplying a solution for a problem that a target market is having.

Yeah, it’s THAT simple.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

A small business can be defined as a business that is independently owned and operated, one that has only a few employees, and does a rather small amount of business. A lot of times, small businesses are sole proprietorships, meaning that only one person owns the venture. There are many different types of smaller businesses, and there are unique advantages and disadvantages to owing one.

There are many different kinds of small enterprises and ways to operate and own them. The usual consideration for deeming a business “small,” is that it has to have fewer than 100 employees in the U.S., and fewer than 50 in Europe. There are many businesses that are typically small, and a few of these are: hairdressing salons, bakeries, convenience stores and gas stations, photography shops and restaurants, as well as offices for lawyers and accountants, and many others.

All of these are considered a small business for various reasons. Employee size is not the only thing that defines what makes a small business, as other criteria include annual sales, asset value or net profit.

The smallest businesses are called micro businesses, and they are often located inside someone’s home. Both the U.S. and Europe defines “mom and pop” businesses, where the operation is almost entirely run by the owner’s family, as businesses that have less than ten employees.

Franchising is a great way to own a small business without having to create the whole thing from scratch, as the corporation will often pay to get most of the business going. This allows the owner the freedom to concentrate on running the business and not worry about failing so quickly.

There are some great advantages to owning a small business, and there are great disadvantages as well. If you feel that the advantages are better than the disadvantages, then you are a good candidate for a small business venture. Probably the biggest advantage to opening a smaller business is the fact that most take relatively little start up capital.

Smaller businesses have an easier time finding and keeping a market niche. Advertising for small businesses is usually cheap and easy, and smaller businesses can use internet marketing strategies more effectively than a larger company. The biggest disadvantage to opening a smaller business is that it is very easy to go bankrupt.

There are incredibly high business tax responsibilities for smaller businesses as well, and it is necessary that the gross income is always greater than the fixed costs of the business, otherwise it will fail. Additionally, just because someone has a good business idea does not mean it will be successful.

Now you know a little more about small businesses and how they operate. Just remember, if you are planning to open a small business, then make sure to conduct proper background research, because if you don’t, then your business will likely fail within a year or two. In depth research and viable business plans are essential!