Tips for Running a Home Business When you Have Children

If you are thinking about setting up a home business alongside looking after your children then there a few things that you need to consider. This short article will give you help and advice on how to manage a career and child care.

Setting up a home business when you have children can be a great way to work whilst being able to look after your children at the same time. It also means that you can enjoy seeing your children without being tied to working set hours and for many parents this is a great incentive to having a home business.

Providing that you plan everything thoroughly and do not take on too much work then you should be able to enjoy a successful career. Of course, there will also be times when working might prove difficult, but the same could be said of having children and working a normal office job.

It is advisable to not take on too much work all at once and be realistic as to how much you can comfortably fit in. It might also be a good idea to sign up to a relevant online community and see if anyone can offer you help and advice.

1. Choosing Your Hours

The majority of people who run a home business and look after children tend to try and work in the evenings or at weekends so that there is someone else on hand to help out. However if your children are older then you may be able to fit in work during the school days.

If you do find that you struggle to balance both work and looking after your children sometimes or you simply need to work more during the day, you could consider child care. It is however important to remember that you need to think about the cost of this. If it will virtually cancel out the money you will earn then you need to decide how feasible it really is.

2. When to Start your Home Business

It is probably not a good idea to set up a home business if you have a very young baby unless of course you have people around you who can help out where needed. This is mainly because having a young baby can be quite draining, especially if you are getting up for feeds at all hours of the night and day. You may find that you cannot fully commit to your working life as well as your childcare duties.

Generally the key to running a successful home business when you have children is to be flexible and to make sure that you are incredibly organised. It may not be without its difficulties at times, but if you can find yourself a quiet area and ways to occupy your children then you should find that you can juggle the two quite happily. Chris Jenkinson

Business Plans for Setting up a Home Business

If you are new to starting a home business then creating a business plan could be worthwhile. You will be able to see what it is you need to achieve and how much money you need to earn to make your new venture viable.

A business plan is essentially a document that will illustrate your business and the objectives and strategies that you have as well as how you feel it will work financially. By having a plan it means that you will be able to gauge the success that your new home business will have.

1. Why Should I have a Business Plan?

It is common practice for someone who is thinking of starting a new home venture to need a business plan. Often these will be essential before you can obtain a business loan should you require one.

By having a business plan set out you can see if your goals and expectations are realistic. It will also enable you to work out the amount of money you need to earn and how much work you will need to keep going. You can set a business plan for the period you feel necessary and that you will be able to realistically start achieving. By having a list of objectives to achieve it is easier for you to stick to them and to know how to proceed. If you set yourself a specific goal you are far likelier to stick to the plan and therefore have a successful career. Without a business plan it is easy to lose your way and feel that you do not know which direction to go in.

2. What Should I Include?

A well constructed business plan should include sensible ways of meeting all of the goals that you have set. A home business plan is after all no good with a list of objectives that you have no way of meeting. You need to plan ahead and explore all avenues to see if your home business venture will be viable.

A plan will also contain thoughts on how you are going to gain work and in what ways your competitors may do so. If you do not know how to go about one then it is worth asking for help or looking on the internet for a guide. This will give you an idea of what you should include and areas that you should concentrate on. If you know someone that has made a business plan before, then ask for their help and see if you can gain ideas to assist you with writing your own. Chris Jenkinson

How to Use Twitter to Advertise Your Business

Twitter is just one of many social networking sites available these days and if you know what you are doing you can use it to help advertise your home business. It allows you to network with likeminded people and help you spread the word about what it is you do. You can provide information about your products or services as well as marketing to people of offers and discounts that you may have. It can also be a great way to receive feedback on how others perceive your business and what you could do to grow.

1. New to Twitter?

If you have never used Twitter before then you may be wondering what it is all about. To put it simply, a ‘tweet’ is the text that you create and post to your account for others to see. This is normally a maximum of 140 characters and allows you to tell all your followers what you are thinking. In this way you can use your ‘tweets’ to inform others of any special promotions or discounts and keep them up to date with what you are doing. This helps to provide a way for you to advertise your home business venture.

2. Target the Right Audience

Once you have set up your Twitter account it is vital that you make sure your ‘followers’ are people that would be interested in what it is you do, or who can offer you help and advice. You can then try to interact with your followers by commenting on their ‘tweets’ or asking questions on yours. In this way you will hopefully build up a good rapport with people and they will see you and your business as worthwhile and you will gain a good reputation.

3. Be Professional

Of course, it is important to remember not to spam your new ‘followers’ as people can view this as being a little desperate and they may choose to delete you. Make sure that you remain professional at all times to avoid alienating your potential customers. Avoid over ‘tweeting’ and try to mix up the posts you make to include some more light-hearted elements so that it does not seem like you are constantly promoting your business. The key to good advertising on Twitter is to find a good balance.

Overall, be sure to keep your ‘tweets’ professional and to the point since the number of characters you can use is limited. It can be a great way to get some free advertising for your business but make sure that your followers feel that you value their friendship and business. Treat Twitter as any other method of marketing and remember that it will take time and effort to begin with.

How Your Blog Can Achieve Celebrity Status . . . Even If You’re Not Famous (yet)!

You can’t simply set up a blog in isolation and expect the search engines to pick you up. That’s like pitching a refreshments stall in the middle of the forest and not providing tourists with a map of where to find you!

Of course, given time, some people will stumble upon you . . . by chance . . .

However, we need our new, dynamic blog, which provides valuable content, to gain instant superstardom status. So here’s how we do it . . .

Blogs are – essentially – online magazines. And magazines make money through advertising products relevant to their readership. Once you’re established online, you can do the same. But no-one wants to visit a website plastered with ads – your potential audience is looking for quality content from somebody they can trust . So the first thing you need to do is create a rapport with your visitors.

Remember, most people are lazy. Therefore, most bloggers are lazy. If you are prepared to go that extra mile to deliver quality, timeless, original content, your readers will keep coming back to you for more of the same.

Here are some proven ways to attract attention to your blog:

Create a PDF which your readers can download for free. This can be a short report or White Paper teaching people how to do or create something (2-10 pages is ideal). There’s nothing more off-putting than coming across a website for the first time and having someone pitch their wares in your face! It’s a huge turn-off. Giving away valuable content is a sure way to instil trust in your readership. Be sure to capture the names and email addresses of your prospects before allowing them to download your material. Use a reliable autoresponder service for all your online marketing activities.

Create a series of informative articles which can be distributed to free article sites.

For a monthly subscription, there are websites which will distribute your articles for you.

Once written, you can combine articles to create an ecourse , or an information product you can sell online, or use to help build your list.

Post comments on other relevant websites/ blogs that link back to your blog. This is a simple, yet effective way of gaining recognition amongst your peers.

Seek out the true experts in your line of business – the renowned “gurus” in your field – and introduce yourself. Why not ask if you can interview them and post the interview on your blog? This is one of the quickest routes to your blog attaining celebrity status. It’s so simple to conduct a short interview via email – and in my experience – most people are thrilled to be asked for their opinions. And what’s the betting your expert will post a copy of the transcript on his/ her site as well? This is a terrific way of gaining free publicity for you and your site and something every serious business blogger should consider.

If you need help or advice a good starting point could be to look for internet marketing consultants

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Things to Watch for When Hiring a Search Engine Marketing Agency

Why spend your valuable time trying to optimise your website when you can hire a search engine marketing agency? Instead of dividing your time on various website tasks, it makes sense to hire a consulting professional so you can do what you do best - run your business. Selecting the right company however can be rather tricky because so many of them sound like a good deal when they are anything but. However, if you know what to watch for during your search, you will find the right company to optimise your website and increase your sales.

Look for Directory Submission Service Options

A good marketing professional will know how to submit your business listing to the leading web directories in addition to those portals that are industry or niche-specific. This facet of a search engine marketing agency can be quite valuable because a superior description of your business in the appropriate category of the leading web directories will increase the probability of being added swiftly and correctly. Directory listings can promote your website popularity and boost traffic. While there are some free listings to be had, a professional will know the fees and correct options to choose from to make directory submissions count effectively.

SEO Services

A marketing company that can offer Google optimisation can be worth their weight in gold if the result is increased sales. They will work with you in regards to researching the correct keywords as well as make changes in your website content, page tags, included web links and other page coding. In other words, not only will they ensure that your website is still user-friendly but also relevant to the top search engines.

Guaranteed Improvement in Web Traffic

An effective consultancy company can guarantee improved performance of your website or your money back. The goal is to improve your SERP rankings and most good companies can do that. The point is to increase your conversions of page visitors to new customers. Because the goal is a higher conversion rate, the number of overall web visitors to your site may drop. However, this can be good when the visitors are more likely to be serious potential customers instead of lookie-lous who are just cruising the internet. Quality over quantity of visitors is the overall goal.

Red Flags to Watch For

Companies that promise not to change your website at all are likely not effective SE marketers. There must be some changes, whether in links, keywords or tags, in order for the major search engines to recognize your website. And you definitely do not want them embedding hidden links, text or even dummy pages as search engines will eventually penalise your company for it.

The final red flag to consider are those absolute guarantees given to you about your website reaching number one in the major search engine rankings. Because these search engines use complicated algorithms, there is no way to guarantee a number one ranking, only guaranteed improvement. Keep these things in mind when hiring a search engine marketing agency.

Marketing Advice on How to Maintain Pricing Strategies in an Economic Downturn

These days, thanks to the economic recession, it can be tough to continually think of marketing tactics to maintain your market share and avoid losing sales. There is the temptation to slash prices or even

contemplate the action in order to compete with others in the same niche as you. While cutting prices may seem to be a simple thing to do, particularly in the short term, it does not always make sense to do so because it could become a habit. What if the recession stretches further than you thought? You cannot keep cutting prices because you could soon be selling at a loss rather than a profit.

Offering the Best Value for the Price

Having a strong, recognisable brand is important if you want to maintain your pricing strategy as high as possible without losing customers to the competition. How you define the value of what you offer is important when communicating with your customers. The stronger the communication you have with them, the more control you can exercise over your pricing strategy. Of course, you should have a few business marketing tactics available to you so that any issues a customer might have will not be about price.

One smart move to try is bundling some of your products together which will accomplish several things. First, bundling effectively creates the illusion that you have broadened your product base. And second, bundling offers you a way to establish a broad spectrum of low to medium to high value offerings, so you can create a pricing strategy accordingly, without a straight price cut, thus maintain your profitability.

Long Range Planning

Lowering your pricing in order to make more sales and stay competitive in the market may work in the immediate short term, but it will not do much for the long term. However, you can alleviate cutting tactics and the effect on your profits by controlling operating costs in your company and look for ways to eliminate any redundancies and inefficiencies.

Streamlining your operations to reduce costs and increase efficiency makes good business sense anyway. Unfortunately, when business is good, you don't always look for ways to streamline. Rather, it takes a recession and reduction in sales to prompt action.

To maintain your competitive edge, even in a recession, look for ways to offer something innovative or unique to your customers. Can you easily change the packaging for some of your products to create a new look to attract attention? Can you offer any sales incentives or coupons for future purchases? Perhaps partnering with a complementary business (one that does not necessarily directly compete with you) can drum up new business.

Marketing new products during the recession can be a good move but don't expect an overnight boost in business. The same principle applies when cutting prices. If you do this too often, just to stay in business, then that is what customers will expect once the economy improves. Instead, try the product bundling or offer sales incentives so that you can present the illusion of offering a deal without negatively impacting your business financial bottom line.

How to Run Your Home Business Accounts

If you decide to set up and run your own home business then it is vital that you understand the importance of managing your accounts. This short article will provide you with some suggestions on how to make sure you are always on top of your books.

Making sure that you keep on top of your accounts is one area that you may have little experience in if you have never run a home business before. Although it is not the most exciting of topics it is one that you need to master if you are to have a successful career.

Obviously the most important area is keeping track of the amount of money that you have coming in and going out. Some will choose to use an accountant to keep their books in order; however this does depend upon the scale of your business. Others prefer to keep their own books so that they are always aware of what is going on with their finances but also because it can be expensive to use a professional.

1.Keeping your Books

Bookkeeping is essentially a way for you to keep track of your outgoings and the amount of money you have coming in so that you can decide if your home business is profitable. The idea is that you record all of this information either in a specially designated book or on a spreadsheet. Make sure that if you decide to keep yours on your computer that you either have it backed up somewhere or have paper records too. The last thing you want is your computer to die and for you to have lost all your accounts.

It is important that you keep an accurate list and that you make sure it is correct as it is one of the main ways you can tell if your business is viable. You will also know how much money you have available to you for things like marketing, networking and any materials required to run your home business.


2.Managing your Accounts

It is common for someone with their own home business to have one or more bank accounts set up primarily for work purposes. This is where managing your accounts comes into its own since it is incredibly important that you know exactly where your finances stand.

Having a filing system in place is the best way to keep track of your accounts. Within this keep all paper copies of your statements, bills and receipts so that you have them to hand. It is important to keep your books as up to date as possible so that everything tallies and you know that your accounts are all in order.

If you do find that you struggle to manage your accounts and books then you will find that there are a number of courses available that can help you.