3/29/2009

Home Based Business Ideas for Men

Home based business ides are everywhere, but if you research them online you will find a lot of them are geared towards women. Direct sales companies are all geared toward the stay at home mom. What if you're a man who wants to start a home based business? What are your options?
 
Assuming you are not a man who wants to sell stuff your own teddy bears at the next mom luncheon, you may want to consider being an independent insurance agent. You can easily run an insurance business out of your home. You do have to be licensed and while all states are different, it's usually only a couple week class to learn what you need to know. You can either be a property and casualty insurance agent or you could get a license in health and life insurance. Once you are licensed a little networking with other professionals and you will be well on your way to a successful home based business.
 
Maybe you are a more hands on kind of guy though. Have you ever thought about starting a carpet cleaning business or even landscaping? While the actual physical work would have to be done outside the home, you can still conducted the business end primarily from your house. More than likely, you will need some equipment to get started. Since this can get costly, you could look into business loans or grants to help you in the beginning. A lot of men enjoy having this type of home based business, because it also gets them out of the house.
 
If you are looking for a home based business with a low start up cost. You could try freelance writing. All you need to get started is a computer and Internet access. There are many types of writing you can do. Businesses will pay freelance writers for writing anything from press releases to annual reports. There's also a lot of work available for those looking to write keyword articles for web content.
 
Another home based business option could be real estate. There are numerous things you can do in the real estate field and they can all be based from your home. You could be a real estate investor. There are numerous books written for people looking to get into real estate investing. You could become a licensed real estate agent. As a real estate agent you have the option to work for a real estate agency outside the home, but you can also work for yourself out of your home. It may take time to build clientele and find good leads, but both of these types of businesses can be home based.
 
While it may seem like a lot of home based businesses are geared towards women, there are numerous options that aren't geared towards either sex. There are more home based businesses for men then you may think. If you put your mind to it almost any business can be based out of your home.
 

3/25/2009

Internet Marketing - 14 Website Content Ideas

One of the most important parts of Internet marketing is original website content, that is keyword rich, original and plentiful.

Benefits of Website Content:
1. Good for your visitors
2. Good for SERPS (search engine rank pages)
3. Good for keyword relevance
4. Good for Internal linking and on-site SEO.
It is very true that thin websites do not do well in search engines. Content along with a good link building strategy is the Internet marketing formula to get your sites to ranking in the SERPS.

Often times, content can be a daunting tasks for webmasters, for store type site. It can be difficult to find ideas for written content and especially if you have several sites.

14 Website Content Ideas

1. Lists - People love lists, they are easy to read and easy to create. Best, Worst, Most Bought, Most Popular, Most Read, Least Liked, 10 ways to;, 5 Methods for;, 6 Types of. The possibilities are endless.

2. How-To - A how-to can be created for anything, just use your imagination.

3. Guides and Tutorials - Every type of product, subject or niche can be fitted to some kind of guide or tutorial and more than one. Even if you are selling clothes you can have a page on size charts, types of clothing for different shapes, hottest fashion trends, buying guide, etc.

4. Side Subjects - You can write about sub-subjects within your main one. For instance if you are selling music products you can have pages about music artists and music news. If selling furniture you can talk about home design and decorating, for cooking types sites you can have pages of recipes. The possibilities for side subjects are endless.

5. Product Reviews - If you don not know the product do some research and compile something good.

6. Interesting Facts and/or Myths

7. Trivia - Trivia is a popular subject and easy to research.

8. Histories - Most products have histories and several pages of website content can be created around that topic.

9. What Returning Visitors Have To Say and Customer Testimonials - A comment section is a good and automated way to add content to your websites. Also, if your visitors have contacted you and had good things to say, these can easily be made into a webpage on your site.

10. About Pages - About pages are a great way to display your website content and use your keywords.

11. Biographies

12. Current Trends/Events - There are always trends related to any niche, whether they are market, consumer, sales, advances etc.

13. Advantages of Buying Online - This one is universal and applies to any niche and or product. Customize it to your subject and niche.

14. Outsourced Articles - These are articles you buy and use as you wish, including publish it verbatim as your own.

Inspiration for Website Content
1. Research keywords to find content ideas. When you enter the main product/niche keyword of your sites, lots of long tail keywords will come up for what people are searching for within that niche.

2. Visit big gun authority sites in your niche and see what they are talking about.

3. Look at what popular bloggers in your niche are blogging about.

4. Read paper and online magazines about your niche and see what the popular articles are, this is a great way to get inspirations for website content and accelerate your Internet marketing campaigns.


By: Jr Lang. Learn more about Internet marketing with step-by-step and useful guides at my Internet Marketing Blog. Get all types of free webmaster and SEO tools for all types of website analysis, desing, SEO and more at Free Webmaster Tools.

3/24/2009

Why You Should Choose an at Home Job

People choose to work at home for many different reasons. There are a lot of benefits to having an at home job. These benefits may work out more from some people than others. Regardless of your personal situation though, they are definitely worth taking into consideration. Deciding to take an at home job is a big decision. It may mean losing some of the benefits you are used to having working outside the home.
 
While you may not find a company that offers their home agents medical insurance, there are other benefits that may make an at home job worth while. When you work from home you don't have more than a five second commute. You can roll out of bed, grab some coffee, and start up the computer. You don't have to drive anywhere and your don't even have to get dressed. This benefit sounds great to most people, but may be crucial for people who are disabled. Work at home jobs, may be the only jobs that some people can accept. It's also a great option for moms who aren't able to afford child care. Not having proper child care makes it almost impossible to work outside the home, working from home gives you the option to care for your children and earn an income.
 
You can work around your schedule. This makes a work at home job a great option for anyone who has prior commitments. If you need to work around a child's schedule you can. If you need to work around something in your own personal schedule, you can. Flexible scheduling makes working at home great for people with health conditions that require regular treatments, people who are starting a business but need income temporarily, or even those who simply like to travel.
 
You can get your housework done on your breaks. If you have a busy schedule this is an added bonus. When you have an at home job, it is necessary to make a schedule for yourself. The schedule helps to keep you focused, but you also need regular breaks. Use those break times to run the vacuum or throw in a load of laundry. This will help to free up your evenings allowing you to spend more time with your family.
 
There are numerous benefits to accepting an at home job, and you can even find some that will allow you to have the same benefits that you would receive if you worked outside the home. While some companies offer medical insurance and even retirement plans for home workers, not all of them do. Before selecting an at home job you should weigh all of your benefits to make sure the job meets your needs.

3/21/2009

Twitter from a Marketing Perspective

If you are dabbling in the online marketing arena than you are sure to have heard of twitter. Twitter is a micro blogging service, whereas you can post updates to your profile and it can be viewed by your followers. Basically the more followers you have the more you can send your message across to a potential audience, twitter has been a gem for online marketers, or has it. There are a few potential problems with twitter as a whole and now we will take a deep look at them.

Firstly I feel that the platform as a whole may turn into one big spam fest. The reason for stating this is because of the fact that there are no captchas in place for adding friends, something similar to what they have on Myspace would indeed be helpful, and secondly they do not have a limit on the amount of friends you can add, like for example Digg do. If you add to many friends on Digg then you will get a warning and will no longer be allowed to add until a time scale has passed. All of these aspects are looking likely to make twitter a follow up that caused the eventual death of Myspace. We all know that Myspace suffered because it could not control the sheer amount of spam that was being generated on a daily basis.

Looking past all of this, if you do decide to spend your time and effort promoting your brand on twitter then you will have a big shock in store. If you have not already heard most of the twitter users are very loyal to the site, so if you start constantly posting to them you are probably most likely to get classed as a spammer and eventually banned. More so if you do not get banned is it really worth the time and effort to drive useless traffic to your site. Twitter traffic is believed to have a massive 93% bounce rate to your business. I can tell you for sure that I would rather spend my valuable time building up my online presence in a more ethical way.

So from a marketing perspective it is warned that you should stay well clear from using twitter. Ok you may be able to get your brand name out but is that how you want your company to be remembered. "Oh I know that site, there the ones that spammed me on twitter". Do you want your company to be labelled as a spam business? I didn't think so. Stop using twitter for promotion and use it as a valuable tool to keep up to date with your friends and your websites subscribers.

By: Musa Aykac
Article Source: http://www.host4gain.com/articles
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3/19/2009

Are Ads on Twitter the Way Forward or a Killer?

By: Musa Aykac

Twitter has experienced phenomenal growth over the last year, the site is being talked about all across the planet and celebrities have also jumped onto the bandwagon to get a slice of the tweet pie.

Twitter has experienced phenomenal growth over the last year, the site is being talked about all across the planet and celebrities have also jumped onto the bandwagon to get a slice of the tweet pie.

These types of ads work for sites such as Google and Facebook. Twitter on the other hand is very different kettle of fish; Twitter users will not want to see text based ads in their profiles as it will just be a distraction when they are trying to read their tweets. Besides from that, how good would it really be for the actual advertisers, Ok they may get a huge amount of traffic, but is it really worth it? Twitter has an unprecedented high bounce rate; tests have shown that visitors from twitter are more likely to bounce then any other social networking site.

Do not get me wrong if you are using twitter to actually update subscribers then it can be a very valuable tool, but to just put ads in front of people is not the way forward. Twitter need to look at launching a business model that would be helpful to businesses. I know tons of companies that just use twitter as a means for updating their subscribers. So why not charge these commercial sites to use the service as they are in fact benefiting from it. Twitter should basically have two sections personal accounts, which are free and professional company accounts which can then be used for updating their readers how they like for a monthly fee.

But I definitely feel that text based ads is not the correct way to approach this as they may end up losing some loyal users in the long run if they do not find the correct approach to take.

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Twitter Tutorials - Your Twitter Profile Matters

By: Chad DeBolt

When someone decides to ask you if they can follow you on Twitter they are basically asking if the two of you can be friends. The first thing that mostly everyone does when they get a follow request is to go and look at the requester's profile page. Due to Spam attacking us around every electronic corner, it is very important to take the proper amount of time and go look at every requester's profile, as opposed to just accepting everyone's request that asks.

It's a good idea to feel out each person that starts following you. Some information you can try and find out is what is their name, do you have anything in common, could they be a potential client? It would be great to be able to find that information out but it's also important to remember that Twitter is a two way street and they will want to know a lot about you as well.It's important to realize that your profile is actually a window into who you actually are.

It's almost like a commercial that shows you and your life letting the viewer get to know you a bit. When you first log on to Twitter you are presented with templated backgrounds to choose from or if you feel adventurous you can create a custom design. If you really want to go crazy with marketing yourself or your company's brand you can actually hire a web designer to design a custom Twitter profile page.

When designing a Twitter profile it is important to remember the following important tips.

The cleaner the better - If you have a lot of things on the page it will pull the visitor's eyes from the important things, like your content.

Consistency is key - It's crucial to make sure the content on your profile page aligns itself well with your company's content.

Short is not a bad thing - If you can't attract a viewer in the first few seconds then they are lost.

Keep it useful - Are you offering consistent useful information?
Do you give multiple ways to connect with you on and off Twitter? Do you have ample examples of your work?

Is it interesting - Why would someone talk to you? Are you posing questions frequently? If you can get someone into a discussion with you then you will be able to begin to discover their needs.

Any type of business can be successful using Twitter if they create a profile page that exhibits the items above. By completing at a few Twitter tutorials and by having a profile page as outlined above will give your potential followers an easy decision on if they are going to follow you or not.

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3/18/2009

Earn Money at Home in Your Spare Time

It is very possible to earn money from home in your spare time. If you are looking to earn a little more money to supplement your bills or even just to save for something you've been wanting you can easily do it from home. Think about how nice it would be to not have to get a second job outside the home. You can work around your current schedule and even in your pajamas! Sounds nice doesn't it?
 
It isn't hard to earn money from home. There are even numerous options available to you. One good way to earn some extra money and clean out the junk in your house at the same time is by using Ebay. Ebay is the biggest online auction site available and a great way to earn some extra cash.
 
If you are one of the few people in the world who don't have an over abundance of junk collected over the years, there are other options as well. There are a lot of different companies who will hire home agents to do phone work. This can be customer service, sales, or even collections. Businesses like to out source this work because it saves on their overhead and that makes it a great option for you to earn money at home.
 
Phone work may not be for everyone though, so what other types of work is available? You could try data entry or transcription. Both are easy to do you would basically transcribe things like meeting minutes from either short hand or an audio file. You could also try your hand at freelance writing, businesses are always looking for web content and keyword articles to purchase. Or you could even be a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant is basically an administrative assistant who works from home. Needless to say there are countless ways to earn money at home in your spare time as long as you have a computer and Internet access the sky's the limit.
 

3/16/2009

Business Startup Made Simple

The thought of starting a business sounds harder than it actually is. Business startup isn't actually all that hard and you can even do the whole thing online. With some minimal research you can be in business within a few weeks.
 
You should already have a business idea in mind and hopefully have done your due diligence to make sure it a wise financial decision. Now that you have those two things complete, you're ready to get started! It's an exciting time, but how do you actually make your business legal? What is required of you throughout the business startup process?
 
The first thing you should do is decide on a business name. The business name should be something memorable and catchy. It also needs to pertain to your business. It doesn't have to be boring like Joe's Plumbing, but you to do something catchy an a little different like Two Plumbers and a Wrench. Something people will remember, but also lets them know what it is you do. Once you have a name planned you need to register your business name with your state. There is a fee which will vary by state, but you can do this online by visiting your state's website.
 
You will also need to decide if you want to conduct your business as a sole proprietor or a corporation. There are many benefits for doing business as a corporation, but you also may need and accountant to handle your taxes for you. That of course, will depend on how much you know about taxes. For some people it may be easier to conduct business as an individual. Doing this may be easier, but you are subject to more taxes and your assets aren't protected as well. You can also find plenty of information on the Small Business Associations website to help you make this decision.
 
The business startup process won't be complete until you have officially registered your business and receive your Employer Identification Number. After you decide how to register, it's time to actually do it. You can register your business online via your state's website. The website will tell you what forms need filled out and how to complete them. Once you fill them out you simply submit them online. Once the papers are filed you will receive your Employer ID number in the mail and then you're in business!

3/12/2009

Five Home Business Ideas for Animal Lovers

Everyone has heard someone say your career should be something you love. We spend the majority of our time at work, so why shouldn't you do something that you love? What if you are an animal lover looking to start a business? There are plenty of business ideas out there, but why not try something geared around the animals you love?
 
1. Start a dog walking business. A dog walking business is best for people who live in the city. Dogs in the city don't usually have a lot of room to run and play. With their owners at work all day, they usually hire someone to walk their dogs. This can be a very profitable business for any animal lover. It would also be a simple business idea to start up. Simply print flyers and go door to door to pass them out to gain clients.
 
2. Start a doggy daycare. Some pet owners have a very busy schedule and don't want to leave their dog home alone all the time. This is where a doggy daycare comes in handy. Whether they bring the dog for one day or a week, babysitting the dog makes you money and leaves the owner with a piece of mind.
 
3. Another great business idea for an animal lover is a pet resort. When people have to travel, they don't want to leave their pet in a kennel. Instead they look for a plush pet resort that is somewhat like a luxury hotel for pets. This is definitely a unique business, but fun and profitable.
 
4. Are you not really a dog or cat person, but still love animals? A good business idea for you may be to own horse stables. Equestrians are always looking for good stables to keep their horses at.
 
5. No space for animals, but you'd still like a good business idea centered around animals? How about making clothes for dogs? You can sell them online and on Ebay and make a good profit. It seems everyone dresses their pets these days, why not profit from it?
 
If you are an animal lover, then you could turn anything pertaining to animals into a business. There are business ideas all around you, all you have to do is think outside the box!
 

3/07/2009

Home Based Businesses Trump 9 to 5 Jobs

While rising gas prices continue to climb throughout the US, more and more people are looking to the future of home-based businesses. Recently, a poll was taken by the general population on the percentage of people who are interested in, or are researching the prospects of a home-based business. A staggering 45 percent are eager to start and another 40 percent are seeking information on a home-based business of their choice. If the 40 percent who have looked to start a home-based business begin within the next year and the eager 45 percent join in too,  that is over half of Americans who do not have to get out of their Pajamas in the mornings. Nor do they have to rush around to get the kids off to school before work. Sound refreshing? Eighty five percent of Americans think so!
 
This is good news for single parents and for families with two incomes as well. Being a parent can be hard enough, but throw in the stress of a hectic schedule and the overbearing power of the eight hour workday, and you've got a recipe for catastrophe. Independence is a major factor in a single parents life. Being prosperous at a job and bringing home the bacon at the same time, isn't easy these days and single parents will be the first to express that. With home-based businesses these parents are finding comfort in knowing that they have the freedom and flexibility to live their lives the way they want to.
 
Home-based businesses may not be for everyone. It takes a self-disciplined and highly motivated individual to succeed in these entrepreneurial ventures. You've got to set goals and work to reach them. Having that pestering boss hovering over you is a thing of the past in the world of home-based businesses. This means you're the boss, and you must be capable of working well on your own. Self-motivation is a quality entrepreneurs must possess. Problem solving and learning new skills are important as well to help you grow to and beyond your highest ambitions. However, the key to a strong and successful business is a powerful support system. With your family and friends behind you as you embark on your business dreams; there is nothing that you cannot accomplish.
 
After countless hours of research on “what business is right for you” and checklist after checklist, you may become discouraged. Still the most impressive thing about home-based businesses is that you can do what you love to do. Finally feel good about your job and passionate about the hours you put in. Choose a subject that you are animated about. Maybe it's photography, or perhaps writing, either way it's your choice. As a result, say good-bye to commuting. No more expensive day care costs or throwing away your time on someone else's investments. Better yourself and spend valuable time with your family. This world is full of opportunities, and the choice is yours. Take advantage of it, you deserve it!

3/03/2009

Five Things Most Companies Making Money Do

Is your company struggling? What do other companies do to keep their doors open? The economy is struggling and it can have a negative effect on businesses everywhere. There are five things companies making money do to stay afloat during hard times.
 
1. Access their finances- Successful businesses access their finances and figure out where they can cut costs. This doesn't have to mean laying off any employees you may have, but there are always places that you tend to overspend. Review all of your expenses and try to cut corners anywhere you can.
 
2. Find cheap and effective advertising- Advertising costs can be expensive and companies that are making money know how to be very cost effective in this area. Look for free or low cost advertising and take advantage of it. Make sure to track the response you are getting so that you know which areas are worth your time. When you start getting a good response think about cutting back on some of the more expensive advertising.
 
3. Network with others in your industry- Networking is a very important part of business. It's important to network with others in similar businesses. For example if you are a property and casualty insurance agent you will want to network with some realtors. Building successful business relationships can bring a lot of new business your way.
 
4. Go paper free- A lot of companies are going paper free. Not only does it help save our planet's resources, but also saves money in a lot of different areas. You'll save on paper, printer ink, and if you have employees it can even boost morale by making them responsible for tracking things like their attendance. The companies making money know this and are taking action.
 
5. Talk about your business- Companies making money consist of people who talk about their business. You may not want to talk about your business at the dinner table, but when you meet new people you should always talk about your business. They may have a need for your product or services, you wouldn't know that if you didn't talk about your business.
 
These are just a few things that companies making money do. There are many things you can do to keep your company going even during the hardest times. Don't let your company sink, be determined and cut costs where you can. Your company will survive as long as you are dedicated to keeping your business doors open.