How Can I Start a Work From Home Business?
Starting a home business has many rewards and challenges of which I will share in this article to include many different options that you may want to consider. In asking, ‘how do I start a work from home business’, you have taken the first step in considering an option.
Whatever the reason for your decision to investigate home business options, knowing and understanding why and what your need for this decision are very important. In today’s economy time constraints, desires for spending more time at home with family, or just simply needing to earn additional income to support your household are but just a few reasons why people seek out these opportunities.
Not to mention being your own boss at home continues to be a favourable choice for many. Every day people are taking on additional part time and even full time home business opportunities for increasing their household income as a solution to their individual situations.
Thorough investigation on what type of business you would be interested in would be a great first start. Among my personal preferences that I coach are ways to use various network marketing business opportunities that in turn support the home business to begin with.
For instance, using a network marketing opportunity such as Avon, Mary Kay, or Amway while very reputable and successful, these typically do not provide any direct supporting elements of a home business at all. Although if you’re currently involved with one or more of these network marketing opportunities they are still viable options for one of many streams of income.
Additionally, the idea is that you want to work from home, not be positioned to host house parties, perform cold calling, handing out samples of this or that to every stranger you come across at the mall. And if you’re like me, bugging your friends and family about your products or business opportunities is not something you would look forward to.
However, there are a few strategic network marketing opportunities that you can tie into the back end of your home business that will support your efforts and provide value to you and your customers and a steady stream of income based on your efforts. I will discuss these in just a little bit.
Square away an area that you would mostly be interested in having or using as your office or central place to do work. I often advise that using a soft comfortable couch in front of your TV in the living room isn’t the best place as it may be too easy for distractions or even deciding its nap time!
Make a weekly schedule where you can fit in 10 to 15 hours per week that you and your family will recognize as your work time, don’t forget to schedule yourself a day off now and then. In doing so you have a continued structure and your family will be bought in with allowing you the time you need to focus on growing your business. One area of concern I ran into during my early days was that I didn’t have a set schedule.
I just did whatever training, follow ups, and marketing that I needed to do whenever I could fit it in. This caused many distractions for me and my family. As mentioned earlier, it’s important to know why you’re starting a home business, and it’s also equally important to not forget your family as the real reason. After all, family comes first.
Buy yourself a nice laptop or desk top computer to use, nothing expensive. You’ll likely want to invest in your favourite version of the Microsoft Office Suite for the Excel and Word applications. Spending a ton of money on a computer for this purpose isn’t necessary so don’t break the bank.
Of course the normal routinely ran anti-virus and malware protection programs to protect your laptop or desktop investment is an absolute must. There are many free options available for this, however most new computers come with these pre-installed and will save you tons of money in the event that something went wrong. Not to mention the headache!
My personal recommendation is focusing your efforts on self development in regards to leadership, communication skills, relationship building, and most importantly online marketing. Search online for book stores to visit, you may even consider visiting used book store. I myself have saved hundreds of dollars by purchasing used books.
You will learn quickly, that is if you haven’t already, network marketing in itself does not provide any type of real marketing strategies other than word of mouth, and this isn’t marketing at all. However, when you use a marketing system that teaches you how to market in the first place, and is used to funnel people to you through what is termed Attraction Marketing, the need to find someone to tell your business opportunity to is a thing of the past.
Through advertising and promoting a marketing strategy such as the Attraction Marketing concept, you will learn how to attract people to your business through various online and offline methods. Many of such methods include article writing, PPC, video marketing, viral eBook distribution, forums, social media, and well, the list goes on and on. Plus, these marketing strategies teach you how to market using these methods in the first place.
Resulting in any excuse of not having any experience with marketing as no longer valid. With full support from a current team that also provides a 1on1 coaching platform for your success, you’ll always have fresh ideas and direction on what to do next. Basically, even though you’re your own boss, being in business for yourself but not by yourself gives you the support you need. That’s comforting in itself and alleviates the fear factor of not knowing what to do or where to go.
This leaves the question, where do these home business supporting network marketing opportunities I mentioned earlier come into play? Consider this, through your marketing efforts you will attract people that are already pre-qualified and actively looking for a better marketing strategy or wanting to start their home business. Just like you found and are reading this article right now. Once contact is made with these people that come to you, positioning your network marketing opportunities simply becomes a means to an end.
You may be wondering what network marketing opportunities I use that support my home business. Well, I’m not going to tell you. Why? Because I don’t actively promote my network marketing opportunities with anyone, they are simply a facet of my home business.
However, when people that do find me and are looking for these types of home business opportunities, my marketing system provides me contact info for these prospects. Just like it will for you. This in turn is incredibly helpful with your recruiting efforts in duplicating your business and making it easier to establish a verbal conversation with them over a live telephone to learn of their needs and enabling you to provide a solution.
Once this has been done, and I understand the needs of my prospect, I am open to freely discuss my network marketing opportunities with them, and again my network marketing business opportunities are simply a means to an end and part of a well rounded home business strategy.
I will however provide you with what my network marketing opportunities provides on a high level. My opportunities provide a type of legal insurance that like car insurance, everyone should never do without and has many valuable benefits for your household. I won’t go into those, but I will include that it has an important element for anyone that is putting themselves out there by providing identity theft protection and restoration services.
Also included is a huge money saving IRS auditing assistance package that hopefully one would never need. Let’s face it, working from home, collecting a paycheck from a ‘normal’ full time job then positioning yourself to have multiple streams of income could turn a wary eye on you from those mean old IRS folks. Protection that doesn’t break the bank is a no brainer.
I tell most people, like your car insurance, you hope you never have to use it, but you have peace of mind that it’s there. Another facet of a network marketing item I use provides a customer retention and ongoing relationship building system. We don’t want to sell something and forget our valued customers right? People only do business with people they trust, and they only do business with those that show gratitude for their business efforts.
Sending a birthday, anniversary, or just a ‘thanks for doing business’ card can go a long way and it’s made very easy and personalized by this second opportunity that I use. So you see, using these two network marketing opportunities and promoting them when the time is right, the value is there, the growth potential is there, and they’re perfect supporting items for any home business.
These are just a few options available to you for your home business platform. I hope I have provided you with a bit of knowledge on a possible direction to go. Please feel free to view my contact information as I am always happy to work with others and teach them how they also can be their own boss. Thanks for reading.
Darin McCall
About the Author:
Hi, I’m Darin McCall and I run my own home business here in Louisville, KY. A 9 year U.S. military veteran turned Information Attraction Marketing and home business coach. I am passionate about the idea of Servant Leadership and practice these qualities by dedication to my team’s individual success above my own. Thanks for reading my articles and I hope they provide valuable content. I welcome all feedback that will help me to continue to grow. [Dead links removed]