Online Business From Home

When I started playing around the idea of starting an online business from home, the excitement I felt was unbelievable. I was well aware that online business is the future.   But that excitement quickly died down after I run into so many stumbling blocks.   There were so many things I didn’t know – in fact, I didn’t know where to start.

It took me several years to get a grasp of what an online business is all about given the limited resources available back then-online and offline.

Today, it doesn’t get any better,  the amount of information online is overwhelming.  You don’t know what is real, what is hype and what information is legit.  Not only that, dissecting all the information can paralized you.

Frustrated?

If you are feeling frustrated, you are not alone. Thousands of women who wish to start a business from home are frustrated. They are jumping from one site to another hoping to find some real useful information but end up getting more confuse.

Although I’ve build an online business since 2003,  I still felt like a hopeless amateur until I joined the mommastermind in 2008.  I’ve learned the rope from experienced women who’ve done it.  I have to admit, when I first joined the group, I felt so disassociated because  a lot of the things they were talking about were foreign to me even though I’ve been doing online business for several years!

So I was excited when Kelly Mccausey published her The Complete Internet Marketing Moms Start Up Guide.

It’s a surefire guide to anyone who wish to learn how to start a business online.  This is not where you find ideas on what business to start or what services you should offer.  We have given you some ideas here at iworkathomecenter.   The guide will help you learn the ins and out of online business.

Here’s a list of chapters to give you an idea.

• Mentoring Increases Success
• The Five Minute Guide to Choosing an Internet Business Mentor
• Reasons to Stay Home
• Ways to Work from Home Online
• Knowing Your Target Market & Unique Selling Proposition
• Choosing a Domain Name
• Hosting
• Choosing Site Building Tools
• Shopping Carts
• You Need a Mailing List
• Content Creation
• Are you blogging yet?
• Podcasting
• Article Marketing on the Web
• Special Reports
• eBooks & Info Products
• Using Video on the Web
• Social Optimization
• What is Twitter?
• Other Social Networking Sites Worth Mentioning
• Social Bookmarking
• Issues of Mojo
• Developing Systems
• Outsourcing for Success and Sanity
• How to Occupy the Kids While You Work
• There’s No Money in Your Comfort Zone!
• Copywriting Bootcamp: The Basics
• What is a Press Release?
• Making Friends with the Search Engines
• Managing Your Books & Preparing For Taxes
• About Membership Sites
• Joint Ventures
• Before You Spend Advertising Dollars
• Internet Terms Glossary

According to Entrepreneur magazine, home parties now account for “roughly 29 percent of the nearly $30 billion in U.S. direct sales, and 13.6 million Americans bought or sold goods from home in 2004.”

We are not just talking about Tupperware or Mary Kay, we are talking about some hot new products that are highly marketable.

Consumers demand is high on jewelry, home decor and green products.

I’ve put together the hottest direct sales and multi-level companies based the number of catalog and information requests from my ishopathome.ca site.

1. Women Accessories are hot.  When people have less money to spend, they use accessories to update their wardrobe instead of buying new  clothes.  Check out these companies:

• Lavish Online
  
• Stello and Dot
• Aura Stella
• Silpada
• Latasia

2.  Home Decor and Home Accessories is the next best thing.  Spring is just around the corner and people start wondering what to do to update their environment.   These companies kept coming up on my search:

• Princess House
• Pampered Chef
• Tupperware
• Everyday Style
• Scentsy

3.  We can’t live without food, so cooking and spicing it up can excite the chef in us.  Check these ones

• Epicure Selections
• Gano Coffee
• Wine Tasting
• Sunset Gourment
• Watkins

4. Green companies are joining the Direct Sales / Multi-Level bandwagon.

• Enjo
• Norwex

5. Communications

• Telfund

To be profitable in any business, you must consider the following before joining:

1. Can you advertise your business online?  Read their policy carefully to make sure you are not limited to their company provided website.
2. What’s their initial fee? It is always wise to fully scrutinize what’s included in the start up kit and see if it will actually provide you enough product to start doing the business.
3. What is their buy back policy? Member of DSWA must agree to buy back inventory from their consultants.  Better yet, choose a business that don’t require inventory.
4. Due your diligence before you plunk your hard earned money and make sure there is an actual product or service being provided and stay away from pyramid schemes.

Telfund International

I received an e-mail from my sister last night about this business opportunity.  She’s  been asking me to attend an opportunity meeting for the last two weeks but I was not really interested.

I’ve been busy with my own business so another business  is the last thing on my list.  Not only because there are tons of “business opportunities” online but also because I’ve had a fair share of pie in the sky business opportunities presented to me and frankly, I am getting tired of hearing this phrase.

But when I found out that my sister flew this morning to Los Angeles to join the business, I got curious. I went to the website and spent all morning getting information about the and here’s what I found so far:

Customer Membership

Free Membership – anyone can sign up for free to use telfund’s long distance and money sending system and get a reduce rate. Free members earn 10% commission on their first level referrals.

Basic Membership – $9.99 very low rate and you can send money for as low as $5.00 service fee.

Basic  Plus Membership – $14.99 for unlimited calls to North America(does not matter where you are calling from) and lower long distance rate on any other countries.  Basic members also get a discounted money sending service fee of $5.00.  I’d say this is better rate when compare to MoneyGram or Western Union

Premium Membership – $24.00 for unlimited calls to 30 countries, the lowest long distance rate to other countries and the lowest customer money sending service fee of $3.00 per transaction.

Telfund’s Services and Products

Make A Call, Send Money, Make Money

Talk

• It’s a Network Marketing Business, offering long distance, text messaging and money remittance business all in one.   The market for these services are majorly immigrants who calls, texts and send money to their home country on a regular basis. Immigrants population is about 150 million globally so there is no lack of customers for this business for sure.
• Telfund use call-back services to lower your long distance cost.  Basically you dial a toll free number, give your key in your telfund ID and hang up. The system then calls you back and you dial your destination.    I found out that if you have free incoming call package, you can use the call back service to also save on airtime.
• It’s a bit of a hassle to dial the toll free before you can dial your destination, but a lot of people don’t mind if it can save them a lot of money.

How Do you Send Money With Telfund?

Telfund money sending service is member to member.  Members can send money to any member in 21 countries in different currency.

Here is how:

• Sign up as a  member
• The person you are sending money to must also be a member-or you can sign them up online if they have no internet where they reside.
• You can either send money “e-wallet to e-wallet” which basically mean from your wallet to the recipients wallet.
• Or send it from you to their bank.
• Services fees vary according to your membership. For a FREE member, it will cost you only $8.00, and the exchange rate is also higher than other institutions.

Can FREE Members (non-distributors) make money?

The simple answer is yes!

The only business  that does not cost you a penny to make money.  All you have to do is the following:

1. Join the FREE membership here.

2. Your membership ID and password will be e-mailed to you.

3. Use your ID to register others under you (no one can register without a referral ID).

4. Every time the people under you use the service, you get 10% of their usage and/or service fees.

5. Your “backoffice” will keep track of all the people you sign up and your real time (no waiting) commission.

6. As a FREE  member, you will also get a replicated website you can use to promote and sign up others.

Conclusion

After having been with this company for 6 months, used the service to call my relatives both within Canada, US and the Philippines, and sent money 4 times to the Philippines and US – this company is going to grow fast.  I also  met the CEO of this company and spoke to him,  so I feel confident that this business is in solid footing.

Contact author for more info.

Starting a home-based business is exciting but it requires doing enough research to ensure you are happy with it and that you CAN do the business the way you want it.

Use this list to pick the best business for you:

1.    Do you enjoy the product and would you recommend it to your friends and family?  I recommend trying the product first as a costumer to see if it’s something you will use and enjoy.
2.    Consumable or hard goods? Direct sales or MLM (Multi Level Marketing)?  These questions are important in helping you figure out what type of business will you be doing.

Direct sales companies focus more on product selling with higher sales commission while MLM companies focuses on building a downline and rewarding builders.  There are pros and cons on the two systems. And each individual has a different way of doing business. Some prefer selling and servicing customers than selling the opportunity to others. Pick yours wisely.

3.    Does the company have an attractive compensation plan? For me, attractive means rewarding me well for my sales as well as for my recruits.    I joined a company once which claimed to have the best compensation plan in the business. I found out the hard way that my sales did not amount much, unless I quickly build up a huge following.  So the top recruiters get paid top dollars while the slow starters with more sales get the least.

4.    Start-up cost.  Can you afford it? Will the company allow you to build your business slowly up or do you have to invest it the big way?

5.    What’s in the starter kit? Will it include products or just literature? It is important that you have a few products to show and tell.
6.    Will the company allow you to promote your business online? I think this is a crucial component of a successful home-based business.   More and more people are realizing that they can’t promote their business online the way thought they would.  Read the fine print before you sign up with a company to make sure you can promote it online.

Some companies allow you to promote your business online ONLY if you use their pre-made websites.  The problem with this is that most company provided websites are expensive for most people to afford.   The second problem is that it is a dublicate of all the other rep’s websites and therefore will not get found on google.

Affordable montly website should be $15 and less.  Having a company website allows your customer to place order online.  But this is not the best way to promote your business however.  It is best to have a blog  where you can talk about your business and then direct them to your company site to order.  But some companies do not allow you to do that.

In your search for a great work at home career, you may have come across the term “affiliate marketing”, or “affiliate program” and you are wondering what the heck it actually means?

What is Affiliate Marketing & How Can I Make Money?

Affiliate marketing is an attractive and viable means to earn some extra cash in your spare time and create multiple residual income streams. Hundreds of businesses, in an effort to reach more customers and get the word out about their products and services, offer affiliate programs. They allow people, like you and me, to post a small link to their website or online store in exchange for a small percentage of their sales generated. This earnings percentage can range from 5% to 25% of the sales made. Each link is unique to you as an “affiliate” and so they can track the sales that are generated from your link. Periodically, a payment is sent out to you based on this program. It’s very low cost advertising for the companies, but it can add up substantially if you get involved with numerous stores and post their links on your websites and blogs.

There is another way that affiliate marketing can help you earn money and that’s by incorporating earnings programs like Google Adsense into your websites. While this is also a form of advertising, the more people who come to your site and click on the ads there, the more money you can earn by getting lots of “hits” to your website.

So essentially, we’re talking about a chance to earn real money every month, for very little effort. But make no mistake; you will still have to dedicate a nice chunk of time initially building it to where it is capable of generating the income you want.

Simple steps on getting started as an affiliate marketer:

Step 1 - Set up a blog in the industry that you are passionate about, hopefully something that is not too saturated. One way to do this is by doing a quick Google search to see how many similar blogs are out there for your particular niche. Keep in mind that most popular topics will be about the travel industry, fitness, insurance and money. Don’t forget there are many untapped niches out there. Think about some of the unique things you are into and you’ll get the idea. Do your research now and it will save you headaches later on. And don’t worry if you are interested in several things; you can have multiple blogs, covering different topics.

Step 2 -  Once your blog is set up, start writing interesting posts about your subject. It can be sort, like 100-200 words per post.  Make regular posts and keep your ideas consistent. It doesn’t have to be professional writing, just write what you are thinking, watch your grammar and spelling and make sure your writing flows and stays on topic.

Step 3 - Promote your blog(s) all over the place. There are free directories you can submit your blog to like technorati, and you may also want to consider swapping links with other bloggers. Create an e-mail signature and include a link to your blog. You can also promote your blog on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or Twitter. Just don’t over do it or it can be annoying to others. Visit community forums on the subject and promote your blog in your membership profiles. Again, be careful not to overdo it or spam others. A casual “posted something on my blog” is acceptable vs. sending a link out to all the members of the site unsolicited.

Step 4 -  Once you have some visitors or “traffic” to your blog, you can then start looking for affiliate programs. This generally takes a couple of weeks of regular posting and promotion. Start reviewing some affiliate companies and some companies that have something to do with your blog. For example, if you are blogging about your wedding plans, then you would want to start searching for companies that offer affiliate programs for wedding supplies, formal attire and even honeymoon or travel sites. You can also check affiliate management companies such as commission junction or shareasale. Remember that when you sign up for these affiliate marketing sites, you are referred to as “publisher” or “affiliate”.

Step 5 – Add the affiliate links to your blog, keep adding to it and just enjoy adding blog posts to it. Over time, as your site becomes popular and people start to visit it often and making purchases through your affiliate links, you will start earning small residual payments. Keep in mind that some companies pay out monthly, while others less frequent. Most of the affiliate programs have a reporting section where you can track your earnings. The more you get the word out about your blog and the more people use your affiliate links to make their purchases, the more money you can earn.

Please note: In order to be successful as affiliate marketing, you must be able to generate good traffic to your site. You have to write interesting content in order for your readers to keep coming back for more. Lastly, continue learning affiliate marketing and blogging techniques in order to stay current. Most of all, have fun with it and soon you will be earning money with very little effort.