Starting a Home
Business? Start with what you know.
By Bob Cortez The most frequently asked question I
receive as an Internet home business consultant
usually goes something like this; "I would
really like to start my own home business on the
Internet, but I don't know what." The short
answer is - Start with what you know and enjoy.
There are a number of good
reasons for this
By drawing on existing
knowledge, you can concentrate on building a
business rather than learning about a new trade,
product, or service.
Starting and running a home business means long
hours and sacrifice. It is easier to do when you
are doing something you enjoy.
Selling what you know and enjoy is less difficult
for non-salespeople. Selling what you know and
enjoy is less difficult for non-salespeople.
The Internet offers unique
opportunities for the home business netrepreneur.
It creates the ability to reach a much larger
potential market for your product, service, or
information at a much lower price than through
conventional advertising mediums.
The Internet and World Wide Web
are still in their infancy. Right now, you can
get everything you need to put your business
online - free. It is like someone offering you a
store (web hosting), full time staff (web pages,
auto responders) and advertising (lots of
advertising) for free. All you have to do is come
up with an idea for a product or service to put
in the store.
One of my favorite examples is
my mother's home business. She builds very
creative and unique birdhouses. She uses scrap
lumber from a local sawmill (free) and driftwood
from the local beach (free), to keep her material
costs low. Another local artist provides the
miniature sculptures for a percentage of the
sales. She started by building and selling these
for the local tourist trade in Homer Alaska, and
was doing ok. But when we put them on the
Internet (http://www.ptialaska.net/~cortez/) sales really began to soar. Not
everyone that would be interested in the
birdhouses can afford to visit Homer, and we
certainly couldn't afford to advertise to the
world in any other way. We were able to reach
this larger market by using free web hosting,
design, and promotion services. Once we developed
a flow of traffic, we were able to create
additional income streams by selling other
peoples products as well. (I'll discuss this
further later in this article)
This business model can work
for just about any product that can be shipped.
What unique item can you build using local
materials? Do you have a craft or gift idea that
is unique? How about a kit or plans for something
you have built?
Information is another type of
product. What do you know or know how to do that
would be of interest or value to others? You can
either sell that information as a report, or a
tip booklet. Or you can give the information away
at your store and sell other peoples related
products for a commission. The advantage here is
that once you put your information in the store
it is done. You don't have to keep building it
and shipping it. If your not comfortable with
writing your own material you can use a
ghostwriter (http://www.home-work.net).
Another home business
opportunity that is unique to the Internet is
based on common interests. What do you have a
special interest in that others may share? Music,
books, computers, cars, gardening, collectibles,
etc
? The idea in this business model is to
create a site with information and resources
available online of interest to others. Then you
select products to sell of interest to people
that would be visiting your site. For instance,
if you had an avid interest in a particular type
of music. You could develop a site that was a
resource for others with that same interest. The
site could include links to artists sites,
reviews of the latest releases, concert tour
information, photos, sound clips, interview
excerpts, a chat room, or discussion board. You
become an "associate" of one of the CD
distributors online and receive a commission on
CD's that are sold. The distributor does the
entire order fulfillment. The number and variety
of companies that have an associate program
online is growing daily. They cover all kinds of
products and services from gifts to computers or
web hosting to credit cards.
Start with what you know, apply
some imagination, and open your low cost home
business online. The market is growing everyday -
world wide.
Brought to
you by: World Wide Information Outlet - http://certificate.net/wwio/, your source of
FREEWare Content online.
Bob Cortez has 20 years of sales
and marketing experience. Through Total Quality
Marketing he is providing consulting services to
home based entrepreneurs looking to expand their
business online and take advantage of the
tremendous opportunities available.
|