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How Does Your Customer Find You?

Posted on July 13th, 2009

When promoting your business or product online are you doing it in a way that your potential customers can find you?

The internet is a big place—I mean enormous place!  It has no boundaries–and if you aren’t careful you can definately get lost in the sea of never-ending websites.

Here is a quick list of ways you can make sure your potential customer can find you.

  • Do Your keyword research! This is definately the most important thing to start with.  Think about what kind of terms your potential customer would use to find your product and then research it at  http://www.seobook.com to see if a lot of other people use that term to look for a product like yours.    Then use those keywords in your product descriptions, page titles, sales pages, etc…
  • Link to relevant and complimentary sites that will link back to you in return.  Examples would be if you are selling children’s clothes try to have a link to your site on blogs that talk about children’s fashions.  You can also get listed in relevant directories that are related to what you are selling.
  • Start a Blog talking about topics related to your product.  Continually add helpful and relevant content that your potential customer will be interested in–and have a link back to your main website that is selling your product.
  • Use Web 2.0 sites to find your target customer and build a relationship with them through your posts.  An example of this would be to start using Twitter,  follow others that are interested in your niche or product, provide relevant and helpful information, and build a relationship!

These are just a few of the ways you can help your customers find you.  Don’t forget to put yourself in your customers shoes.  How do you find what you are looking for when you search online? Put yourself and your product in front of your potential customer in as many places as possible.

Filed under: Basic Skills for online businesses, Work at home resources by busmoms - Comments Off

Work at Home Business Costs

Posted on July 2nd, 2009

One of the best things about starting a business from home is that it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to get started.

Depending on which business niche you decide to go into, will of course have an affect on your costs–but working from home definately has its benefits when it comes to saving money.

There are the obvious things like

  • Not having to drive to work because your office is right in your home (saves money on gas)
  • You won’t have to pay rent for an office space or retail space
  • Your business wardrobe will probably be less expensive because you won’t have the added costs of buying professional business suits
  • Your business may be able to help cover some of your household expenses depending on how much space your office uses in your home.  Some examples of this would be your computer and internet expenses might be able to be paid in portion by your business if you are using it for both personal and business use.  As well as your electric and phone.  Check with a business accountant or tax advisor for more information on these issues.

Here are some quick ways to get started making money from home that the costs are either Free or nearly nothing.

  • Selling items on ebay(you are charged once your item sells)
  • Start a Blog, build up traffic to it, promote affiliate products or offer advertising spots(Free to get started)
  • Fill out surveys online and get paid per survey(some places charge a small fee to get started but others are FREE)
  • Start an online store–if you offer products through drop ship this is a very low cost way to get started.  Your basic costs would be buying a domain name, hosting, using a shopping cart, and merchant account…but all are minimum expenses.
  • Sell hand made products on Etsy

There are tons of ways to make money working from home you just need to do your research and decide which one is right for you.  And remember you can always just start out part time and keep your full time job until you feel comfortable with your at home business enough that you feel you can make a full time income on it.

If you want some more great ideas for working from home check out this great resource

http://www.25homebusinessideas.com

Filed under: Work at home resources by busmoms - Comments Off