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)
or have a tips booklet prepared with assistance in getting it
published (http://www.realvoices.com/booklets).
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. For a partial list of these types of programs,
send any email to start@athome.hypermart.net
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, your only source of
FREEWare Content online.
Copyright
1998 Total Quality Marketing and Bob Cortez. 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. Total Quality Marketing,
P.O. Box 338, Homer Alaska 99603. http://athome.hypermart.net/tqm.htm
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