Home with the Kids Newsletter August 10, 2004

The Editor's Desk - From Beneath the Clutter
Feature Article - Are you ready to start a home business?
What's happening on the discussion boards?
Guest Article - A Day in the Life of an Internet Marketer
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The Editor's Desk - From Beneath the Clutter

Have you seen my latest announcement yet? I'm pregnant! If you've been to the discussion boards or my blog lately, you may have seen that already. If not, why not come and join us now? Things have been picking up lately. My sister (aka Stargazer), who will soon be starting her own website, has come on as moderator and covered for me during my recent vacation. We'd love to see you there.

The pregnancy hasn't been as easy as it was with Ariel. I've had quite a bit of nausea, partially just from the stress of traveling when we were on vacation, I think. It's easing up now, thank goodness. I've had to change my work schedule around to cope, however, since my nausea is at its worst in the evening, which used to be my most productive time. It's been interesting finding ways to get more done at times I used to have for leisure. I can hardly wait to get back on my old schedule.

This week we're looking a lot at home business and what it really takes to succeed. Think about if you're ready to start a home business and see what a day in the life of an internet marketer is really like.

Don't forget, you can contribute your articles or tips anytime for consideration. Just use the contact form.

Feature Article

Are you ready to start a home business?

A home business can sound appealing, but it can be hard to know if you’re ready for it. Will you be able to cope with customers, filling orders and solving problems? What if your business flops?

These are normal concerns, and you should try to have answers for them before you start. Let’s take a closer look at what you need to be prepared for when starting a home business.

Are you self motivated?
If you aren’t motivating yourself, your business won’t take off. Owning a business means no boss (save perhaps the customer), setting your own hours and deadlines and working even when you aren’t seeing any kind of return. If you can’t work under those conditions, you may not be ready. On the other hand, if you think you will thrive under such conditions, you may be ready to get your home business started.
How easily do you learn new things?
It doesn’t matter how much you know about the area you are starting your business in, you will be learning many new things. A new home business can rarely afford to hire a marketing team, for example, so you’re going to have to learn to market yourself. You might decide to save money and design your own website, but how will you make it look professional? You also need to learn what is worth paying someone else to do versus learning to do it yourself. You need to learn how to figure out when your time could be better spent on making your products or marketing your business than on learning new skills.
Are you comfortable promoting yourself?
You will need to talk up your business and your abilities quite a bit to prospective customers, both on the phone and in person, and quite possibly online. You don’t want to exaggerate your skills, but don’t be excessively modest either. You want customers to feel that you are the best person for the job or that your products are of good quality, so know what you are offering and why a customer should want to buy from you.
Can you cope with rejection?
Not just rejection – can you cope with customers who simply cannot be satisfied, who seem to want to make your life difficult… you have probably encountered such people in your life already. Customers will decide to take their business elsewhere, they will decide after hiring you that they don’t like the results, and you need to be prepared for this.
Do you need immediate results?
It can take a couple years to build a profitable business. Few successes happen overnight. If you aren’t ready to cope with financial hard times, long hours promoting your business with little result and only occasional customers, it may not be time for you to start a business. If spending money on your business will bankrupt you, it may not be time for you to start a business just now.
You look forward to not having to dress up for work.
Working from home may not always mean sweats and t-shirts. If you have to meet with customers, you will probably have to dress professionally. Some home business people find it helpful to dress professionally even if they aren’t meeting with anyone that day. How you dress can impact how you work, so casual dressing makes you work less consider dressing up a little.
Have you researched your target market?
If you don’t know who will be interested in your products or services, it will be very hard to market yourself. Try to find a niche market to target, especially at the beginning. This will make it easier to make a name for yourself, limit your marketing costs and make it easier to find clients.
Do you have the support of your family?
If your husband or children resent the time you are spending on your business it will be quite difficult to succeed. Talk over with your family what starting a business will mean in terms of family time, housework and so forth. If you can involve them in your business, do so, provided they are willing. A supportive family makes running a home business much pleasanter, while an unsupportive family can make it all but impossible to succeed.

Running a home business can be profitable, fun and a great lesson for your children, but it can also be stressful. Make sure you have thought out your business carefully before you begin and keep the lines of communication open with your family.

Stephanie Foster is the owner of Home with the Kids, a resource that knows that there's more to staying home with your family than just business. For more home business tips, visit the site at http://www.homewiththekids.com/home-business/.

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What's happening on the forum?

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Guest Article

A Day in the Life of an Internet Marketer

I have been working on the Internet since 1998 and I often get emails from people that think that working online is an 'easy ride' and won't involve them in much work. Don't get me wrong, working online doesn't have to be hard and it is possible to earn a good income for a few hours work each day. If you want the BIG rewards however, you are going to have to put a bit more effort in.....

To illustrate the above point, take a moment to read the account of a typical day in my office......

7.30am Get up and turn on the computer. Grab a cup of tea while it downloads my emails. A web business is never closed, so even though I checked my emails last night at 11pm, there are still over 30 new ones - mostly from US customers (I am in the UK so the time difference means that whilst I am sleeping the US is wide awake).
Spend the next hour replying to emails and deleting spam.

8.30am With the emails done, I make a start on the real work of the day - developing. I currently have 3 new websites in the development stage, but today I am working on my UK-Trader's Private Site. This is a membership site and it is almost ready for launch. The content is there, but I am just ironing out some of the 'behind the scenes' software issues. The key to a good website is to have everything running automatically so that customers don't have to wait for their purchases and the site owner doesn't have to deal with every single transaction that takes place.

9.00am I run into a problem with a software script that I purchased yesterday - basically it doesn't work and I need it for the new site. Obviously it comes with support, but I purchased it from an American company which means that due to the time difference, I probably won't be able to get any assistance until later this afternoon. I send an email anyway and hope for the best.....

9.10am Wow, I get a reply back from the software developer - it must be about 2am in the US but he is still working! He agrees to fix the problem and install the script on my website right away - what fantastic service. I leave him to it and go to have some breakfast.

9.30am Ok, more problems, the software guy is telling me that the reason the script doesn't work is because of my web host. I phone them up and they tell me that the problem is with the software - oh great, I am stuck in the middle! Unfortunately, I use one of the largest web hosts in the UK so they don't take too much notice when I tell them that my software chap in the US thinks there is something wrong with their configuration settings!

11.30am Two hours later and I am still going back and forth between the software guy and my host. We don't seem to be any further forward and the last telephone conversation with the host involved them telling me that they don't offer support for third party scripts and there was nothing more they could do. I find this somewhat irritating as I am paying them well over $1000 a year for hosting and the software guy is earning a fraction of that and still hasn't been to bed yet!

11.35am The web host phones back with a solution, I pass it on to the software guy. His opinion - it looks good and he will get back to me in 5.

11.37am Software guy is back and everything works - yippee! I thank him for his efforts and work out that it is probably around 6.30am in the US and he has been up all night. Now that's what I call customer service. This is one of the reasons that I like to deal with small businesses - they tend to care more about your custom and make a bigger effort to keep you happy.

Happy that the script is now working satisfactorily, I check my emails again - another 25 have arrived since I last looked, so I spend 45 minutes sorting them out.

12.15pm Emails finished and I really want to get the website done so that I can launch it tomorrow. I am going away tomorrow evening and I want to launch it before I go, otherwise it will be delayed for another 5 days and it has already taken a month longer than I anticipated to complete. I make a start on the final testing.

12.30pm I have a brainwave for a new website and get sidetracked into doing a bit of research on the Web to see if anyone else has already set up a similar site.......

12.45pm I can't find anything like my idea on the search engines, so I figure that even if someone has already thought of it, if I can't find it then no one else will be able to. I forget all about the members site that I am supposed to be working on and start designing a home page for my new idea.

2.00pm That's the problem with the Internet - it is too easy to get sidetracked into other things! I have just wasted over an hour playing around with a new site - a new site that I have no time to build. I add the idea to the pile of post-it notes on my desk - must be at least 20 'great ideas for a new site' in the pile - I will get around to them one day.......

2.15pm Right, I am back on the job and the new website is ready to go. I need to draft up an announcement email to send to my subscriber list to tell them about the new site.

3.15pm After typing up a long announcement email, I bore myself reading it and decide it is just too long. I cut it down to a couple of paragraphs and upload it to my mailing list manager for sending tomorrow.

4.00pm I realise that I haven't had anything to eat except for a couple of bits of toast first thing this morning, so I take a break and have a sandwich.

4.30pm Back at my desk (I am sure I got a full hour lunchbreak when I had a job!) Another batch of emails to reply to and a customer having a problem with opening an eBook which needs sorting out. Customer service comes before everything else, so I spend the next 30 minutes trying various things to fix the problem and eventually get things working for the customer.

5.00pm By this time of the day, my eyes are usually getting pretty tired from staring at a computer screen for hours, so I don't normally do anything too 'important'. It is a good time to have a general surf around and see what other people are doing online.

6.00pm Have just remembered that I promised to review an eBook for a colleague and get back to him today with my opinion - I haven't even opened it yet! I hope it isn't too long....

7.00pm Phew, it was only 30 pages, so I read it and send off an email with my comments - for what they are worth :-) Just a few more emails to deal with and then I am turning the computer off for a couple of hours.

7.30pm - 10.00pm Dinner and slump in front of the television time!

10.00pm Quickly check my emails again before going to bed. I don't like to leave anyone waiting for longer than 8 hours without a response - I know how frustrating it can be waiting for a reply.

11.00pm Bed and I am ready for it too!

The above is typical of one of my working days and it was only after logging my activity that I actually realised how many hours I am working each week! Far more than when I had a job that's for sure.

Working online brings it's own stresses - software not working, computers breaking, Internet connections going down etc. By way of example, the day after the above was written, which was the day that the new website was launched, my phone line went down. I had to deal with over 125 emails using a laptop and a cellphone - not ideal!

On the plus side, working online brings it's own rewards - I earn a very good income, I don't have a boss, I can work the hours that I want to and I can take time off when I want - and that's what makes it all worthwhile :-)

*******************************************************

Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more about Richard and his services/products at: http://www.thetraderonline.com

Richard also operates the hugely popular UK and US Trader websites. If you are interested in buying and selling stock either online (eBay etc) or offline then check out http://www.theuktrader.co.uk and http://www.theustrader.com

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