July 8, 2008 |
The term “telecommuting” has found its way into all areas of work and the community of e-commuters is growing in number.
These days anything and everything is done online and the internet has made the world a smaller place. Today, one can reach anybody in any part of the world by the simple touch of a button. Digital data can be easily transferred from one place to another, from one media to another. A world of information is at one’s fingertips once there is access to the internet. With technology at the fore front and telecommunications improving at this rapid rate, things from grocery shopping to finding jobs is easier through the internet. Working from home has also been easier and has proven to be a viable alternative to working at the office.
There are many advantages in telecommuting. For the employee, it provides the flexibility in both the working hours and in the location of work. It saves them the commuting time and gives them more time for productive work. With no commute, lunch at home and no office attire, expenses are also low.
The employer can save considerable resources in terms of office space, facilities and equipments. With VPN (virtual Private Networks) and hosted solutions being widespread, a telecommuting employee can use PC, network connections and equipments at home. Secure network connections enable a person to work from home while gaining access to data at the office networks. This reduces the cost of maintaining office equipments and providing dedicated access to employees. Also in many cases, employees who work from home are able to work effectively for more hours. Continuous working hours at the office can be replaced by working at home between breaks and hence can be more productive.
Telecommuting can be beneficial to the environment also. With global warming and pollution being a worldwide problem, commute to work can add significantly to environmental problems. Many organizations now encourage car-pooling. Working at home is better than car-pooling!
Technology has made communication smooth and easy. An office environment can be simulated even if an employee is working from home. Phone calls, chats, teleconferencing and emails are used even for communicating while in office. All these can be used as efficiently to communicate with a telecommuting employee. And yet there are certain issues and drawbacks to telecommuting that makes an employer prefer in-office work.
One of them is security risks that can be greatly reduced if the employers choose appropriate measures when engaging employees off-site. Use of a secure gateway or a firewall between the company’s network and the outside network restricts the flow of data to and from the company. Proper authentication measures for employee access from home and use of data encryption can significantly reduce intrusion and illegal data access.
Providing PCs designed specifically for a telecommuting employee may prove useful. The PCs can have inbuilt security features along with access control. Since PCs at home are at a risk of being accessed by other family members or visitors, fingerprinting can be used to operate the PC. In addition to these, IP filtering can be used to restrict access only to systems pre-approved by the corporation.
One drawback, however, may be related to the lack of face-to-face interaction with colleagues and team members. Certain types of job are suitable for independent work while other types of job require constant and frequent interaction with fellow workers. In the field of Information Technology, work that can be done effectively on an independent level can be isolated for telecommuting employees. Projects may require personal interaction and discussions during the design phase. During the phase of design, architecture and conceptualization, work can be done inside the office rooms. Projects in the development phase can be offered to telecommuting employees. Work that depends greatly on the creativity of a person can very well be done at home. Some work requires team effort and is effective with face-to-face interactions. Integration of modules built separately by individuals in a team may become tricky without proper discussions to fully understand the dependencies. Such work may again prove effective when the team operates in the same environment with regular interactions.
Once the type of work that can be offered to telecommuters is identified and appropriate measures to ensure security are taken, telecommuting can be used to benefit the employee, employer and the environment.
Written by Mahe Krishnan of www.easystorehosting.com
Posted in Telecommuting
June 17, 2008 |
A lot of what goes on today, as internet marketing is outdated. Everyday more and more inexperienced newbie’s to internet marketing fall victim to his or her own lack of knowledge. The key to having a successful internet marketing campaign is to understand it. Marketing online can be summed up in one word “traffic”. Traffic is to your internet business what oxygen is to water, without it you have nothing but gas.
Without overwhelming you with a lot of useless and confusing details. I am going to tell you how to drive large amounts of traffic to your website for free. Your product or service doesn’t matter. What matters is your technique. So let me start by saying this, if you want to have 100,000 people visit your website this month, this week or today, then really all you have to do is buy a service that delivers 100,000 guaranteed visitors. Please understand that visitors are just that visitors. Visitors do not mean sales, sales means sales
You will hear a lot on the internet about keyword marketing, link trading, banner exchanging and even getting on google in 24 hours. Understand that the internet is an income generator. For every failed attempt you make at achieving your high income potential someone will make money and lots of it. So if you are serious about making real money on the internet then you are going to have to take my diet test. Don’t worry it is really simple.
You ever meet someone overweight trying to loose weight quickly. Some actually succeed at this though the masses do not. However what generally happens is that just as fast as they lost the weight they gain it back on and with some extra. Then you have the person that takes their time while creating a daily routine. Overtime they gradually loose the weight changing their metabolism and then viola the pounds are gone and they stay off. Well, that is how it is with the internet. Fast is not a formula for longevity. Fast is just fast and if it doesn’t work you will be out looking for something else after wasting your money and time.
You will read about people on the internet that claim to have made all of this money in 24 hours or in their first week of marketing. This is all said after they told you that, “if they can do it anyone can” or they say that “they are just like you.” So what’s the difference? The Truth! I am not writing this to call anyone a liar. Some of those stories are true. Infact, I have stories like that of my own to tell. But what you never hear is how people have failed their way to the top. From your own experience you now know that everything about the internet is not for everyone. At least not right away. A learning curve must take place first.
Marketing on the internet is like learning a new language, you are not going to build a website and then suddenly you become a millionaire. It takes work, educating yourself and patience. The good thing is that the results are achievable but you have to know the rules.
First decide what do you want. Do you want traffic or sales? For the sake of argument I am going to assume that you want sales over traffic. Congratulations that is the first step. Making the right decision will drive you to your pot of gold. Now lets analyze this further. Where do sales come from machines or people? Duh, people. So then whatever you do make sure that your marketing approach is geared towards people and not internet spiders or bots. Realize that everybody in the world is not interested in your product. So would you market rock-climbing shoes to a ballerina? See my point. The key to your success is targeted marketing. I am going to list 2 techniques that will drive traffic to your website effectively from humans and make you money.
Now to make these techniques work you must already have a website.
Step 1: Utilize free classified ads. Hey this takes work but you have to do it. The two best free classified ads are craigslist dot com and backpage dot com. Place your ad in the appropriate category in the specific city and state of your choosing. The great thing about advertising on free classifieds is that it creates a direct link to your website on the major search engines. In making this approach as effective for you as possible you can go to alexa dot com put in the name of the website that you are advertising on to find out which location receives the most traffic.
Step 2: Introduce yourself to the world either by voice or video. Link to your web page a video from youtube dot com or any other social marketing video site. This is such a huge combination. Let the world know that they are buying from a real person and not a machine. Internet marketers like automation but your customers still want customer service.
Now once you have these two services in place you should be on your way to making the internet work for you. Now just to let you know how aggressive the internet can be pay attention to this following suggestion. What every website needs is a capture page I have an example of that on my website. Many people will visit your site but everyone will not buy right away. So you have to play a little give and take.
On your capture page where your video is playing with you describing the basics of your service (no heavy details) or product you have a form for them to fill out where they can get more information. Once they fill out the form your auto-responder will send them the link to either your corporate website of the one you put together. This approach is hands down not an option it is a must do. You need to be in regular contact with real people not machines or bots on the net.
You can setup your auto-responder to make replies to their request for more information on 1 day intervals or every other day or 1 day then 3 days then once a week or a month. They can always opt out. You do not have to worry about spamming or any illegal activity because this done according to the standard of the law.
Finally, lets talk about keywords and link exchanging and banner exchanging. In the real world if you sold men’s suits your would be considered suit salesman. On the internet you are a marketer. A sale is the result you achieve from your marketing. A marketer’s job is to decide what techniques work to get you the results you are looking for.
When it comes to keywords you need to take some time and think about the words you would use to find your website and the words your potential clients would use. Using meta tags in the keyword section of your html website create 24 to 56 of your best phrases or words followed by a single comma. This is how search engines learn of who you are and where you will be placed. Keywords should also be used often in the text description or in the body of your website. Don’t over do it but repetition is good.
What will emphasize the success of your keywords are link exchanges. Don’t worry this is pain staking but necessary. Spiders or bots simply search on a scheduled basis websites and all of the links associated with them. If you have a link on your website from a website much more popular than yours the search engine bots will quickly place you on its engine. Having good keywords and web content will keep you there and give you better positioning.
Banner exchanges work like links exchanges. The difference is that they come with an image. This is attractive to your would be clients who will see even more benefits from doing business with you online.
I am sure you will find this information most helpful. If you have any question you can reach me by my information below. Look for my next article on how to get on google, yahoo and msn in 24 hours. I will tell you for free what others would charge you hundreds of dollars for.
Written by Marvin Kane. I have been marketing on the internet for over 20 Years. I will show you what you need to know to build your business. Make thousands as you learn incredible marketing techniques from the ground up. Just go to my website and enroll in our signature program and get the money you need now to make it big on the internet. http://www.moneydrama.com
Posted in Website Promotion
April 6, 2008 |
For many people, starting a home-based business is a great way to avoid the constraints of the workplace. You are no longer answerable to the whims of a boss or supervisor who can go psycho on you at the most unpredictable moments. You are free from the schedule rules that govern the workplace, where you have to come in at a certain time, work for a certain duration, and get no payment for overtime. You are free from workplace dress requirements, and you might as well sit in front of your computer in your underwear and still earn the money that you need.
What does not change, however, is the fact that you need to learn a lot of things in order to succeed in your home-based business. There are many things that you can pick up from home-based business books, and they can tell you a few facts about where to go to make what applications and pay what fees. They can tell you about how to fill out your application forms and how to do accounting for your home-based business. But they will not tell you how to talk to people and how to deal with your customers. The most that Internet articles can do is to update you on the latest news in the home-based business arena, but they will note tell you what ideas you should put to use or what products you should come up with.
You may need to find yourself a business mentor. Such a person can help you get your business together, survive the first few months (or even years!) of struggling to make ends meet and earn your investment back, and keep earning yourself some customers and money through your improving ideas. Such a person can help you talk to customers without talking down to them; and negotiate with investors without sounding like a fumbling amateur. In fact, this business mentor could be your own investor!
What are the characteristics that you should have in a business mentor? There is no rule of thumb when it comes to age differences or gender, and you are free to pick who your business mentor will be. But you need to make sure that this business mentor is someone that can push you to your limits without you going insane: a mentor should challenge you to do your best in all your endeavors, whether you are developing a product or service, trying out your marketing mettle, or doing your accounting. The mentor should challenge you, moreover, to keep doing better every single time.
Should you get a mentor who is a friend or a tyrant? Would you like a grandfather or grandmother figure who will give you advice from his or her rocking chair and gently embrace you while you sleep fitfully? Or would you like a stern mentor who will scold you for under-achieving, have little to no praise if you are over-achieving, and in general act like the drill sergeant to your private at Home Business Army? There is no real rule of thumb again, in this case, and the choice is up to you. You should know how you best operate and what kind of authority works best with you.
Do you need to pay your mentor? Again there are no rules for this, and some mentors will offer their help off the bat without demanding compensation. You may need to talk to your fellow home-based business managers about how they deal with their mentors, if any. If your mentor is open to talking about compensation, then you may discuss remuneration in kind, such as free products and services from you. There are many ways for you to reward your mentor, and sometimes, mentors will simply see your success as their reward.
A home-based business mentor should help you succeed using legitimate means, and should allow you to grow emotionally and financially. This mentor can be your business school teacher, your arts and crafts teacher, your best friend who succeeded at home-based businesses and is ready and willing to offer a hand, or even your former boss. There are many people to whom you can turn for help – and sometimes, you can have more than one mentor as long as you know which advice to pick and which to disregard. With a good home-based business mentor, you will be able to get the money and success that you need.
Written by Cesar Campos - Work at Home Enterprising, Team Supervisor, SEO Advisor and Internet Marketer. For more information please visit:
Work at Home Enterprising
Work at Home Enterprising Business Planning
Posted in Work from Home Business
March 29, 2008 |
There are many blogs, articles, products, training sessions and programs that you will find on the Internet, the moment you search for ‘making money online’. However, most of these do not really give you a good grip of the various ways of making money online along with a practical list of the various sites you can sign up with to take things further.
This article is an attempt to make things easy for you so that you can identify the online money making opportunity that you want to explore and start the process immediately. There are twelve opportunities listed below which you can use to make money online. Each opportunity has a brief description that allows you to identify whether it is something you would like to venture into. The specific references will help you to get started.
- Blogging – You can make money by creating a blog based on a specific nice that you have identified. You can either create your blog on blogspot, delicious, twitter, facebook or stumbleupon or host your blog on your own server. Other than picking a relevant and in-demand niche, you will also need to feed your blog with good quality SEO content, create word of mouth and attract traffic with attention grabbing titles and topics. Some sites like creamaid and payperpost will actually pay you for every entry that you submit. As your blog starts to get traffic, you shall see marketers in related industries flocking to you to place their ads in your blog.
- Affiliate marketing – Affiliate marketing is all about getting traffic to your site and ensuring conversions. You can join networks like clickbank, commission junction, CPA networks, Amazons Affiliate program and linkshare. All you need to do is join in, select the products that you will market and ensure conversions. Every conversion that results from your online marketing efforts will give you a commission (some of which go upto 75% of the value of the product). The new and smaller ones on this block are sharesale and cost per action.
- Online marketing – This concept is similar to that of an affiliate program but when you are an internet marketer, you are actually creating affiliate programs of your own. In most cases, online marketing is more holistic in nature where you employ strategies like SEO, social networking, blogging, ebooks and forums to sell your products.
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Revenue from ads – Making money by attracting ads on your website is one of the easiest ways of making money. All you need to do is to create a website and adopt strategies to attract traffic to it. If you have opted for services like google adsense and yahoo publisher network, you need to include a javascript into your site which will allow adsense or yahoo publisher to feed in relevant and contextual ads. Every time some one on your site clicks on the ad, you get some monies based on the amount the advertiser is paying google or yahoo for the click. The way to increase steady revenue from this option is to choose to create your site based on a competitive niche. This allows you to get higher revenue because competitive keywords have a higher bid amount in google.
- Sell your expertise – If you have expert information about a niche that you feel other people can benefit from, use forums to market the same. You will need to establish yourself as an expert by participating actively, posting comments and answering queries on specific topics. Once you have gained the trust and credibility of the visitors on the forum, you can use your signature to market your link. Your signature can be linked to your site where you may be selling products, training videos, training sessions and programs for a fee. Some forums that you can start by exploring are ether and bitwine. Make sure that you do not spam or else you will lose credibility and maybe even your login with the forum.
- The SEO expert – Given that online marketing has become so important for businesses, everyone needs the service of a SEO strategist. You can therefore sell your SEO services to other online marketers. There are two aspects of SEO – onpage optimization and offpage optimization. Onpage optimization requires you to understand concepts like keywords, metatags, rich content. Offline optimization requires you to target backlinks and press releases.
- Uploading videos – Creating home videos, travel videos or a short film can also earn you money online. You can also use it to generate free promotion for your business. Sites like youtube, metacafe, break and revver allow you to upload as many videos as you want. If your video becomes viral, it will generate promotions for your business in more ways than one. Some sites also help by attaching the video to an ad and paying you every time it is clicked.
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Freelance – Many companies outsource work to professionals as they grow up the value chain in internet marketing. It is not uncommon for people to outsource their content writing, code creation and other such needs. You can become a professional at rentacoder, clicknwork or elance and start making money by bidding and completing projects. You could also pre-write some stories or tips or articles and send them to sites like readers digest or associated content. They pay for the content is it is approved and published.
- Sell your stuff – it actually does not get simpler than this. All you need to do to make money is to sell articles that you do not need online. Sites like Amazon seller, eBay and overstock allow you to post the details of the things that you do not need. A good description and a photograph help. You will find that there are many takers for the things that you bought and never used or gifts that you were given that you had no plans of using ever.
- Free online shops – If you do not want to be limited to random items that you want to sell but want to formally start selling customized or unique items, signing up with free online shops is a good idea. You get to showcase your products on their site and can start selling your homemade or cottage industry items immediately.
- Help people fill job slots – If you visit h3, indeed or SpotAJob, you will realize that there are many job postings that need filling up. If you can provide the right contender of the job and your suggested candidate lands himself with a job, you could earn a large sum of money. This works in a manner similar to employee referrals, except for the fact that you don’t need to be an employee to refer a candidate.
- Review products – Another option that you can exercise if to write reviews for various products and earn money as you do so. It is ethical to state that you are reviewing the product for a fee so that it is evident to the reader that it is promotion content that is being read. However, that does not stop you from making your review persuasive or convincing enough to allure click through and buys. Some of the sites that pay for such reviews are softwarejudge, reviewme and loudlaunch.
Surely, after having gone through the list, you would have realized that some of these opportunities are relatively easier to kick off. However, the easier ones also have a limit to the amount you can. earn. The scope of affiliate marketing is far higher than just blogging or freelancing and opting for an online shop is likely to be far lucrative than getting rid of your junk on eBay. If you are looking to grow, and grow really fast, then you must invest some time to train yourself and invest in some good reading before you embark on your successful journey.
Written by Vishal P. Rao of Work at Home Forum.
Posted in Make Money Online
February 29, 2008 |
Most traditional societies view the home-based business as the realm inhabited by stay-at-home moms and out-of-work dads. In fact, there are still some people who view home-based businesses as just a little bit more sophisticated than the lemonade stand a kid would put up on his front yard during the summer. Thank goodness, this is true no longer. Today, home-based businesses mean serious money and as such, require marketing strategies in order to compete.
Do You Need a Marketing Strategy for Your Home-Based Business?
Most home-based businesses start out as part-time jobs or hobbies that became real moneymakers. However, concluding that the most successful home-based businesses have survived due to pure luck is wrong.
If there is one element that is common in successful home-based businesses, it’s marketing strategy. Without a marketing strategy, a home-based business has nowhere to go. It will also be in danger of collapsing unto itself, unable to sustain its growth. If it does grow, the owner might be unable to manage it well.
Marketing Strategies for a Home-Based Business
There are five important elements that you should consider when creating marketing strategies for your home-based business. These are:
Knowing Your Market
So you have a product to sell. Do you have the market to sell it to? As part of your marketing strategy, determine your target market. This is the group of people you want to buy your product. Don’t just say,’Oh I want to sell to anyone who wants
to buy.’ That’s too vague and lame. Try to do mass marketing and you’ll end up smarting from the huge costs.
Instead, focus on your target market. Your target market is that group of people who will want/need to buy your product or service. Who are these people? What is their age range? Where are they located? How much are they willing to spend? What types of products do they often buy? Are they finicky or will they remain loyal?
How would they react to your product? Can they be counted on for support and feedback? How often do you think they will buy your products from you?
Knowing Your Product
As part of your home-based business marketing strategy, evaluate your product. What does it do? How viable is it to promote and sell? What are your production limitations? Do you need to spend for equipment and labor just to produce? Is it
possible to produce these products in bulk so you can save money or do they need to be crafted painstakingly by hand?
How much profit will you be looking at based on the kind of money it would take to produce your product? Does it have an expiry date? Are there state or local laws you need to comply with just to produce it? Can it be improved upon? What type of
permits, certification or training do you need just to develop a more competitive product?
Do You Have Budget Laid Out?
Another aspect of your marketing strategies that you need to look at when running your home-based business is your budget. Do not make the common mistake of designing and implementing your marketing strategies without first determining how much you can afford to spend without going under.
Marketing costs money and if you’re not careful, you could end up spending more than you should. The type of marketing method you choose should also be put into consideration.
Try to keep marketing and promotions expenses to a low of 10% based on your projected monthly sales. Let’s say you project about $7,000 in sales a month. A realistic figure you can work with for your marketing expenses should be kept at only $700 per month. That should keep your costs down while you enjoy the profits.
Knowing Your Competition
Part of your marketing strategy in your home-based business should be to keep your eye out for the competition. Your competition can easily steal your business from you. Find out everything you can about other businesses similar to your own. Determine what their selling points are and how well they are selling. This will help you design a marketing strategy that will help you compete.
Future Growth
Yes, you need to plan ahead. If you want to bring your home-based business to the next level, you need to incorporate growth and expansion plans in your marketing strategies. Determine what you want to do with your business once demand for your product increases. You might need to introduce new product lines or improve your branding. Make room for growth in your home-based business. Who knows? Yours could be next big thing.
Written by Cesar Campos - Work at Home Enterprising, Team Supervisor, SEO Advisor and Internet Marketer. For more information please visit:
Work at Home Enterprising
Work at Home Enterprising Business Planning
Posted in Marketing
