The Home Business Set-Up Guide

what we need to know about starting and running a home based business.

Legal Structures

The legal structure of your business is very important as it is a function of liabilities and tax deduction. The most common structures are:

§ Sole trader§ Partnership§ Company§ Trust

Sole Trader

When you are a sole trader you are personally responsible and liable for the business and its activities. Commonly you may start out as a sole trader, and as you expand, you will need to seek out partners or investors. Your accountant is the best person to advise you if this is the best structure for your business.

Partnership

This arrangement is where you and your partner are liable for anything related to your business. It is a very good idea to get a solicitor to write up a partnership agreement to avoid disputes down the track.

Company

This is a legal entity liable for the debts it incurs and paying tax on income. Your accountant can help you set a company up, or you can buy one off the shelf, which may be more cost effective.

Trust

Depending on your personal circumstances, and the country you live in, trusts can be useful in business and estate planning. They can be quite complex, and again, your accountant is the best person to speak too.

Registering Your Business Name

You can operate a business under your own name or register a business name. Registration of a business name allows you to operate under that name.

Select a name for your business that describes to your customer what you do. A descriptive name promotes and advertises your business more effectively.

Licences And Permits

Depending on your municipality, you may need licences and permits. Do the right thing and check with your local council. Doing the right things now will save you a lot of unnecessary leg work later.

Insurance

Often overlooked, insurance is an important part of your risk management plan. There are two types of insurance: general insurance for loss/damage of assets and risk insurance which is your personal insurance cover.

Ensure your business insurance is separate to your personal insurance.To establish the type and amount of insurance you need for your home based business, check with an insurance broker.

Managing Risk

You must have a risk management strategy for your business. Your SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analysis from article one, will show what could expose your business to loss and what actions to take to reduce that loss.

Marketing

As a home business entrepreneur, you must understand what your customers want and give it to them. You must strive to have a service or product that meets and excels your customers needs and expectations. This is what makes them come back to buy from you, and this is how you grow your profit. Try and think like your customers and you will find they want:

§ Satisfaction§ Value for money§ Performance§ Reliability§ Presentation

Don’t confuse marketing with selling. In a home based business, marketing is much much more and involves all aspects of the business- pricing, advertising, customer service to sales.

Marketing Mix

Communication with your customers is essential and develops the framework for your marketing strategy. You must tell your customers these important bits of information

§ Product- describe it in full detail, its special features and of course how it will benefit the customer

§ Price – explain your pricing strategy, don’t forget to consider your costs, discounts you will offer, payment policies

§ Promotion – choose the most effective for your type of business. If you don’t know, think about what you would prefer if you were the customer. Eg: telemarketing, flyers, e-mail campaigns

§ Place – what place will your product be so customers can find it and contact you. How will you deliver the product to your customers? You may need to consider getting a website.

Your Business Image

Even though you are running a home based business, make sure your office is comfortable and professional in appearance. Your website also needs to project the same kind of professionalism

Location

Your home based business needs its own dedicated area. Very often the living and working areas muddle into one, not allowing you to distinguish which is for work and for play. Keeping these separate is essential for running a home business. You must ensure that all family members understand this too.A telephone is essential in your home office as it will be the first point of contact with your clients. Installing a second phone line separate from the personal line is essential along with a cell phone, answering machine and a pager. Talk to your telecommunications company, very often they have some great packages suited to small businesses.

Furniture And Equipment

Choose furniture that is comfortable and professional. This helps distinguish this area from the rest of the household.

Your office needs equipment and here are a few to get you kick started:

§ Computer§ Chair(S)§ Desk§ Fax machine§ Filing cabinet§ Mobile phone§ Telephone§ Heating/cooling§ Lighting

I hope this article has set you on the path to create your own home based business and empower you to reach your financial destiny.

The Art of Knowing When To Say When

When running your own business it is important that you develop the wisdom to know when to say when. It's important to realize that there are actually other things in life that you need to pay attention to.

For example, I know this may come as a surprise to some of you, but you are human and sometimes you need to take breaks to do things like eating and sleeping.

Don't forget about that family of yours. They need to see more than the back of your head. After all, didn't you start this business so you could spend more time with them?

Also, don't be afraid to give yourself breaks just to veg out. It's really easy to become a victim of information overload these days. Do some fun things online. There's nothing wrong with taking some time out to just play some games or whatever it was you used to do before you started trying to make some money online.

Oh yeah, don't forget to bathe. :-) I know it sounds silly, but sometimes we need to be reminded of such things. If you have to schedule these types of breaks on your computer to remind yourself, then do just that. Sometimes I amaze myself when I calculate how long I’ve been on the computer at one time.

Get up and stretch. Get outside(unless the smog alert is code orange). Play with your dog. Play with your cat. Read something totally non-business related.

I know it sounds hard, but I know you can do it. You'll be much more productive when you allow yourself to take a break. Okay, break over. Let's get back to work.

What is a Business Opportunity?

People throw the term business opportunity around pretty loosely these days. Before the internet took off, a business opportunity was a franchise like McDonalds or Wendys. Or maybe a vending machine route or insurance sales position in your local area.

Mainly what people considered business opportunities was that you had to be an entrepreneur with investment capital to take advantage of an opportunity. So a business opportunity was something only someone with money to invest could take advantage of. You had to have money to make money.

Nowadays, people by the thousands make money on Ebay and through millions of websites selling everything from wigs, to toys, to cars, houses, and electronics. A business opportunity exists for every man woman and child on the planet who has the drive to learn how the internet works and just how many different ways there are to make money.

Some business opportunities on the net require an investment of thousands of dollars. Others require only that you have a website and hosting for it. $24 a month can set you up with an affiliate business opportunity right now. I even have a free website I give people, loaded with products and customized so that you get commissions for every sale made on your site.

You don’t have to know HTML. You don’t have to know how to get a merchant account. And most of all, to get started, you don’t even have to have your own products. By far the most people making money online are doing it as affiliates who refer people to products, services, and information for commissions.

This is what I do, and I love it! I don’t have to take care of customers, stock products, do any shipping, or anything else that comes with owning your own products. Yet I make great money at it.

Now that’s a business opportunity! Gone are the days when you had to have a lot of money to invest in starting a business. You still can, if you want to. But to me it’s crazy that people spend tens of thousands of dollars on their local business, hiring staff, managing them, keeping stock and inventory, dealing with rude customers. I don’t mess with ANY of that stuff and make more money than most people who DO!

A business opportunity is worthless if it is not taken. Most people just keep their jobs because they don’t trust that they have any other choices. People who take action on a great business opportunity are people who are self-motivated and action-oriented.

You should be able to work long hours in the beginning and you should be willing to do what it takes to learn what business is all about on the web.

If you do, you can become self-employed and even extremely rich. It’s not for everyone, but from now on you know that business opportunities abound on the internet and one is even just a click away from you right this moment!

Create Your Own Home Business

A home business is by far the best way to support yourself if you just cannot stand working for others for less money than you need to survive. It’s also the best way to get out of a good paying job that just takes up too much of your precious short life working for someone else.
Let’s face it, you probably know someone who has a home business. Do they look happy to you? Do they complain as much about work and money as you do? Probably not.

This is not to say that you should quit your job and start a home business. You should start one while you still have your job. Some people complain that this is hard and takes up too much of their free time. In the beginning a home business is not profitable – you have to work at it like anything else.

Some people eventually go back to work blaming some program or home business opportunity that wasted their time and didn’t work. Unfortunately, the odds are actually that they didn’t work hard enough and stick to their dreams. Many people allow themselves to believe that there are no legitimate home businesses. It’s easier to go to work thinking this than to let themselves truly believe that a home business is possible, profitable, or liberating.

But if you truly believe there are no good home businesses, that they are all scams, then what are the thousands of people doing everyday in your hometown driving around during work hours?

You know the ones. The people you see on your day off that are driving around and standing in line in places you frequent on your days off. They can’t ALL be on their days off too! You have wondered, just like I did, what it is these people do. I know you have.

Many of them have their own home business. Many of the people you see at the post office who know the clerks by first name are shipping packages of goods they sold on auction at Ebay or their own websites.

The cars parked in the county clerk’s office in your home town. Some are employees there, but not all of them. Many of the people coming and going from that office in your town (during business hours when everyone should be working, right?) are real estate brokers, or no money down buyers and sellers looking up local property information.

Home business owners are all around you, everyday. The home business industry is quite literally booming and is getting larger exponentially by the month.

The worst thing you could ever do to yourself, that is a life-altering belief system, is let yourself believe it is all a scam or that there is no room for YOUR creativity and YOUR value as a home business owner of any kind!

Take me for instance! I own my own website and I sell information, business tools for home business people who work on the internet, and services of all kinds. I work from home. I am one of those people you see during the week driving around town while you wonder what it is I do for a living. Nice to meet you!

Home Based Business Opportunities Abound On The Internet

Looking for a home business opportunity on the internet these days is a pretty involved process. That is, if you don’t know how to eliminate 90% of the junk that’s out there and pick among the home business opportunities that actually have merit and track records.
What works?

Information sales, auctions, hard goods that can be shipped, books, reports, network marketing, you name it!

There are just certain types of home business opportunities that you want to stay away from. Those are things where someone you don’t know from Adam is making guarantees that are way too good to be true. Anyone who makes it sound like money is dripping from the internet for you to simply catch in a bucket is a liar and a thief.

You will never have success with home business opportunities that promise you that you will never have to work, or make things sound too easy. Take it from a professional, working online or offline with a home business opportunity is work.

But home business opportunities have perks that are better than any job you could ever imagine.

You work for yourself and answer to no one but your customers You can make as much or as little as you want You can work as much or as little as you want You can take time off whenever you want You can make your schedule totally flexible You can work on the internet and work from anywhere in the world You can save money on clothes you had to buy for jobs You can save money on gas, car maintenance and insurance You can get great tax breaks owning your own business Travel and other expenses can be tax deductible

The list of great things I can think of about a home business goes on and on. Here are some of the things that can be a drain on you with a home business opportunity:

You can’t leave your business at certain critical times of growth Your family will sometimes become a distraction when you are working at home Your bed is in the same place as your work There’s no boss to keep you honest about your hours There’s no boss to keep you on your focus to complete critical tasks No one will do the work for you Customers can be a pain sometimes The money in the beginning can come in sporadically (people who cannot handle any kind of financial stress should definitely keep their jobs until their home business opportunity starts paying the bills regularly).

No pain no gain. No risk, no profit. No investment, no return. A home business opportunity is like any other business. Don’t let anyone tell you differently!

But for those of us that thrive on making our own way in the world, who love that there is no limit to what we can make, and no one but our spouses to tell us what to do, there is nothing under the sun better than a home business!

Start a Home Based Business

What would it be like to start a home based business? Many people wonder this on Sundays as they dread the beginning of the next work week. The only real problem, and what prevents most people from starting a home based business, is belief that it can be done.

Most people are not cut out for a home based business. This is why most people work for someone else. If we all had home based businesses we’d have no one to serve our meals at restaurants or sing to us at concerts!

So be glad that YOU are looking into starting a home based business because if you choose wisely, there is a lot less competition than there is at a local job fair these days!

The internet makes it very, very easy and inexpensive for people to start a home based business these days. There are thousands of legitimate, valid home based business opportunities out there. And, of course, there are a lot of scams to beware of.

The best rule to live by is this: If it sounds too good to be true, it absolutely, definitely, positively IS!

Anyone who tells you that you can get something for nothing is a crook. Someone who says “we do all the work” is lying to you. Anyone who tells you that to start a home based business you need thousands of dollars and it should go to them for the privilege, is yanking your chain.

Working for yourself is actually a lot harder work than working for others. Why? Because once you taste success, and you realize that all you have to do to get more sales and make more money is work a little harder, most people work a little harder!

Why, again? Because when you start a home based business, you control your destiny! You get 100% of the profit from all your hard work and you have no boss and no one to answer to. This is an incredible feeling of freedom and peace to 99% of the people who experience it.

No successful home based business person (and there are quite literally thousands of them on the internet) will tell you what they do is “easy.” But they WILL tell you they love what they do and would never trade it for anything else.

Whether you end up selling information, services, or hard goods, the one thing to keep in mind when starting a home based business is that you must love the subject, product, or service. You are going to be married to the business for awhile when you start out and you definitely don’t want to quit from boredom just before you were about to make some great money!

I have seen this happen many times and it’s a sad thing! If you are the kind of person who can motivate yourself and work hard, then start a home based business today and get out from under the thumb of your employer!

Why Creating Profits are better than Earning Wages

Let me ask you a question.

Of all the friends and family in your life, have you ever known any of them to become rich while earning a wage? Now there's a chance you might be thinking of someone in sales who's making six figures a year. But when it comes to sales, that's a slightly different animal and I'll tell you why in a moment.

Wages, while they can pay for most of your expenses, have one drawback. They are always a fixed amount. Worse yet, the deductions that come off your check keep increasing while your wage stays the same. And if you do happen to ever get a raise, you could fall into a new tax bracket and actually take home less than before. It's happened to a lot of people and isn't very funny.

Profits on the otherhand, offer more than a wage could ever hope to give you. The reason is simple. There's no limit to how much profit you can make. That's why wages can only earn you a living but profits will make you a fortune. It's the reason why people in commissioned sales positions are different - they're not restricted to a fixed wage. There's no limit to how much they can make.

The ways you can create profits for yourself are limitless. You can start part time doing anything you like. It can be training, consulting or tutoring. You could have a landscape business in the summer or shovel snow in the winter. A hobby such as painting, writing, computers or cooking can also earn you profits. It really doesn't matter what it is as long as you enjoy doing it.

How hard is it to make profits? It's easier than you might think. For example, wouldn't you like to learn:

* How a 13 year old is making over $60,000 a year with her own company?

* How a 15 & 18 year old get 10,000 hits a day selling chocolate from their website?

* How an 8 year old launched a furniture business and made enough on profits to buy a substantial stock portfolio and a small cattle herd?

It seems incredible but these are real kids, with real business, making real money that you can verify.

Now think about it. You're an adult. You're a lot smarter than these kids. Yet they're probably all making more money than you even while going to school everyday.

The only difference is that you're earning wages and they're creating Profit.

So if 13 years old kids can make over $60,000 a year in their own business, don't you think you could too?