Your Questions About Business Online Services Group

Jere answers:

You are lucky. I only made $0.85 over a 6 month period of time. Cancel the rest of your advertisting campaigns you already have going and save that $20 for something else you might need like food, gas, etc.

I wrote a blog on advice for working from home. Link can be found in the second paragraph of my profile. I think you will find it worth the read; however, scroll down through the comments and you will find a link to a free ebook called success in 10 steps. Download that ebook if you would like.

I am involved in a free mentoring group. Yes, we ALL do it for free and it is not an affiliate program where you resell and resell information. We offer various trainings on how to advertise for FREE on the internet. I have seen other people advertising the same information for a fee that we share and give away freely.

It is all generic and a ‘no recruit, no product, company or services allowed to be mentioned’ organization of people helping other people to become successful in marketing THEIR own business.

That’s what I offer to you in your situation. It’s there if you want the help, no big deal if you don’t
~good luck
~jennifer

Jere answers:

Create a home office. This is not as difficult as one would think. Every home office’s needs are different, but there are some fundamental staples that all require. You will want to have a clean, noise-free environment that has good lighting and is free from distractions. This will help keep you more focused and productive.

You will need a desk and chair. The size of your desk will depend on what its function is.

You will want a place to store all your information about your customers such as a computer and/or a filing cabinet.

You will also want a phone, fax/scanner/copier, Internet connection, and any other communication tools you might need at hand. Since most home-based businesses focus on services or affiliate products, there will be no need for storage.

If you are planning to sell your own products and ship them yourself, then make sure you have room to store them all. If you plan on doing meetings outside of your home, there will be no need for a conference room either.

If you are going to be seeing clients in your home, and don’t have a conference room, then be sure to keep your place clean and neat at all times. First impressions say a lot.

Create a website.

Keep things simple. You don’t need to have tons of graphics and bright colors plastered all over. The clean, simple design is the best and attracts the most people. Too many things going on throughout a site can be overwhelming to the viewer and drive them away, not get them to stay and come back.

Stay away from playing annoying music of any kind on your site. This a sure fire way to drive away business.

You also want to stay away from things that require time to load. This slows down the viewer’s access to immediate information.

Just because you can put it on a site, it does not mean you have to or should. You want to have value to your site.

Include good content. This will make the viewer linger and become more interested in what you have. There are tons of ways to accomplish this and you will to use and decide what works for you.

Pick a few tools of the trade use them and apply them to your site and monitor the response and traffic. If you notice that some are not producing, remove them and try something else.

You will have to be diligent but remember that simple is better.

You don’t want to implement every tool at once, it can make your viewers feel uncomfortable, so use a few and ditch the rest.

Here are just a few possibilities.
Start an e-mail list. They’re great to allow customers to talk about your products and services. Yahoo! Groups offer this service free. Members can post comments and questions to you or each other and an e-mail is generated to all users. The group can be private, subject to approval, or public.

You will want to see daily traffic and post frequently in the beginning to get things going. Eventually your customers will start talking to each other. These lists are a great tool and keep people active and coming back.

Create some polls for viewers so they can vote on a specific issue related to the site’s content. You want to keep people interactive so they don’t get bored. Writing a poll from scratch can be tricky but they make great templates today that can be of great help. You would fill in the blanks and then copy and paste the code to your site.

Create a weblog or “blog”. This is like an online journal that is frequently updated. You will add some good links into it to advertise your business, of course. It is also a form of communication that allows people to stay updated on what is going on with your business and what they can expect in the future. Today, blogs have taken on a life of their own and are sweeping through cyber land.

Tips:
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Computers, printers, and software are a lot more inexpensive these days. You can also find great plans for telephone and internet service today that are very reasonable. These services will allow you to make long distance phone calls for free. If you shop around wisely, you can find some really good deals on computers and office supplies and furniture.
Computer: you can expect to pay anywhere from $500 to $1000 for a computer that has all the latest features. You will want to make sure that it has at least a Pentium 4 processor speed and 60 GB hard drive. You will also want a 17″ monitor to make your life easier especially if you need to be on the computer often. Make sire that you have 256 MB of memory at least and a CD-ROM read and write drive. This is pretty standard for most computers today, but you will always want to double check.
Multifunctional Machine: you will want to invest in a fax, printer, copier, and scanning machine. Many places sell them for great prices. You are looking at about $100 an up. Make sure that if you do a lot of printing you check out the price of the ink cartridge refills. If they are very expensive you might want to consider paying a bit more for the machine itself to be able to get the more inexpensive refills.
Office Furniture: This can vary tremendously. If you want nice but affordable try office supply stores. They have the packages that are relatively inexpensive and easy to assemble. Get a good chair though. Never skimp on something you will be sitting for hours.
For better penetration, use ads to targeted groups. Take advantage of free online classified ads as well.
Write articles and submit to major article directories, with a link to your website.
Do a lot of linking, link your pages to the major directories and search engines – this will pay off in the medium and long term.
Use autoresponders to generate your own opt-in lists and email campaign.

Warnings:
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Spend more time promoting your page than building it up; a good web page is useless if no one knows about it.
Do not send unsolicited sales email to those who do not ask for it, this is considered spam. Avoid sending email to so-called safelists that send to millions of email accounts.
Do not be stingy on advertisement. Use of all forms of ads is recomended, especially during startup of business.
Do not join too many affiliate programs early on, start slow and concentrate on building each program singly.
Do not be easily scammed, research each program and potential returns first before committing.
Do not burst your advertising budget. Continuous flow of advertising is better than a one off full blown ad campaign.

Good Luck 😉

Jere answers:

Yes, there is online volunteering! There are thousands of organizations that involve online volunteers. These volunteers are:
– translating documents
– researching subjects
– creating web pages
– editing or writing proposals, press releases, newsletter articles, etc.
– developing material for a curriculum
– designing a database
– designing graphics
– providing legal, business, medical, agricultural or any other expertise
– counseling people
– tutoring or mentoring students
– moderating online discussion groups
– creating podcasts
– editing videos
– monitoring the news
– answering questions
– tagging photos and files
– managing blogs, Facebook accounts and other social media sites
– managing other online volunteers

Note that for most of these jobs, you need to already have expertise — you can’t translate text from English into Spanish unless you are fluent in both languages, you can’t design web sites unless you have already done so and have a portfolio to prove your skills, etc.

You can find online volunteering opportunities at VolunteerMatch, http://www.volunteermatch.org (however, note that many opportunities are mislabeled as “virtual” when, in fact, you have to be onsite to do the task) and Idealist, http://www.idealist.org (keyword search: virtual). You can also try the UN’s Online Volunteering servce, http://www.onlinevolunteering.org, though note that most of these opportunities require an area of expertise. You can also try Project Gutenberg, where online volunteers transcribe books with expired copyrights.

Jere answers:

Here are 5 very useful tips before you start to open and run an online business:-

1. Write down your objectives and goals – Include who are your target group / market. Be passionate of what you do. Improvise along the way.

2. List down your supplies of products or services – eg. Manufacturers, wholesalers, drop shipping (delivery matters, lead time)

3. Create an advertising budget – use High-Traffic-Classifieds.blogspot.com, Professional Webmasters Advice is there. Other methods should include Adwords, Social Networking, Videos, Article, Blogs, Forum, etc.

4. Create a website – Starting out any (online) business can be tough and challenging. Need to be cost effective. Therefore, best to Professional Webmasters Recommendations to purchase domain and web hosting eg. CheapestDomainHosting.Org

5. How do you process your orders? – Arrange payment gateway such as
Authorize.Net
PayPal
FirstData
WellsFargo
CyberSource
TransFirst
Merchant-Pay
PayJunction
AcceptPay
PaySimple
Payleap

Jere answers:

A true business credit card is a line of credit that is taken in the name of the business, under the business’ credit. Activity, whether good or bad, is reflected on your business’ credit report through D&B and other financial institutions, and the liability for any debts incurred and bills owed is with the business.However, some companies out there offer “business” credit cards which they require a person guarantee for. These institutions will often ask for a personal guarantee, and will almost always ask for a social security number from the person applying for the card. If this is the case, the credit card is not a business credit card, but is simply a personal credit card which is used for the business. The business is not liable for bills and debts – you are.When applying for a credit card for your business, watch out for areas asking for your SSN (and not your TaxID or EIN) and be wary of any credit card that asks for a personal guarantee. By ensuring that your credit card is in the name of your business, you can help to build your business’ credit, while avoiding creating problems with your own.

Many companies offer a list of credit cards that are issued under the business name only. Those lists typically run $300-$900, depending on the quality of the information inquiring. I would suggest starting your search online via google or yahoo. Search for “strong business credit” (just like that in quotes) to find services that sell the information.

Good luck,

Ilya Bodner

Small Business

Owner Initial Underwriting Group