by: Jeff Schuman
So you want to make money working at home! You are not alone. According to a recent search I did the term make money was typed in almost 100,000 times in one month. There are a lot of people wanting to make money working at home.
I was one of them and now can excitedly say I do just that. No more traffic jams, bosses, co-workers, 8-5, Mon-Fri., 2 weeks vacation etc.
Don't get me wrong! A J.O.B. certainly is needed to pay the bills and provide for the lifelong essentials for millions of people.
But it is interesting how many people have figured out that there is more than one way to do that. And making money working at home is one of them.
What proves to be a little harder is finding a job working at home. There are a lot of companies that are willing to sell you information lists that claim to have companies looking at work at home employees or sub-contractors.
My own opinion is that the only one who makes out on this method is the person selling you the information. My advice is Do Not Pay To Buy Information On Companies Looking For Work At Home People.
How about this.....Start Your Own Home Business providing a product or service that there is a need for. Finding a niche in the marketplace is not as hard as it would seem.
The best place to begin is with a topic you have a personal interest in. If you are going to be doing this everyday you might as well like doing it.
In my case I chose 2 topics. The make money at home opportunity seeker and the small business sector. I like working with people and I understand how small businesses operate because I have personally worked with small business owners for the past 20 years.
Next is to choose a product that could fill a need to your market you are going into. Make a list of everything that you can think of. Nothing is to off the wall. I have even heard of a farmer in Kansas who sells colored tumbleweeds all over the world.
One thing I have found helpful is to see what people are searching for on the internet. A really good tool for that is the search term suggestion tool with Overture.
Search Overture
Go ahead and type in words and phrases and see what people are looking for relating to a topic you might be interested in selling a product for.
Next I want to look at what the competition is doing. Doing a search on Google is a very good way to see what websites are out there relating to your topic.
Search Google Do not be afraid of competition, but do expect to work harder if you want to make money working at home in a competitive field.
You don't need a lot of of tools to start making money working at home. In my case I use a laptop with high speed internet access, an email account, a second phone line separate from my personal line, a printer, and efax to receive faxes.
You could get by with just a good internet connection and a decent email provider to start. Don't use a free email account like hotmail or yahoo. Be professional!
I learned how to build simple websites for my products, how to advertise the products both online and offline, and how to use my telephone for follow-up.
This took a while and I have found that joining a good affiliate program can provide you with products, training material, marketing tools, websites and more to help you get your make money at home business off the ground as you are learning.
There is no doubt the biggest obstacle you will encounter is finding prospects, customers, traffic, or whatever you want to call it.
This is the number one reason people fail working from home. You have a great product or service, now how do you tell the world about it!!
My advice is to zero in on a main marketing strategy and then branch off from that. I'll give you an example. When I started my small business website design company I decided that signing up affiliates in various large metro areas and providing them with a pre-written telemarketing script and objections/rebuttals list was the best way to attract customers inexpensively.
Pay them a handsome commission and residual income and support them with an excellent product and back-end service. I branched out into internet marketing and advertising from there. There is always more than one way to skin a cat, but focus on one method before you add another. Do not become a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none when it comes to marketing your business.
I would close this article by saying this. You have to become a sponge and spend some time and money learning how to make money working at home. Subscribe to as many newsletters, publications, etc. as your time allows you to read. BUT....Do Not Get caught up in the trap of learning, but not earning.
Take what you are learning and get in the game. Knowledge without action is a waste. If you will apply what you learn you will reap the rewards of the rapidly growing number of people who are happily making money working from home!
© 2004 Jeff D. Schuman