by: Adrian Austin
People with work at home jobs should use the Internet to maximize their businesses. The first necessary Internet tool is a website. You can market and sell just about any product or service via a website.
How do you get a website? There are sites that provide website hosting services. They may be free or not. With a free host, you usually have to let them place advertisements on your site; you don't have any say in the advertising content. So if you opt to go with a free host, see what kind of advertisements they post. With a host you pay for, you determine the ads and other site content. Also, you can get more bandwidth or room to put content on your site.
With work at home jobs, a domain name( for example http://www.yourbusinessname.com) is important. A free host may put their name in the domain name which would look unprofessional. You can purchase your own domain name at certain sites to use with free and paid hosts.
Once you have a website and a domain name for work at home jobs, you have to determine how to build the website. You can build it on your own, or you can pay someone to design it for you. If you do it yourself, you can use templates and programs such as DreamWeaver to build your website.
Many of these can be downloaded for free off the Internet. You can read books and website content to guide you in website design. The basic knowledge you need is html, the language used on websites. You don't have to know what an experienced website designer would, but the more you know the better. If you want someone to design the site for you, you can find designers at various prices on the Internet.
If you're going to have work at home jobs on the Internet, you need an email address, preferably a professional looking one with no cute names such as koolkat@email.com. Also, it looks better if the address is not part of a free service such as yahoo.com or hotmail.com. Use your internet service provider's email account or an account provided through the website host(if there is one).
Less important but helpful items in work at home jobs are auto-responders and ebooks. An auto-responder will send an already written message to someone asking about your services. This helps to manage many requests at one time especially if you work by yourself. This allows the potential customer to get your information immediately, and you can make contact after that.
Ebooks or electronic books about working at home, marketing, and website design can be valuable tools in building your business. The authors are usually people who were in your position one time and can teach you from their experiences. Ebooks are sold are on the authors' websites or on websites that relate to the books' subjects. Using what the Internet has to offer can help you to work at home.