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Five_Ways_to_Kill_Your_Home_Business
| Five Ways to Kill Your Home Business
Copyright 2005 Craig Friesen
I know it is better to be positive than negative. But speaking
from experience sometimes you can do things that are bad for
your home business without realizing it. You might even think
you are doing the right thing when in fact you are hurting your
online business. So here are some "top 5" ways you can throw
your work-from-home opportunity down the drain (and how to avoid
doing so):
1) Have no plan, vision or goals. Sure, you may find success in
your home business by accident. But you are more likely to keep
your online business alive (and have it grow) by setting some
direction. Besides, without a plan and destination how would you
even know if you achieved success? Do some dreaming about what
you would like your home based business to be in 2 years. Then
set some attainable but challenging goals based on your vision.
With your goals in mind, chart a plan for your home business.
2) Do nothing. "If you build it, they will come." Wrong - who
told you that? One of the most frequent mistakes made by
newcomers to online business is the belief that if they can just
build a nice looking website then they will earn money. Of
course some marketing ploys feed on that assumption, luring
Internet marketing rookies to purchase the only website they
will ever need. Just like an offline business, your online
opportunity does not usually sell itself. You need to somehow
bring potential customers or clients to your business website.
This takes hard work, consistency and determination to succeed.
3) Do too much. You can't do too much of the right things. But
please do not mistake activity for progress! I hear this all the
time: "I spend xx hours a week at my computer and not one sale!"
Quality not quantity, people. There are some promotional
activities such as writing home business articles (hey, like I'm
doing here!) and networking politely in business forums that you
can never do too much of. But some marketing tools can be over
used and actually harm your home based business. Examples:
submitting too frequently to some search engines or blasting
customer support with an endless line of similar requests.
4) Join everything. If it is free to join, why not? Affiliate
marketers especially are always on the lookout for the next
great business opportunity. What happens, however, is that
unless the business opportunity somehow compliments your primary
home based business then you are going to end up spreading your
efforts thin. Choose programs to join that provide you with
marketing leverage or which will enhance what you are offering
without providing unwanted competition. The other danger with
free progams is that once you join there may very well be an
"upgrade opportunity" that you will find difficult to pass up.
Be sure that this is what you want before you click on the
payment button...all those free programs upgraded adds up soon!
5) Spend lots of money on advertising. This is a tough one. You
would think that the people who spend the most money get the
most traffic to their websites and therefore earn the most
money. While this may be true, how much are you willing to spend
to have the kind of traffic volume to your business opportunity
that is going to pay off? It is really hard to tell. The best
advice I can give you is to take it slow. Track the results of
every advertising campaign so that you can assess how effective
the method or ad itself is. If you do not track your marketing
then you might just be throwing money down the drain. Spend too
much too fast and you might soon find it difficult to keep your
home based business running. You might even adversely affect
your current lifestyle by piling up bills that you can't pay
because the website advertising you chose is not bringing you a
good return on investment.
There are other things that can help your home business become
successful or kill it. And these may not be the "top 5" for you.
Just listing these made me think of another 5 that have probably
hurt my own home business. Time to make some adjustments!
About the author:
Craig Friesen is a freelance writer and home business
entrepreneur. Find other articles, ideas, resources and
opportunities for home business or subscribe to the free
newsletter.
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