Bob's Home Business Blog

If you’re thinking about starting your own online home based business or if you’ve just taken the plunge there are a few things you shouldn’t believe when you hear them.

These are falsehoods, fallacies or just plain lies and if you believe these statements they could lead you down the wrong path with your Internet enterprise and to eventual failure.

Here are the top 4 misunderstandings or misconceptions newbie’s are under when entering the Internet marketing arena:

1. You have to be a technical wizard when it comes to HTML and building your own website. This, of course, couldn’t be farther from the truth because there are so many free services available on the Web that will take you by the hand and show you step-by-step how to get your website built and how to launch it on the Internet.

2. The second misunderstanding most people have is that it’s expensive to start your own home based business online. This is probably the biggest misconception I’ve encountered from new Internet entrepreneurs because this just isn’t true.

All you really need starting out is a domain name and a web host to begin an affiliate marketing career. If you want to begin building your list, which is highly recommended, you’ll also need an auto responder service.

So there you have it as far as start-up costs are concerned, for all 3 services, your total expenditure should be approximately $40.00, and only $20.00 if you don’t start building your list.

3. The third fallacy making the rounds online is that the more traffic you have visiting your website the more money you will make.

This is true to a certain extent in the sense that if it’s targeted visitors you’re attracting then this could translate into more money for your home business. Unfortunately, some new Internet marketers just drive traffic to their website without concentrating on why they’re visiting.

They have to be there because they’re interested in your products or you’ll never make a living on the Web. In other words they must be targeted by you in your marketing efforts to make sure they’re there for the right reasons.

4. The final lie that some people believe is that it’s easy to make lots of money online. Unfortunately, some experienced Internet marketers perpetuate this lie in order to sell their products to unsuspecting newbie’s who believe everything they hear if it means they’re going to make a fortune overnight.

Just like any other business offline it takes hard work, determination and dedication to be successful with your home business on the Internet.

If you hear someone telling you any one of these 4 falsehoods just ignore it and remember to work hard and have a plan to follow with your goals in mind every step of the way and you’ll be fine.

Bob Withers

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These days, with the economy and the unemployment situation the way it is, people are always looking for ways to make some fast cash to pay a few bills or just to put in the bank. Here are 4 ways you can make some fast cash from home online:

1. Gigs seem to be all the rage on the Web these days whether it’s on the fiverr website or some of the other paid to do task sites online. These websites act as intermediaries where people offering a service for sale advertise their wares while others who need a job completed search for their match.

This is a great way to make some fast cash if you have a particular talent you’re willing to provide for a price. This can be anything, within reason, ranging from writing articles to doing voice-overs to creating videos for people, so you’re sure to find a talent you can offer for sale.

2. Internet marketers are always looking for people to update their blogs for them on a regular basis either by posting articles or by simply adding comments to their websites. You can find these home business opportunities simply by conducting a search in Google or by visiting the warrior forum website.

3. There are lots of incentive opportunities available on the web where companies pay you for filling out a survey, for signing up for a free trial or for browsing through their website and clicking on product offers.

These businesses need traffic and higher page ranking on the Web and these are a few of the tactics they employ to achieve their goals. For these reasons they aren’t afraid to pay for it.

4. Flipping blogs is a tried and true strategy for generating some fast cash from home and it doesn’t have to take as long as you may think. Websites are in big demand these days from people who are just starting out online and have no idea how to create their own.

It’s very easy for anyone with a little experience to create a WordPress blog with all the plug-ins and themes available for free, then write a few articles on a given niche topic and offer it for sale on one of the better known sales websites on the Web such as Flippa.

So as you can see there’s no excuse for your online home business not to be making any money because there are so many fast cash opportunities available on the Internet these days.

Bob Withers

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Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder so is website value in the eye of the beholder for most Internet marketers. If you want to add value to your home business website for future flipping opportunities or to attract the major  search engines attention so you can increase your sales and profits you must keep your future prospects needs in mind if your going to sell it for maximum profits when the time comes.

There are basically 3 major elements every serious Internet marketer looks for in a top quality website if they’re looking for one to buy to add to their Internet Empire:

1. First of all, everything begins and ends with Internet traffic because without it you don’t have an online business to begin with or the accompanying sales and profits. So, the first two things an interested buyer will ask is what are your monthly web page traffic figures and are these people targeted prospects.

Of course, you need people dropping by who are interested in your products and or services or you may just as well have no traffic at all. Therefore, you have to develop your traffic sources immediately if you’re planning on attracting top dollar for your home business website in the future.

2. The next question your prospective owners will ask is how much money does your home page make every month? In other words is your site monetized and if so how do you bring in this income on a regular basis?

Of course there are many ways you can make money from your web page including, but not limited to, ad sense ads, affiliate products and selling your own merchandise. But, however you chose to do it, in order to maximize your flipping profits you have to monetize your web page.

3. Next the potential buyer will want to examine the content you have on your website because as we all know content is king. For this reason the more quality, original information you have on your home page the more attractive it will make it to your prospects and the more profit you will make from a sale.

So try to add as much of your own content as possible which will enhance your traffic statistics as well as your website ranking within Google and company for related searches; this will also add to your bottom line come flipping time.

If you decide to make flipping websites a major income stream for your online home based business be sure to keep these three value added assets in mind when you’re creating your web page so you can maximize your profits when you finally sell your product.

Bob Withers

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Flipping domains is a quick and easy way to generate an income online from home. This is also a cheap way to get started because all you need is $10.00 to buy an Internet address and post it for sale on one of the many directories on the Web and wait for the offers to come in.

However, if you have a few more dollars to spare you may want to consider flipping aged domains because sometimes you can get up to four times what you paid for it from a sale. Aged domains are addresses that have been previously used online but were allowed to expire by their owners and are now available on the open market.

These domains are a little pricier because some of them already have existing traffic flowing to them and they may also have a reasonable page rank on the Web. If you decide to take this route here are 5 important things you should consider before buying an aged address:

1. As with most domain names the length is very important and it should consist of no more than two words. Any longer than this and your prospects have a difficult time remembering it and it lends itself to mistakes when being typed into the browser window.

There are exceptions to this rule but only if you are lucky enough to find a three word address that is keyword rich and easy to remember.

2. Speaking of keywords you should check the domain to see if it contains keywords relevant to Google searches. If it does this would make it much easier for your website to get ranked.

3. Always check an aged domain to find out if it still has existing traffic coming to it. If it does, this will substantially increase its value on the open market thereby making it a more attractive purchase for your prospects.

4. When you’re looking at the available aged domains list for sale try to imagine what the name could be used for by the buyer. For example, is it a brand able name or would it be better suited for a blog or a personal website?

If you can find a name that’s suitable for one or more of these types of websites it would make it easier for you to promote by suggesting these ideas in your sales copy.

5. Finally, before purchasing an aged domain always investigate to make sure you won’t be in violation of any trademark claims of existing companies by doing so. This is a headache no one needs especially if they decide to take legal action against you and your business.

You can create a nice income for your online home based business by flipping aged domains as long as you keep these 5 considerations in mind before buying.

Bob Withers

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Productivity can be measured and defined in many different ways depending on your point of view. As an online home business owner you may characterize it as how much you accomplish on any given work day.

For example, do you get everything done you have on your to do list for that particular day? Or, are you having a problem accomplishing your daily goals and meeting your deadlines? Do you feel as though you aren’t getting as much done as you once did during a typical work day?

If this is the case you may need to re-examine your level of motivation and your work habits. Often times a drop off in productivity is directly related to a procrastination and a motivation problem. If you find yourself putting things off more frequently than you ever did for no legitimate reason you may have a procrastination issue.

Obviously you need to increase your productivity if you aren’t happy with your daily accomplishments and you may be able to get more done by eliminating your habit of procrastinating and by finding ways to motivate yourself on a daily basis to accomplish more for your home business.

Sometimes this is easier said than done however, if you are successful in ridding yourself of your procrastination I find it then becomes easier to motivate yourself every day because you aren’t continually trying to catch up with work that should have been finished last week or the week before.

I’ve found creating a daily to-do list to be very effective because as you complete each chore you can cross it off your list which gives you a sense of accomplishment while motivating you to continue on to your next task.

You should write your list for the following day at the end of each work day and when you do make sure you create a realistic set of daily goals by not giving yourself too much to do. You should also give yourself a set length of time to complete each job so you don’t spend too much of your day on one assignment.

One motivational technique I find helpful when trying to boost my productivity is to re-examine my long term goals by sitting down and re-writing what I want to accomplish over the long term.

This helps to remind you why you’re doing this in the first place and seems to get the juices flowing again so you can get the job done and you can look forward to the future again with anticipation of what it will be like when you do reach your long term goals.

A decrease in productivity is often related to motivational and procrastination issues and by addressing these underlying symptoms you’ll see a steady rise in your daily output for your online home business.

Bob Withers

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Mobile marketing is all the rage on the Web these days as cell phone usage continues to soar worldwide. According to mobile local ads website:

“4,239,956 people are having a cell phone conversation at any given second in the world. 15% of Americans have interrupted sex to answer a cell phone call. 32% of men and 23% of women say they can’t live without their cell phone.”

This mobile phone phenomenon has created a tremendous marketing opportunity for Internet marketers and online home business owners everywhere. Some are predicting that mobile marketing will some day claim number one spot over email marketing as an advertising medium.

Mobile marketing is any type of advertising or product promotion that utilizes cell phones. This media is not only limited to text messaging, as some people believe, but you can also use voice messages, apps and mobile websites to get your point across.

This relatively new Internet marketing frontier provides several advantages to Internet entrepreneurs who are willing to get involved.

1. First of all, this advertising channel is very easy to set up and to implement. All you really need is a list of prospects and access to an online mobile service willing to send your messages. If you can compose an email advertisement and send an email you can create a cell phone marketing campaign.

2. Another reason to take advantage of this new opportunity is people on average check their text messages and their voice mail more often than their email messages. This means it’s easier to get your message to your prospective customers.

3. Timing is everything in the world of Internet marketing and with text messaging you can reach your target immediately. People check their texts as they arrive while an email message may be sitting in someone’s inbox for days or may even get lost entirely in a spam folder.

4. Believe it or not there are still people who don’t have an email address while 91% of Americans own a mobile device. This also increases the chance of your home business message getting to your intended recipient.

5. Currently this market is virtually untapped because, as with most things, people are reluctant to experiment with something new. This means, once again, that timing is everything and this couldn’t a better moment to get involved before the market becomes too competitive.

Mobile marketing is the new kid on the Internet marketing block and if you’re serious about creating another revenue stream for your online home business you should give this opportunity serious consideration.

Bob Withers

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When you’re just starting out online with your home based business there are few things you should keep in mind about generating traffic so you don’t become too discouraged too early in the process.

1. You must understand going into the traffic generation process that you aren’t going to get a torrent of visitors early on. People will begin to trickle into your website in the beginning and as you work to get more prospects to your web page the numbers will start to increase. There are several techniques you can use when this happens including social book marking and link exchanges to get more of a flow to your home page.

2. Another fact you should keep in mind is that, depending on which market you’re selling to, some niches have high traffic numbers while others only attract small amounts. So sometimes it depends on your location as it does with offline businesses.

3. If you want to increase your number of visitors immediately you can try buying traffic. Google ad words will produce this effect however it can be expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing so it may be better to stay away from this technique until you’re more experienced. Other cheaper tactics include banner ads, guest blogging and writing articles and distributing them to the various directories online.

4. If you decide to use free traffic generation techniques such as social book marking and networking it will take a lot longer, sometimes months, to see the results and these methods require a lot more work than the paid tactics.

5. When you’re website traffic numbers begin to soar you shouldn’t decide it’s now time to take a break. In other words, don’t let complacency set in or before you know it you’ll be back to where you started with having too few visitors.

You should always keep an eye on your conversion rate and if you notice it’s beginning to fall you should take a look at new ways to revitalize interest in your website and your products.

6. To make sure you’re getting the traffic you deserve and that you’re working so hard to get have a good website host in place. Some of the cheaper operations sometimes have break downs because they can’t handle the number of people passing through their server.

This means lost prospects and possible sales for your business with your visitors being redirected to error pages. This also hurts your overall reputation on the Web as word of mouth spreads about your unreliability.

Attracting traffic to your home business website takes time and effort, however its importance should never be underestimated because without it your Internet enterprise and your Internet marketing career are finished.

Bob Withers

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Contrary to what some Internet marketers want you to believe making money online is not easy. It takes hard work and dedication and it doesn’t happen overnight as some people will tell you on their sales page. There’s no magic bullet, no code you have to crack and no push button software available that’s going to make you a fortune while you sleep.

Internet marketing and creating your own successful home based business online takes a lot of long hours of sometimes tedious work which isn’t rewarded in a day or two. Sometimes it takes months or even longer depending on how much time you have to devote to your Internet enterprise before you begin to reap the fruits of your labor.

So having said all of this, you may ask yourself what’s the fastest way to make an honest living on the Internet? The answer to this question is actually quite simple however; putting the response into action isn’t quite as easy.

From my experience and from what I’ve heard from more experienced Internet marketers on the Web the quickest way to achieve monetary success online is to create your own product and then form joint venture agreements with other business people on the Internet.

We’ve all heard the old Internet marketing adage which says: “The money is in the list.” The reason we hear this so often and the reason why we’ve heard this for so long is because it’s true. However, we can add a twist to this statement by adding a subsection which says: “The money is also in other people’s lists.”

This is where joint venture arrangements enter the picture because after you’ve created your e-book or your report or your software program you should approach other home business owners and Internet marketers with a proposal to form a partnership whereby they promote your product to their list in exchange for you advertising their merchandise to your email directory.

This agreement should at least double your number of prospects automatically if their list is the same size as yours and it will also add new names to your list from your partners’ so you immediately add to your compilation of potential customers as well.

Information and information related products have never been in as much demand as they are today and people are willing to pay for what they want. So the answer seems obvious if you’re wondering: what’s the fastest way to make big profits on the Web?

As you can see, creating your own merchandise has tremendous benefits for you and your home business so the sooner you produce your own information product online the sooner you’ll reap the rewards from it and achieve your monetary goals on the Internet.

Bob Withers

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Blogs and blogging have become a phenomenon on the World Wide Web and are an integral component for achieving success with your online home based business. Your blog acts as a stepping stone to your Internet marketing product offers or, if you’re building a list, to your squeeze page by attracting targeted visitors to your website content and redirecting them to your sales page or to your email list.

Of course in order to fulfill its role your blog needs to attract the number of prospects necessary to make sales and earn money for your Internet enterprise. Driving targeted traffic is one of the biggest challenges in the world of Internet marketing and here are 5 ways you can explode your numbers by drawing massive numbers of interested visitors to your blog:

1. Always create content with your target market in mind. To ensure your website visitors are also hot prospects you have to give them what they want so they’ll land on your web page to take advantage if what you’re providing. Like they say in the movie “The Field of Dreams”: “If you build it they will come” or in your case, relating it to your blog, if you create it they will come.

2. The old internet marketing adage which says: “Content is king” is just as true today as it always has been in the past. By creating targeted information which solves your prospects problems or answers their questions you will attract a flood of interested people to your web page on a regular basis.

3. By updating your blog with original information on a regular basis you’ll satisfy Google and company’s thirst for fresh content and they’ll reward you with targeted visitors by ranking you highly in the search results for your blog’s keywords.

4. Try to create evergreen content in order to keep your blog fresh and timeless so people will still be interested 10 years or even 30 years from now. If your information remains relevant by with standing the test of time you’ll save yourself the time and energy necessary to update it every 6 months to keep your visitors satisfied so they’ll keep coming back for more.

5. Make sure you optimize your website for the major search engines online. The best way to begin is by choosing a keyword rich domain name to help you rank highly for searches related to these phrases. Also, sprinkle your keywords throughout your posts to attract Google’s attention so they’ll send you the targeted visitors you need.

By keeping these 5 strategies in mind when you’re creating your home business blog and whenever you’re creating new content you’ll achieve long term success on the Web by attracting the interested people you need on a regular basis to make money online.

Bob Withers

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You’ve probably seen websites where you’re asked to leave your name and email address to subscribe to their weekly or bi-weekly newsletter and perhaps because of this you’ve thought about creating your own online home business periodical.

Unfortunately many of us talk ourselves out of the idea for different reasons when we really should be planning how we’re going to do it. There are many more positive reasons why we should do it than negative reasons why we shouldn’t attempt to publish our own newsletter.

First to dispel some of the myths about why we shouldn’t or why we can’t do it. You don’t have to be a literary genius to write a weekly newsletter. As long as you have a topic or theme that you’re knowledgeable about you should be able to write a column about it once every two weeks.

If you’re providing quality content that your readers need and want to learn more about you’ll succeed with your new found writing career. Even if a weekly or bi-weekly publication sounds too daunting for you a monthly newsletter would also be acceptable.

By providing actionable information in a concise format which is grammatically correct and spell checked your readers will look forward to your next editorial and will be asking for more. You should also, occasionally, include your affiliate product offers so you can make some sales and increase your income.

There are several advantages to having your own publication including the fact that people will begin to see you as an expert in your field because of the quality information you write for them and provide to them on a regular basis.

This will also help a great deal with your relationship building process because when your prospects begin to feel that they know you and respect your opinion they will be more inclined to do business with you and your Internet enterprise.

By providing excellent content regularly you’ll improve your return traffic numbers because people will start coming back looking for more. When your potential clients and your current customers are happy with your website and your content they are usually anxious to let others know about it, so word of mouth advertising is another positive by product of having your own online home business newsletter.

Also by giving your visitors a valuable tool free of charge you can build a targeted, responsive email list of prospects by asking for their contact information in return for your free bi-weekly or monthly editorials.

These are just some of the benefits of creating your own newsletter for your prospects and customers and you’ll soon see the results in terms of increased sales and profits for your online home business.

Bob Withers

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