Monday, June 23, 2008

Find Your Target Market

People around the world ready with thousands of e-books, software and many more e-products ready to sale but they are finding it difficult to track the right market. If you are having your e-store ready and if you are thinking of setting up an online business, one of the first things you need to think about is finding a profitable market in which to develop your business. You need to find your target market.

First of all let consider market place. You should look for a market with high profitability. You want to find a product or service for which there is high demand. High demand means good chances of high profitability. You also want to see high competitive activity or supply. Why? Because that means people are making money. It means there is a good chance you can position yourself to make a good profit if you plan your marketing wisely.

As per my research some typical areas of high demand and strong supply are categories such as internet marketing, stock, currency and index trading, health programs, weight loss and even gasoline efficiency for your daily commute. You can determine how these areas are doing by going on Google to find the dominant keywords for a particular product or service. A Google Ad word is a great tool to use for this purpose. For example, look up affiliate marketing or currency trading and see the results you get. With the keywords from your research, you can then do a Google search to see what businesses pop up.

Surfing internet and finding the right websites is key to success. You must check out the top sites both in the organic return down the middle of the page and on the top and right column where the paid sponsorships display the level of interest for paid leads. A presence of paid sponsors indicates that people are paying for ads and making money for the product or service you are researching. It also shows you what the competition is doing and what you need to incorporate in your own planning to get good results.

One of the goldmine on the internet is the affiliate marketing programs .You should spend some time in evaluating the profitability of a product/service is to join Click bank, Pay dotcom, cj.com or any number of resell sites for product and services. With Click bank, for example, pick a market category that fits your prospective product /service. There you will see the leaders in the category. You will also see the level of affiliate sales activity, the commission amounts being paid, information about the product and the contact information of the owner or originator of that product or service. This information will tell you, who is making money and what the business sector profitability is. With this information you can decide to rep a product or service or find something similar to resell or develop yourself.

Once you have made your choice of a profitable market area, you want to find a specific product, preferably a digital product, that you can 'front end' to get started. In this model you want to own resell rights and make your offering of affiliate resale rights at a very low cost, somewhere between $10 and $20. You offer your affiliates a commission of 75-100% for the delivery of leads to your web site.

This affiliate system will help you develop your customer base to which you can cross sell and up sell all sorts of related products/services and that is where you will make your income. These back end products can be cd's, DVD's and all sorts of software needed to carry an online business.

Click bank and other affiliate programs are earning billions of dollar but they are spending lot of money and time for promoting e-business. Part of the process of setting up your online business means you will need to register a domain name and sign up with a web hosting service. We always recommend Hostingmug couz they provide most reliable and economical services. Your Web site will be the place for your presell, sales and order pages. You will also want to sign up with an auto responder service to organize your email responses to your affiliates and customers.

Using this early research and set up process, you will have a chosen a profitable market sector and you will have selected a list of products that you can front end and back end to grow your business. You will be ready to move to the next stage of your business development; working out a marketing plan to capture and grow your customer base and preparing the final stage of launching the actual business.



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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Work-at-Home Schemes

Modern Twist to Old Scams
With the rise of the Internet and e-mail, getting a phony ad or message out to a vast audience is cheap and easy. Even though the old work-at-home scams have taken on a modern twist, the typical profile of victims who are most susceptible to these scams has changed very little. Work-at-home con artists have always preyed most heavily upon senior citizens, the disabled, mothers who want to stay at home with their children, people with low income and few job skills, and people who just want to get rich quick.

Cyberspace is simply the newest arena that scam artists have entered to widen their hunt for more people to dupe. To avoid falling for work-at-home scams, both on- and off-line, look for the following warning signs:

Overstated claims of product effectiveness;
Exaggerated claims of potential earnings, profits, or part-time earnings;
Claims of "inside" information;
Requirements of money for instructions or products before telling you how the plan works;
Claims of "no experience necessary."
Warning List
Beware of falling prey to tempting work-at-home promotions that offer "easy money." You could be at risk for some very bad consequences. You can:

LOSE MONEY! Consumers have lost amounts ranging from $10 to $70,000, or more.
WASTE VALUABLE TIME! You may throw away countless hours on worthless projects that cost you a lot of money to attempt and complete, but, in the end, give you nothing in return.
RUIN YOUR REPUTATION! You can involuntarily sell your customers terrible quality merchandise or nonexistent products and services.
BE A TARGET OF LEGAL ACTION! You can be held liable for perpetrating a fraud by deliberately or even unintentionally promoting and selling fraudulent products or services to others.
Most Common Scams
To protect yourself, learn to recognize the most common work-at-home scams.

ASSEMBLY WORK AT-HOME: Typical Ad -- "Assembly work at home! Easy money assembling craft items. No experience necessary."

This scheme requires you to invest hundreds of dollars in instructions and materials and many hours of your time to produce items such as baby booties, toy clowns, and plastic signs for a company that has promised to buy them. Once you have purchased the supplies and have done the work, the company often decides not to pay you because your work does not meet certain "standards." You are then left with merchandise that is difficult or impossible to sell.

CHAIN LETTER: Typical Ad -- "Make copies of this letter and send them to people whose names we will provide. All you have to do is send us ten dollars for our mailing list and labels. Look at the chart below and see how you will automatically receive thousands in cash return!!!"

The only people who benefit from chain letters are the mysterious few at the top of the chain who constantly change names, addresses, and post office boxes. They may attempt to intimidate you by threatening bad luck, or try to impress you by describing themselves as successful professionals who know all about non-existent sections of alleged legal codes.

ENVELOPE STUFFING: Typical Ad -- "$350 Weekly Guaran- teed! Work two hours daily at home stuffing envelopes."

When answering such ads, you may not receive the expected envelopes for stuffing, but instead get promotional material asking for cash just for details on money-making plans. The details usually turn out to be instructions on how to go into the business of placing the same kind of ad the advertiser ran in the first place. Pursuing the envelope ad plan may require spending several hundred dollars more for advertising, postage, envelopes, and printing. This system feeds on continuous recruitment of people to offer the same plan. There are several variations on this type of scheme, all of which require the customer to spend money on advertising and materials. According to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, "In practically all businesses, envelope stuffing has become a highly mechanized operation using sophisticated mass mailing techniques and equipment which eliminates any profit potential for an individual doing this type of work-at-home. The Inspection Service knows of no work-at-home promotion that ever produces income as alleged."

MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING: Typical Ad -- "Our products make it possible for people like you to earn more than they ever have in their lives! Soon you can let others earn money for you while you and your family relax and enjoy your affluent lifestyle! No experience necessary."

Multi-level marketing, a direct sales system, is a well-established, legitimate form of business. Many people have successfully sold the products of reputable companies to their neighbors and co-workers. These people are independent distributors who sell popular products and also recruit other distributors to join them. On the other hand, illegitimate pyramid schemes can resemble these legitimate direct sales systems. An obvious difference is that the emphasis is on recruiting others to join the program, not on selling the product. For a time, new recruits who make the investment to buy product samples keep money coming into the system, but very few products are sold. Sooner or later the people on the bottom are stuck with a saturated market, and they cannot make money by selling products or recruiting. When the whole system collapses, only a few people at the top have made money—and those at the bottom have lost their investment.

ONLINE BUSINESS: Typical Ad -- "Turn your Home Computer into a Cash Machine! Get computer diskette FREE! Huge Selection of Jobs! No experience needed! Start earning money in days! Many companies want to expand, but don’t want to pay for office space. You save them money by working in the comfort of your home."

This is typical of advertisements showing up uninvited in your e-mail—an old scheme advertised in a new way. You pay for a useless guide to work-at-home jobs—a mixture of computer-related work such as word processing or data entry and the same old envelope-stuffing and home crafts scams. The computer disk is as worthless as the guidebook. It may only list free government web sites and/or business opportunities which require more money.

PROCESSING MEDICAL INSURANCE CLAIMS: Typical Ad -- "You can earn from $800 to $1000 weekly processing insurance claims on your home computer for health care professionals such as doctors, dentists chiropractors, and podiatrists. Over 80% of providers need your services. Learn how in one day!"

Generally, the promoter of this scheme attracts you by advertising on cable television and, perhaps, by inviting you to a business opportunity trade show at a hotel or convention center. You may be:

Urged to buy software programs and even computers at exorbitant prices; a program selling at a software store for $69 might cost you several thousands of dollars.
Told that your work will be coordinated with insurance companies by a central computer.
Required to pay for expensive training sessions available at a "current special rate" that will be higher in the future, and
Pressured to make a decision immediately.
Most likely, the expensive training sessions are superficial, and the market for your services is very small or nonexistent. The promoter may delay the processing of your job, citing a backlog or mistakes in your work. There may also be no central computer as advertised. You may be left with no way to deliver what you have promised to your clients or customers—if you found any—and with no way to earn any money on you own.

Avoiding Fraud
There is no substitute for closely examining any offer which promises or guarantees income from work-at-home programs. If it sounds too good to be true, chances are it’s a scam.

Consider it a warning sign if a worker must buy something in order to start the program. Those interested also should take into consideration that, by becoming involved in a work-at-home scheme, they might well be perpetrating a fraud by selling the program to others, and risk investigation by postal authorities.

For a reliability report on a specific work-at-home company, check first with your local Better Business Bureau.

Signs of a Work-at-Home Scamer
A Work-at-Home Scheme Promoter will:

Never offer you regular salaried employment.
Promise you huge profits and big part-time earnings.
Use personal testimonials but never identify the person so that you could check with them.
Require money for instructions or merchandise before telling you how the plan operates.
Assure you of guaranteed markets and a huge demand for your handiwork.
Tell you that no experience is necessary.
Take your money and give you little or nothing in return except heartbreak and grief.
If You Are Victimized

If you become a victim of a work-at-home scheme, ask the company for a refund. If they refuse or give you an evasive response, tell them you plan to notify law enforcement officials.

Keep careful records of everything you do to recover your money. Document your phone calls, keep copies of all paperwork such as letters and receipts, and record all costs involved, including the time you spend. If the company refuses to refund your investment, contact:

Your local Better Business Bureau;
Your local or state consumer affairs agency;
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service;
Your state’s attorney general's office or the office in the state where the company;
The advertising manager of the publication that ran the ad you answered.
Outside Contacts

To learn more about Work-at-Home Schemes, contact the following:

Your Local Better Business Bureau
Direct Marketing Association
Federal trade commission at 202.382.4357
National Fraud Information Center at 1-800-876-7060
U.S. Postal Inspection Service
* If you find any of the web sites listed above to be inactive, please contact the respective organization. Also, be aware that the above phone numbers may be subject to change without notice.>
3/25/2003

© 2003 Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc.

Important roles in determining your home business success or failure?

6-22-2008
Published by
Ephran Price

Have you ever considered what factors play the most Important roles in determining your home business success or failure?

Is it the compilation of the little successes in your home business or personal endeavors that make you a success in life, or is success in life something completely separate from success in business?

How do you define success, and what are you willing to do to achieve it?

Most of the top success coaches in the world agree that one factor that will help insure your home business success is your willingness to "go the extra mile", but what does "going the extra mile" really mean?

Think about how many business opportunities you have each day to go the extra mile. You'll find that there are dozens. "Going the extra mile" simply means doing something better than you have to, or going above and beyond what is expected of you in any given situation.

When you meet someone new, how you relate to them is a choice. You can do what is expected of a normal person, which is to introduce yourself and maybe force a smile. Or, you can go the extra mile. You can flash a big smile, pay the person a sincere complement and let them know that you are genuinely pleased to have met them. You can take interest in really getting to know them. Perhaps using your intuition, you can say or do something for this person that would brighten their day.

Is it difficult to go the extra mile in social situations? No, of course not. However, most people don't do it.

Use that to your advantage. When you decide to start really going the extra mile in every area of your life, it's going to set you apart. It's what's going to give you an advantage in every area of your life. It won't be at the expense of anyone else, except maybe your business or romantic competitors who are failing to go the extra mile.

People are going to like you more. Doors will open. Success will follow. But first, you have to make a habit of going the extra mile EVERY chance you get. Soon, it will become second nature to you, something that's just built into your personality and work ethic. Most people don't even recognize their opportunities to go the extra mile because they aren't looking for them, but you can.

From this point on, make a conscious decision to be on the lookout for your business opportunities to go the extra mile - and take them. Once you make a habit out of going the extra mile, you'll begin to enjoy it. If you're paying attention, over time you'll recognize how going the extra mile pays off for you, and it always does pay off over time.

Whether it be in your personal relationships, or in your business relationships - going the extra mile always pays off, even if the payoff is not immediate or simple to recognize. Do a little more or better work than is expected of you, or than what you are compensated for now. Pour a little more of your energy and soul into your business phone calls or emails.

Take the 5 seconds to add "have a great day" at the end of your emails. When you see an opportunity to complement someone on what they are doing right, take it. It has been said that everything you do or think, both positive and negative, comes back to you in an ever increasing quantity. We've found this to be true about going the extra mile. Never has it failed to pay off big dividends.

We'll end this article with a super example of someone going the extra mile, which we found published in and relating to Newsweek Magazine. It pays tribute to a man, Harry Quadracci, now deceased, who went the extra mile for Newsweek back in 1977.

Quadracci had a small printing press in Wisconsin. Not usually a supplier to Newsweek, he took an urgent order when they were unable to get work done by their regular printer. They sent him the layouts, but the plan was diverted by a snowstorm. Unable to trace the package, Newsweek staff called him "in distress." They discovered that, despite the weather, he had already sent a car through the blizzard to claim the package, and that the job was already being printed. One might say that Quadracci went the extra mile. Certainly it paid off handsomely, because he later became a regular supplier for the huge publication. But he did not know that when he proactively challenged the snowstorm. For all he knew, as soon as the magazine's temporary problems with their regular suppliers were over he might never hear from them again. But he did it anyway.
Going the extra mile does not always pay off so handsomely as it did in this case, but in terms of personal and business growth, of the growing feeling of confidence that we experience when we stretch ourselves, it pays off every time.
Starting right now, begin to recognize your opportunities to go the extra mile and make certain that you take them as often as possible. The dividends will come back to you in various ways and at unknown times, but at some time - YOU WILL be compensated in your home business venture for going the extra mile every chance you get.

Article from GDI, our Top Pick Home Business Opportunity.