Work at Home Based Business

We all know how powerful the internet is for marketing our home based businesses but the internet is not the only way to market your home business. There are plenty of ways to market, advertise, and promote your home based business offline as well.

Here are six very good ways to market your home based business offline:

1. Business Cards - Every business person should have a business card, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Just because you have a home business or online business doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a business card. Even a basic, simple business card will at least help the people you network with to remember you when they go about their business, and give them a means for contacting you if they need to.

Even better than a basic, simple card, however, is a unique, eye-catching business card that makes a very good impression and is memorable to anyone who has it. A business card is a necessity, and that’s why every business person should have one.

By spending a little extra money to design an attention-grabbing logo, use a colored background, add a slogan or a catchy quote, and maybe even add a small photo of yourself so people who have your card can easily recall who gave it to them – you can maximize the benefits of having your own business card.

2. Giveaways - Everyone loves free stuff, especially when it’s cool free stuff. And if you hadn’t noticed how nearly every big company utilizes this winning marketing strategy, then you must be walking around with blinders on. Giving away freebies to potential customers is actually a tried-and-true method of attracting new customers for your home based business, both online and offline. Just make sure that whatever you give away has some obvious association with your company or product, even if it’s nothing more than your company name engraved, embossed, or otherwise emblazoned on the giveaway item. Otherwise people are liable to forget who gave it to them, no matter how much they love it.

3. Events - Sponsor an event. An excellent way to get the word out about your home based business is to sponsor events happening in your market. Consider intramural activities, sporting events, charity fundraising drives, concerts, popular workshops and seminars - the list goes on and on. Find out what events people who fit your target market are attending, and offer to help sponsor it.

Often you’ll even get your home business’s name printed on any advertising and promotional materials and souvenirs/memorabilia for said event - be they signs, t-shirts, hats, flyers, programs, etc. Associating yourself with an event that people attend for fun and enjoyment is a particularly effective (and unobtrusive) way to spread the word about your home business.

4. Classifieds - Believe it or not, people still read the newspaper. And just as it always has been, the classifieds section is consistently one of the most frequently and popularly read. As a small home-based business-person, you probably don’t have the money to put towards display ads in the rest of paper. Why even bother trying to afford that outrageous expense when the “big leaguers” already have that part of the market dominated? But the classifieds are still the place for small and home business. Just peruse your local classifieds and you’ll see what we mean.

5. Fliers - Post fliers in supermarkets, sign posts, in parking lots under windshield wipers, anywhere you can. This can be a great way to spread the word about your home business offline without spending very much money. But make sure you have permission first! You don’t want to get fined or piss off your potential customers with unwanted advertising.

A particularly good way to use fliers to build business is to hand them out at large public events. The personal touch adds an extra kicker to the effect of the ad, especially if you’re friendly and smiling when you hand them out.

6. Word-of-mouth - Never underestimate the power of a personal recommendation. Nothing spreads word about a worthwhile business faster than simple word of mouth. Ask your friends, family, and current customers to tell people about your business. All it takes is a few people to start talking about your business and it could turn into thousands of new customers.

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Pretty straight forward question. Many people REALLY don’t know the answer to it. The truth is, not everybody is cut out for making a living online.

God bless my wife, I love her. But put her in front of a computer and she’s about as helpless as a puppy in a lion’s cage. There is no way she could ever do what’s required to run an online business. Heck, she can just about save a Word DOC without losing it. And this woman is a high school math teacher with 25 plus years of experience. Computers just aren’t her thing.

Then there are some people who have spent their entire life pushing a mop at some apartment complex. They have no education and very few skills. How tough do you think it’s going to be for somebody like this to sit in front of a computer and run an online business?

And then there are those who actually have quite a bit of smarts, have some skills, but have never worked for themselves. They’re so used to taking orders from a boss that to try to motivate themselves to get up every morning and do what is required to run their business isn’t such an easy thing. Some people just can’t handle all that freedom.

Have you ever sat down and asked yourself if you’re cut out for this? Honestly, I didn’t when I first started because I had to make this work. I had no choice. Maybe desperation drives you to the point where you can do anything. If that’s so, what about you? Are you desperate enough? Do you want online success enough to go out and get it? If not…

Are you cut out for this.

That’s a question that you might want to sit down one day and ask yourself. Otherwise, you might be wasting months, or even years of your life chasing after something that you’re just not suited to do.

Running an online business isn’t for everybody.

Is it for YOU?

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Creator Real Truth Video Series

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You heard right. Get one over on those hijos de putas by playing them at their own game. Well, not quite exactly their own game, but instead of getting mad, get even. Here’s two home based business tips you can use to your own advantage:

1. Let Them Steal Your Content

Here, I’m talking about the kind of highly annoying gits who scrape your content and post it as their own on their websites and blogs. You can’t stop them, so play it clever. Every time you write a new post, include a link to your own site in the first paragraph and make it a keyword anchored link for good measure. Just like the one I just made.

When Mr Spamasshole comes along and scrapes your post, he is most likely to be stupid (as most spammers are) and will not bother to remove your link but post it as is in his blog.

The upshot is his site gets slapped for the duplicate content, but you get a keyword anchored one-way backlink to your site.  Oh, and the reason for putting it in the first paragraph is that a lot of scrapers only publish the first paragraph and link back to the originating site with the anchor text “click here to read the full story…” or somesuch useless text. Then you get two backlinks - one useless and one very useful.

2. Let Them Spam Your Comments

Spammers love to leave comments in blogs with reams of links to unsavoury sites. Well, don’t just delete them all, use them!

If you have time, edit each of the spammers’ comments and put your own keyword rich text in there, making sure you remove all their links and then approve the comment. The search engines give you more authority if your blog has lots of comments - it doesn’t matter where they come from as long as they come from a different IP address or geo location and the text is relevant to your blog. Voila - thank you Mr Spamasshole for lots of relevant, keyword filled comments!

Now those asshole spammers can put a smile on your face in at least two very satisfying ways!

Terry Didcott (Freedom Writer)
Author of Make Money Hints 

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