Are you Killing your own Internet Business?

January 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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Don’t Manage your Time Effectively- As a home based business you will find you need to wear many hats but sometimes you may not be wearing the right one….

Spend hours in forums, chat rooms and “cruising” the internet instead of building good solid, keyword rich content for your business.

Don’t track your marketing strategies so you know what is working, what is not and what your ROI is for each method of marketing.

This includes Pay Per Click advertising,if your budget is endless then don’t bother tracking your conversion rates with clearly identified ad objectives.

Don’t ask your customers how they found you and WHY they are buying from you.

You have not written down your goals for the day and planned three things today to promote yourself either marketing, advertising, or public relations.

Acknowledge you can’t do everything but you can create a list of what does need to get done, prioritize and then get to work. Need help? Consider creating an Alliance with other home based businesses to barter services or hire a virtual assistant.

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Posted by Kristen | Filed Under Small Business Blogging, Tips & Advice, Work at Home MOM

Tips on How to Balance Working at Home

January 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I hate to admit it, but there are weeks when my family believes my computer is a physical extension of my body. Hard enough to admit, those are often the weeks that I get the least amount of work “accomplished” no matter how much I try to fit a few minutes in here and there.

I am sharing my best success tips on balancing your home based business and your family. If you have school age kids, working from home may be a bit easier but if you have small kids underfoot like I do, it can be challenging.

Make a designated work area It is often easier to have a seperate area that is just for your work papers so you don’t have your business plan soaking up the spilled milk. If you have a seperate office where you can close the door for seperation and quiet even better!

Create a set work start and stop time. Let your family know you have work to be done and tell them how long you will be working. I find that setting a fun kitchen timer in 15 increments help during the day to give the younger kids. They know that I will work until the buzzer sounds then it’s play time with mom. I do this in cycles so we can go from work to play, work to play.

Work Smart Don’t waste precious work time cruising the web or emailing friends. Stick to that Goal List. Email is necessary but can often “suck you in” and waste your precious time. Set aside two work sessions of 15 minutes each to focus on only email at the beginning and end of day.

Be Realistic. Set goals for your work day and stay with them. Getting distracted is easy to do, especially when you see the laundry pile in the bathroom.

Work when others sleep Yes, it stinks for us, but it is often a reality that if you need to work on a project or focus and concentrate it’s easier to be done early in the morning while everyone is still in bed or at night when they have gone to sleep (if you can stay awake). I personally have found that my best work time is from 1-4 in the morning. I go to bed at 9 because I’m tired but find that I wake up on my own at 1 and I’m on the ball.

Don’t be afraid of the word NO. You don’t need to be everything to everyone. Just because you don’t go into an office every day doesn’t mean you have to be the one that volunteers in school at every event.

Like my Post? Maybe you would like to Buy Mama A Java! It will help to keep me reading, writing and scooping out the info

Posted by Kristen | Filed Under Work at Home MOM

13 Questions to Ask before Starting your Business

December 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Starting a business is not a job it is a lifestyle. In my daily conversations with people the question often arises “what do you do?” once I tell them I am a work at home mom that has been working the past few years to bring my product to market they respond with “OHHH I have this idea” where they continue to tell me about an idea for their own business or product.

While I know this is often just a conversation piece I also get calls from women saying “I really want to do this but don’t know where to start”. So I ask them the below set of questions to start their process of thinking. They are areas that I have learned over the last few years either from research, experience or another kind “mentor” asking them to me. I hope this helps you if your still in that stage.

What are you offering- sounds simple but be concise on what your offering
What are the benefits and features?
Have you done any research yet to see if there is something similiar out there?
How is yours better if there is?
Who is your target market? Be EXACT on who is going to buy or use this service
Have you done any market research to see if they will actually buy it? Asking friends and family while at a party does not count. They will often sugar coat to spare your feelings.
How are you going to reach these customers?
How do you want these customers to perceive your product/service? High end, economy?
How will you produce your product? If it’s a textile can you sew or have a friend that will? If it’s plastic are you going to invest in having a prototype made?
What sales channel are you going to pursue? Direct sales with a website, home parties, wholesale, drop ship?
What do you plan on doing with this? Do you want to grow the business to employ others or do you want to grow and sell? Is it better to license?
How much time, energy and money can you invest?
What resources do you have available?

You don’t need to give long answers to these questions but just a starting point because they will have a huge impact with how you go forward with starting your business.

The next step would be to perform your market research and business plan.

Like my Post? Maybe you would like to Buy Mama A Java! It will help to keep me reading, writing and scooping out the info

Posted by Kristen | Filed Under Work at Home MOM

DO IT YOURSELF building your page rank

November 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment

I have been seeing alot of fellow mompreneurs asking- “what can I do to increase my page ranking in the search engines?” I just updated my site and changed some pages so I’m starting from scratch and working on the following suggestions myself. I’m not claiming to be a tech expert- just sharing the knowledge that was given to me:

1. Content, Content Content- the more content you can link to your site the better. High Quality 4-6 paragraph articles can make a difference. If you can’t make it- find it- there are plenty of “free’ articles out there you can use as long as you keep the credentials listed.

2. Focus Key Words- Do your homework on google tools and other keyword tools find the top searches and narrow your own keywords for each page to focus only on 2-4 top keywords for EACH page. The more keywords you add to a page the more you “dilute”- so select the top ones and optimize your page using that keyword in your title, meta tags, descriptions and content. Do this for Every Page on your site. Don’t try to “stuff” keywords in your content- incorporate them into quality content. You need to remember to make the text readable for spiders and people.

3. For those websites that are heavy on products -Combine 1 & 2 and write articles on a topic that is one of your best keywords and post it on your site. Just having the link on your site will help the spiders.

4. Quality Links- there are online tools ( I believe thru Alexa?) that allow you to search for the top ranking websites for your keyword OR do a search for your keyword and look at the links attached to those sites and if you can try to link to the higher ranking ones also. I don’t know if someone mind find an ethical flaw to this method?? I personally have not come to this step for myself yet.

5. Inbound Links- Use blogs and other websites to link to you by doing product reviews and posting in blogs and including your web url in your tag line

6. Blogs- that’s a whole topic in itself but I’ve been told they do work for traffic and regular spiders

7. Off Line does count- keep up that PR and get people to visit your site. I’m told that search engines are even getting more sophisticated to know that the longer visitors stay on your site (of course they will when you have great content) they put that in your favor and know you’re a quality resource.

I just wanted to give back a few suggestions that I found are cheap, can be done yourself and make a difference. Also there is a woman by the name of Cricket who offers a great FREE SEO course, don’t be fooled it is work, but it is worth it and can be found here CRICKET

Like my Post? Maybe you would like to Buy Mama A Java! It will help to keep me reading, writing and scooping out the info

Posted by Kristen | Filed Under Tips & Advice, Work at Home MOM