Tuesday, December 18, 2007

5 Steps to Making Money in your Home Based Business

Fact: People start a home business to make money. If your business is consistently costing you money and not making you money you should evaluate every aspect of the business.

Evaluate the Product Line

Any business evaluation should start with the product line. Are you marketing a product that is affordable to the majority of your target market? If the product is only affordable to a few then you have a problem. In order for you to make a sale or secure a reliable customer base of repeat buyers you will have to reach more people to find the few who can actually afford your product. This is no easy task and could cost you more money in advertising than you have to spend.

Is the product line a one time shot or will it be repurchased once used? This is key to repeat sales which can be the lifeline of any business. Repeat sales will also keep your business on the plus side of profit with little effort on your part.

Evaluate your Product Knowledge

How much do you really know about your product as well as your competitions products. This is another key factor in your own success. Have you done your research or are you relying on what you were told by your sponsor, upline or company? Your ability to portray yourself as an expert in your business will give you an advantage over other marketers not only when it comes to marketing your product, but also if you are working on building a team to earn residual income.

Take the time to learn as much as you can about your own products as well as those product lines and companies that are your competitors.

Evaluate the Tools of your Trade

Look at the marketing material that you were provided. If you fall prey to the old school marketing techniques filled with hype and buzz words you may need to develop your own tools to market your product and build your business.

Another aspect of evaluating your tools is to look at the actual tools provided by your sponsor or company. Are you looking at paying additional monies each month for websites, autoresponders or landing pages? This will be additional money spent each month and possibly will keep your business in the red.

Evaluate the Focus of your Sponsor

This is another important key to your success. Is your sponsor only looking to pad their own pocket each month by encouraging you to buy additional product or sign up for their affiliate programs? Is your sponsor available to you when you need them to answer your questions or are they hard to reach or keeping business hours that don’t fit into your schedule? Do they provide additional support systems that provide you with answers to the common questions for the times that they are not available?

The most important factor for any business should be getting that business into profit as quickly as possible. This can’t be done if your sponsor’s only focus in on their own business.

Evaluate Yourself

We all need to evaluate ourselves from time to time and doing so when it comes to our home business is what allows us to grow not only our business but also to expand our own knowledge.
Look at yourself honestly and determine if you truly stand behind your products, tools and marketing methods. Do you believe that you can sell the products? Do you believe that you can learn what you need to know in order to portray yourself as an expert? Do you offer your business partners up to date tools and training or are you relying on old school marketing techniques that have been handed down for generations?

My own Road to Success

One of the biggest problems in todays MLM and Direct Marketing industry is the lack of common sense and integrity when applied to your business. It’s up to each and every marketer to apply the same common sense and integrity to our business as we would in our own personal lives.

When I started my home business in January of 2005, I made a commitment to myself and my sponsor to work my business for 2 years. I fulfilled that commitment and then evaluated my accomplishments over that 2 year period.

I did have a small level of success however I also believed that I could have achieved much more had I been provided with the proper training and tools.

I had very few months where my business was in profit, and also had to deal with my husband who financed my business each month. It’s hard to justify continuing anything that consistently sucks money and doesn’t make money.

Late in 2006 I evaluated what I had done as well as the tools I used and changed my business plan to incorporate two key factors. The first was listening to my own common sense and the second was to educate myself in my industry as well as marketing.

These two very simple factors are what brought my own home business from sucking money from our family budget into a business that has made money every single month of 2007.

I am thrilled to say that now my expenses are not paid for through the earnings generated from my home business and I am also able to contribute to our family finances as well.

I am also better able to help my growing team to get their business into profit quickly and provide them with the up to date tools they need to grow their business without draining their budgets. This is key because a business that is in profit rarely closes its doors and by supporting my team I am supporting my own business.

If you are interested in how to get your own business into profit using common sense marketing, visit my Website and request information.