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.

Truth in Advertising, revisited

Back in September I posted a short article on Truth in Advertising. After reading an article today written by Vern How Chan [1], I felt the need to expand my original article and while I don’t like to promote my own business in my blog environment I can no longer sit back while others misrepresent what our product is or is not.

My primary business is as an independent distributor for Scent Sations who makes Mia Bella Candles. If you don’t live under a rock you have probably heard of our products. If you have looked for a home business you have probably seen a multitude of advertisements and websites promoting our products.

This is where the problem has taken deep root. Our candles are not Soy Candles, but you will see them advertised as a Soy Candle at just about every level of distributor from the bottom all the way up to our top distributors.

Technically for a candle to be a “Soy Candle” it must contain 25% soy wax which ours do not. Clearly many of our distributors are told in the recruiting process that our candles are made of soy as that is what is reflected on the different distributor’s personal websites but it simply is not the truth.

Another common claim about our candles is that they are “Healthier” than paraffin (or other types) candles. Again this is not true and no solid research has been done to back up this claim. Our candles defiantly burn cleaner than any other candle I’ve used, but that doesn’t mean they are “healthier” than other candles.

In the early days of my business I also made this claim because it was the information I was given by my sponsor and upline. It is an unsubstantiated claim and could be construed as medical advice which crosses a dangerous line in any industry. My marketing strategy has evolved as my knowledge base has grown and I have corrected my advertising efforts to reflect my products in a truthful light.

In an effort to make sure that I was marketing our products with accuracy I emailed our VP of Marketing about our products with some pointed statements about our product line. My request was for him to confirm or deny my statements, here’s what I got back:

Our candles are not a “soy” candle

We have not promoted our candle as a soy candle since 2001 when we were a soy candle....ever since we have kept the information updated on the websites and the company materials...

Our Candles are made from “vegetable wax”

From Carmen[2]: soy, palm and other natural waxes are called vegetable wax in the trade...we use a vegetable wax blend....if there is any soy in that blend, its a very small blend...we prefer to say there is no soy

Our candles do not contain “beeswax”

Because of the mystery that is wiping out about 70% of the bee population in the USA which has consequences more dire than global warming or terrorism, beeswax is not in our current formula, actually, that is a positive for many vegetarians who wont burn beeswax

Distributors should not make health claims about our candles, i.e. “healthier” than other candles

Correct.....we are now a big and growing company ..we must be very careful of wording that could be construed as a medical claim

Distributors should not promote our candles as a longer burning candle as the burn times of any candle is subjective to environmental conditions and there is no conclusive testing that has been done to prove this statement on behalf of our candle products.

That is correct

With the exception of the beeswax and the burn times of our candles I had been marketing ethically by providing my prospects and customers with the truth about what our candles are and what they do. I have made the adjustments in my advertisements to reflect the new information about both beeswax and burn times.

I am very proud of the gourmet candles that I represent as an independent distributor. It is a stand alone product in the candle industry because of it’s ability to burn clean and it simply smells better than any candle I’ve ever used.

The result of my not using the buzz words and misinformation in my ad campaigns has affected the growth of my team. I recruited many more distributors when I was providing the wrong information, however it is my firm belief that marketing honestly and not using buzz words to describe my products has enabled me to build a very firm foundation for my business.
Providing my team of distributors with accurate information and solid leadership based on facts and not hype will in turn make my team strong and profitable in the long haul.

[1] Read Vern’s Review of Scent Sations and Mia Bella Candles
[2] Carmen is our Master Chandler

Do You Provide Tools to your Team or just Affiliate Links that put Cash in your pocket?

Clearly affiliate marketing is important in the big picture of what we do as Internet Marketers, but is your bottom line to milk every extra penny for every tool you refer your downline to, or to provide tools that will help your team?

I've struggled with this one early in my MLM business, but finally decided that my bottom line was providing my team with every resource I have available regardless of how much affiliate money it put into my pocket.

When I started my business I didn't realize how much money could be generated from affiliate marketing. That changed quickly with my AWeber account. But referring my team members to this affiliate isn't always the best option for them.

I'm fortunate that early on I found some tools that I was able to pay a flat fee for and then provide my team with a few key tools that they could use to promote their business. It was a pretty simple program that provided them with a url rotator, ad tracker and a web page that they could use as their landing page.

I would give these tools to my team to help them get started without having to reach into their pockets and the tools have been well received by my team members.

Over the years these programs have been improved and now include many more very useful tools at no cost to the people I refer to the program. The system now includes a fully functional Autoresponder which has been a stumbling block for my team members on a budget.

Yes I realize that $20 a month isn't much for me, but if I had a couple of kids at home it would be.

I've been criticized and asked if I was setting up a "welfare mentality" with the free tools I provide and I even was asked if what I was doing was "duplicatable". Forgive me, but the ability to duplicate something isn't really what "my" business is about. It's another one of those old school marketing techniques that sound great but in reality work for only a few.

So as the release of the new program was announced providing a multitude of awesome online tools including an advertising module, I had to decide how to present it to my team. It was clear that the best thing to do was give it to them and let them decide for themselves if it was a system they wanted to use.

I did let them know if they were currently using other resources to keep those in place until they had evaluated the new program. Doing this allows my team members to have the tools they need for their Internet marketing without having to dig into their pockets to pay for the tools. It also meant that I would lose some of my affiliate money each month, but the bottom line is always to provide the best tools at the best price for my team. What I will gain in their own business growth by them using the free tools will far outweigh the small affiliate commissions I lost.

And then there's the obvious...

The less they have to spend on websites, autoresponders, advertising and other things, the more money they have available to buy product which they can sell and put money into their pocket as well as my pocket. Win Win.

If you are curious about what I provide my team members use the banner to check it out. No money goes into my pocket by promoting this program.