Archive for February, 2009

Hostesses can make or break a direct sales business. Can your business survive without them, possibly? Do you want to find out? Probably not. Therefore it’s essential that your hostesses know you appreciate them. It’s important to give them the best treatment ever.

Perfect party treatment begins with a great attitude. This sounds simple enough however your attitude will be contagious. If you’re feeling less than genuinely thrilled about your direct sales business and products, she’ll pick up on it. This may leave her wondering why she’s throwing a party in the first place. Make sure your attitude is positive and professional at all times when around your hostess or potential hostesses. Smile.

Be gracious. A thank you note may not seem like much but it actually says a lot about you. Sending a thank you note as soon as your hostesses agrees to host a party is a great way to let her know how much you appreciate her and her efforts. It’s also a great time to follow up with information and reminders that will help her throw a profitable party. After all, your hostess wants to get something out of this too.

Be organized and professional. Your hostess is counting on you to provide all of the necessary materials and information to throw a good party. This includes everything from checklists and invitations to refreshments and back up supplies. Make sure you have everything you need to help her throw the best party possible.

Establish expectations. Early on in the process it’s helpful to establish the expectations for the party. That means setting sales goals, attendee goals and so on as well as establishing a process to attain those goals and letting your hostess know what’s in it for her, i.e. great gifts, cash, and incentives.

Check in. Call every couple of days to see how she’s doing and if there is anything you can do to help. It’s important not to overwhelm her with phone calls and status checks but at the same time to make yourself available if she needs you.

Offer to call her guests if she gives you the names and numbers. This is a great opportunity to introduce yourself and get attendees excited about the party.

Arrive early, not too early, and help her set up the party. Be professional and gracious.

During the party, make a point of recognizing the efforts of your hostess. Let the party attendees know what she did and what she earned by being a hostess. You may at this point take a few minutes to let others know how they too can be a hostess.

Before during and after, keep your hostess in the loop about where she stands with her goals. Give her help and advice on how to attain her goals as well as motivation and encouragement.

Never assume a hostess is interested in doing what you do, even if she does a great job, however always present the opportunity and information to her. Let her know her strengths and how they might fit within the direct sales business.

Last, but not least, don’t forget to send a sincere note of thanks. Party hostesses are the backbone of the direct sales industry. Without them, you wouldn’t be profitable and it wouldn’t nearly be as much fun.

Coaching! Coaching! Coaching! Who has not heard about this 21st Century phenomenon? There are so many ways to coach and to be a coach. What is so great is that it is still a relatively untouched market because there are so many niches and markets that have not been touched by coaching.

However, any coach or wannabe coach needs to learn to do it professional and with style. Any who desire to coach professionally must have The Business & Practice of Coaching at hand.

Here is the real deal. The initial hype about coaching has deflated, and the profession is coming down to earth. This book explains the current state of the coaching profession and offers basic advice and strategies so that you can plan your practice to operate well on the contemporary business terrain. Whether you are an established coach or just starting out, this book is for you.

You will discover chapters that discuss:

• Coaching: Trend or Fad?
• The Differences Among Coaching, Therapy, and Consulting
• From Specialty to Niche
• Attracting Ideal Clients
• Business and Your Emotional Intelligence
• Executive and Leadership Coaching
• Business Coaching
• Skills Coaching
• Career Coaching
• Life Coaching
• Wellness Coaching
• Creativity, Relationship, and Spiritual Coaching

With coaching being so in-demand today, if this is your chosen career path, you will want to have a book like this one on your shelf. You can be the coach you desire with the right tools and resources in your hand. The Business & Practice of Coaching is the perfect resource for you.

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Virtual Assistants are oftentimes moms, like you and me, who want to work from home. A Virtual Assistant (or VA) can offer clients any number of services from their home-based location, rather than being at a traditional office. VAs can earn a nice income, charging somewhere in the area of $10 to $30 per hour, with specialized or more technical services ranging around $50 per hour.

If you have basic computer skills, a general knowledge of how an office works, or even specific skills that business owners are looking for, you certainly will want to consider starting your very own Virtual Assistant business from home. Your start up costs will include a good computer and home office setting, but the ongoing business expenses are minimal. Here are some tips to help you get started.

What Services Will You Offer: It’s important to know what services you can offer, and how you will offer those services, before you begin. Are you a good typist? Do you feel comfortable speaking on the phone with others? Are you good at making event and travel arrangements for others? Do you have web development skills? These are some of the services that a Virtual Assistant can offer the clients that hire them.

Business Plan: As a Virtual Assistant, your business plan is important in order to map out your marketing plan, your financial goals, as well as putting together an overview of your business with your mission in mind. Once you’ve decided on your services, you can start writing your business plan with help from the resource at the end of this article.

Setting Up Your Home Office: Make sure you have a separate work area, free from background noise, with adequate space to keep your client information secure and organized. You’ll eventually want to invest in a good desk, a separate telephone line with answering machine, and a reliable computer and printer. As your business grows, you may want to expand your office to include a scanner, copier and fax, depending on the type of work you’re doing for clients.

Choosing Your Software: You’ll also need to have all the software required to provide the services you’ve decided to offer. If you’re starting on a budget, at a minimum you need the software required to do the job well. You can always upgrade or get new software as warranted. Networking with other VAs is invaluable in finding out all the best resources for software and support.

Marketing 101: Along with getting business cards, letterhead and address labels professionally prepared, you’ll need to set up a website that will serve as your “virtual office”; a place where potential and current clients can visit you online. Add information about your services, contact information and testimonials once the work starts coming in. To get started, you might offer some services free to a few business owners in return for feedback and to build your portfolio. Your service business will grow best through word of mouth.

You can work from your own home office and happily reap the rewards. It’s true that, in uncertain times, many companies are letting go of full-time employees and are hiring Virtual Assistants on a part-time basis, as needed. This is a growing opportunity for you, as more Virtual Assistants are needed. Whether you’re looking to earn an extra $100 per month or a full-time income, it all starts with the first step.

A Virtual Assistant Business is a fun way to start making money online with a minimum of money and equipment. Get step-by-step help by grabbing the JustAddSweat.com Guide to Making Money with a Virtual Assistant Business.

With our economy’s present state, most people think it’s a bad time to start new businesses. That couldn’t be farther from the truth! Many businesses begun during a recession are still thriving today. It isn’t necessary to start cutbacks or becoming overly frugal.

Many large companies started their businesses during times of recession. Johnson & Johnson, MacDonald’s and Microsoft are among the ranks of those who kicked off their business in times of economic uncertainty. There are many different business ventures easily adapted to our economic times.

Consider the goods and services people still require during times of recession. By conducting research carefully in regards to these needs and how your dream business can assist during economic downfalls, you can easily and successfully cater to the needs of the people around you. With careful planning being your primary concern, it is that much easier to cater to the needs of those around you, providing you and your business with a foothold to success.

Be specific when outlining your business plan. There are many varying aspects to consider, depending on the business itself as well as where you will be fulfilling the various obligations needed for your business endeavor. Ask all the questions necessary consider all the aspects involved and enter this decision as informed as possible. This process will be of endless wealth to you while starting your new business.

Real estate is being rented or sold at a much lower margin, so now is great timing to look into procuring a location if your business needs cannot be met within the home. Other start-up costs can also be less of an expense due to the economic situation.

Your next step would be strategizing around the specific details in your outline. Depending on the goods or services you intend to provide. Variations with pricing strategies could be higher prices to fewer people, or discounting and receiving a larger client base. Tracking the aspects that can bring you the desired clientele will allow you to create an overview permitting a larger success for your new business.

Your goals may be smaller at start-up of your business due to present economic state. Establish the level of funding available to you and create goals or plans within the same level. Ensure that your available funds are well invested, and thus creating a business mindset of responsible spending. When you create this mindset, you are less likely to over-spend; especially once your clientele’s money is involved. By creating a level of capitalization based on your own financial contribution, you are protecting not only your business, but your clients as well.

With this mindset now in place it’s time to set some achievable short term and longer term goals. Feasible short term goals are any that you wish your business to achieve in a period of time between six months to a year. Longer term goals should be aimed for the first five years your business will be effective. Give your business, as well as yourself at least two years to become profitable, especially during a recession. Many businesses don’t make a large profit margin in the first two years

Marketing your new business is a step often overlooked or possibly even forgotten. In a period of recession it’s paramount to get the word out every way you can about your business and what you can offer the public. By advertising in as many ways possible will undoubtedly give your business that little boost of attention it needs. Speak to managers of other small business, as well as those larger businesses in your area. These people have probably been where you are at this time, and will gladly help by including a flyer in their customers’ packages at the checkout line, or post one on their bulletin board as well as their break rooms. Also turn to local newspapers and magazines, which may have inexpensive packages available for the advertising of new businesses in your area. Take the time to construct a web page for your business, and don’t forget to email your contacts with the address to your web page, inviting them to share it with friends and family.

The need to hit your target audience at just the right time is great for your new business. Consider for example a line of Valentine’s Day gifts and services. Revealing your product line too soon can leave you with clients still dealing with holiday expenses, meaning they aren’t looking to spend money right then for a special day that is a month or two away. Instead, start advertising your Valentine products the 1st of February so your potential customers have recovered from Christmas expenses, but still close enough they remember to stop by.

Recessions can be frightening experiences. By taking the time to properly and thoroughly plan your business venture, as well as making your clientele feel appreciated you are well on your way to a pleasant and successful new business.

If you’re looking to start your own business, but need a little help generating ideas, visit , your source for endless great home business ideas.

With the opportunities in online business growing more and more every day, it’s almost time to ask the question, “What CAN’T be sold online?” However, there are some things that fair better than others when it comes to selling on the Internet. Let’s talk about a few of the more popular (and profitable) ways to make money as an online business owner.

Design and Produce Your Own Goods, or Buy From Wholesale?

Already in business, and have your own products? It may be time to start selling them online. An alternative (if you want to avoid the hassle of manufacturing) is to buy ready-made goods from wholesale. Storage of goods, and the efforts of manufacturing should be taken into consideration before developing the product. If you do not have storage space and do not want to develop your own products or buy from wholesale, another idea is using a drop shipper, although this tends to cut into profits.

The other suggestions in this article do not require carrying an inventory or the workload.

Direct Sales Products

Working with a direct sales company will offer you a product that has already proven itself in the marketplace, and will give you a good start to business. A good thing to check for when taking this route is to see if they allow online sales. Some companies do not allow this at all. If they do allow online selling, it’s time to set up a website. Time must be spent promoting your website before any sales begin to come in. This may not be as easy as it sounds as you will need a good education with regards to online marketing.

Information Products

Information products come in many guises, including audio, video, reports and e-books. The type of reports that sell best are those that teach others how to do things. Customers purchase these types of reports for the big benefit of being able to download the product is soon as they have purchased. The alternative to downloads is to send the product physically to your customer in traditional hard cover book format, or as a CD/DVD. Offering the product as a download is more popular, as profit margins are larger due to the fact that the item does not need to be shipped.

Selling as an Affiliate

Do you already have an existing website or blog? If you have, it may be a good idea to sell other product owners goods as an affiliate. A surprisingly large amount of mainstream online businesses host their own affiliate programs, enabling you a commission on every sale. Every product you sell in this manner will entitle you to a commission as a percentage of each purchase. This enables further benefits of not needing inventory, or even having to fulfill the order. All you need to do is concentrate on making the sale.

The best method of finding these type of affiliate programs is to type your chosen subject into the search engine along with the phrase “affiliate program”.

Selling Your Service

It may be copywriting, accountancy, web development or many other ideas that can be sold as a service — these can make money by prmoting online. Simply create a professional web presence that explains exactly what you are about and what you have to offer. Surprisingly not many others do this, meaning you’ll be one step ahead of the competition.

Need to Build Your Website?

Looking for an even easier option to build your web pages? Take the comprehensive easy website builder for a 10-day test trial. You can choose from over 1200 templates and your account includes all kinds of interactive features including: message board, shopping cart, mailing list, coupons and more.

Here’s a VERY cool download from on of our great guest authors at Internet Marketing Sweetie.  Carrie Lauth shares 100 great tips for blogging for profit. Whether you’re just starting out or gaining momentum, there are some real gems here.

You can download this handy printable 15-page guide here:

Click here to get yours (PDF)

Thanks Carrie for this great resource!

Are you just starting out in the world of cyber-business? If you’ve just opened your doors, you may not be getting the sales volume you want. Perhaps it’s only a sale here and another there – not quite what you had in mind when you planned your online business.

You’re either not making enough to keep the business running or you simply break even. If that’s the case, then the business is pretty much doomed to fail. You don’t want that, because you put in of a lot of thought, time and effort to get it going.

You want it to succeed. So, what do you do? You start scouring the ‘net for any information you can find to better your business. That desire pushes you forward to find whatever it takes to get your business out there to more people, so they will come and buy what you have.

You’ll start off with the Freebies you come across. Those can be:

- Articles

- Reports

- Guides

- Newsletters

- E-Courses

Will they have the information you need? Many of these resources will only give you the basics. You need more depth, greater detail and better tips to make sure that your fledgling business takes off. The information is out there all right. But this is knowledge you’ll find you have to

Buy!

You’re the customer in this scenario, not the information marketer. Step back and look at it from the marketer’s point of view.

You have the product. What makes this a huge market with massive potential for profit? It’s like this:

Business owners who are driven to succeed are ready to purchase that information instead of picking up freebies, and they could pay good money for it. It costs little or nothing to produce the information and create a product and sell it on – for prices ranging from $20 to as much as $100 in some cases.

Think how many people out there are operating online businesses. New enterprises are opening up every day, all seeking exciting and innovative ways to get their business noticed in the business community. You have a ready-made and growing market.

These business owners are dedicated to find the informational nuggets that will give them the edge over their competitors. There’s a wealth of information to be compiled and products that people will be interested in, if you can only tap into that need and get people to purchase them.

Some of the things that business owners will buy to help their businesses include:

- EBooks

- Reports

- E-Courses

- Memberships To informational items

- Guides

- E-Zines

If you can provide business owners with the quality information they want and need, you won’t have too much trouble finder a market full of eager customers.

If you can show that you have the best information they could have, then they’ll be willing to pay for it. One way to make it easy to get this information out to your market is with Melissa Ingold’s Special Report Club. Each month you receive a brand new fully-customizable 30 page report and complete marketing materials, so you can start selling information the lucrative online business owner market right away.

Learn more about the Special Report Club and find out how to save tons of money and time by clicking here. And earn even more by joining the affiliate program – you’ll receive 50% monthly commissions for anyone who joins the Special Report Club value-packed membership.

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Are you a crafty person who enjoys making other people happy by creating beautiful things? Do you like sharing how you do this with others? Then an online crafting blog might be perfect for you! Blogs are like online journals and they can be set up easily in minutes via the use of such free applications like Blogger.com or WordPress. By choosing an adaptable and colorful template, a craft blog can be used to display:

Photographs: Your readers will appreciate a clear picture of the craft idea, from start to finish. When creating something from a recycled object, pictures of the original object are especially of interest to your readers. If you also include step-by-step photos, you’ll end up with a very popular blog in no time. Using a good digital camera will help your readers get an idea of how a simple craft can become a treasured object.

Detailed material descriptions: Your fellow crafters are interested not only in how you make your craft, but what materials you use. Crafters recognize a certain brand of material, or a specific color, or shape, and will shop for that item because they want their version of the craft item to turn out like yours. Not only will your reader’s craft turn out more like yours if they know what items specifically to purchase, but when you use exact sizes, shapes, and names of materials, the search engines will find you and your craft as people search the internet using the words you use in your description.

Include a lesson: If you have a craft that is quite involved, or possibly very popular, you may want to include a simple “How To”, or lesson on one or more portions of the craft. Your fellow crafters may like to expand on your craft, making it uniquely theirs for gift-giving or personalizing. A technique or craft that is yours alone may even be worth a patent. That way you can actually sell the instructions or technique to an interested reader at a reasonable price.

Materials list: When your readers walk into the craft store, they want a complete list of materials to make their shopping easier. You’ll want to include all colors, sizes, and measurements in great detail and accuracy. Include where your readers can find the materials needed and any additional descriptions and possible substitutions if needed. Additionally, when people visiting your website duplicate your craft and it turns out great, they are more likely to tell their friends about your blog — so be sure to explain exactly which items they should purchase and where they can find them.

Selling ideas and crafts: Some of the best money-making opportunities for you could be selling your own crafts directly from your blog. You will see a quicker return on your investment if you can turn your own crafts and ideas into sales. By personalizing gifts during high gift-giving seasons like the Holidays and birthdays, you will quickly benefit from your growing crafter’s blog. You may wish to set up a storefront on a site such as Etsy.com or eBay.com. You may also consider selling the patterns you’ve developed for your crafts, the templates for designs, or even selling advertising space.

Taking the time to do crafting takes a lot of time, patience and talent. Blogging about your crafting ideas will help you take your art to the next level, by increasing awareness of your unique crafts. Start now to create a blog, let the rest of the world know about your talents, and make money in the process!

A Craft Blog is a fun way to start making money online with a minimum of money and equipment. Get step-by-step help by grabbing the JustAddSweat.com Guide to Making Money with a Craft Blog.