11/17/2008

Do You Belong Online?

Do you belong online? It does not matter what kind of home business you have because at some point you must decide if you have a market that is best served locally or is it something that should be online.You have to decide where you belong, and then you have to figure out how to market yourself from there.


Do You Fit Better Online or Offline?

The first thing that you have to figure out is where your customers are going to be. Are you opening up a day care or a hair salon that is going to rely on people in your home town to be your clients? If this is the case, then online marketing is not going to be what works best for you, you will instead do much better if you can be localized. So, this is going to be your first decision.

If this is the case, you are mostly going to want to have print media. You can have a website, and you should have one, in today’s day and age, but if you are looking for people in your home town, you are going to need lots of things like business cards, posters, bill boards and other things that people can see which will direct them to your services. This is either going to be something that is easy for you to do, or it is going to be something that takes some time. Either way, you are going to find that print media works best, even if you only use it to bring local people to your website.

If you don’t find yourself with a local clientele, or you think that you are going to serve people better if you can reach more people than are in your town, then the internet is going to be the place for you. This means that you are going to have to get yourself out there online and see how well you can get your name into the websites and the other directories so that you know what you are looking at when it comes to clients.

If this is the case, then you are going to want to spend your time concentrating on your website and trying to get people to come to your site based on what your site can do for them. You are going to need to get your name into different directories, and do as much online advertising as you possibly can to make sure that it works for you.

11/10/2008

Why Is Customer Loyalty Important To Your Business

Success is not always determined by your location – although it does play a vital role – but more often than not it is dictated by customer loyalty.Here are four reasons why customer loyalty is important to your business.

1. A loyal customer is a repeat customer.This person will know about your business practices, about what to expect from your goods or service, the advantages and the disadvantages, and she or he will do business with you in such a way that it is a mutually satisfying transaction.

2. As you establish a relationship with your customer, you are also establishing a relationship with the customer’s family. Thus, it is not uncommon to have the wife bring in the dry cleaning for the family and turns her mother, mother in law, aunt, and best girlfriend on to your business. As the husband is sent one day to pick up the dry cleaning he becomes familiar with the business, and he will tell his brother, business associates, and others who are looking for a dry cleaner. Thus, you are suddenly becoming a commodity which is being shared with others.

3. While family referrals are great, business referrals are even better. If you are a dry cleaner, you will want the dress maker down the street to recommend your services to its customers. Similarly, if there is bridal shop with which you may have some professional ties, then these business referrals are simply priceless! Customer loyalties – when you have other business owners or clerks shopping at your store or utilizing your service – are quite often the gateway to a great number of new walk in customers.

4. Yet the fourth and perhaps most important reasons why customer loyalty is vital to your business rests in the fact that many major purchases are not made during the initial contact. For example, if you are a furniture store, you might have someone come in looking for a computer desk. While these may be expensive – depending on the materials – by and large these items are small fish. Yet if the consumer is satisfied with the product, the delivery, the setup and also the price, the odds are good that she or he will be back when it is time to furnish the nursery, buy that new wall unit, or acquire that bedroom set that was saved up for!

11/03/2008

What Is The Key To Work Online Success?

The key to work online success is realism.Many people have noticed that there is an abundance of work opportunities available online; these opportunities to do work online can be a great find, or they can turn out to be a great hassle. If you’d like to make sure that your work online venture turns out to be a 100% positive experience, there are some basic things that you’ll need to know about successful online work.

If you all ready have a off line day job that pays reasonably well, it´s always a good idea to start working online part time.This way you can see what kind of opportunities are available to you and you can start slow, because you are not in such a hurry to make your online business work immediately.It´s realism to think that it will not work instantly, nothing ever will without putting an effort.

In six months time, you should be able to make a reasonable estimate about how much work you will be able to do online as a part time venture and how much work you would reasonably be able to complete if you were to quit your full-time job. Making this sort of assessment in a measured way will make it so that you can ease your way into working online instead of quitting a job and being forced to find something online.

Work online generally starts out slowly in turns of earning potential and then can build up as you get more jobs or better paying jobs doing the same kind of work that you were doing before for a lower fee. On the other hand, online work tends to take a lot of time in comparison to the amount of revenue it brings in. Don’t be discouraged by this; it’s bound to be the case that things will improve if you work hard at your online work endeavors.

If you don’t expect to make millions right off the bat, you will have a better attitude about completing all of the difficult work that will be assigned to you. By the way, whether in two weeks or ten years, you’re most likely not going to make millions by doing work online. A few strike pay dirt; however, most people who begin working online only make a similar salary or a lower one to the job they were doing before.Building an online business is all about building relationships, just like in the off line world.

For some demographics, doing work online is an excellent opportunity. For example, women who stay at home with their kids can have the opportunity to earn some extra income in those years that their career is on hold. Whether you need $100 a week in extra income or you need $400 a week, there are ways of doing work online that can give you either one of these paychecks. Just don’t get it wrong in the beginning: it IS work. It’s work that is done online; it’s not free money.

Be realistic: Expect to spend time and effort but also expect to get a paycheck. If you understand that working online is not getting rich quick, you’re already well on your way to working online for a decent paycheck.