The state of our economy in the last few years has had a terrible impact on employment in our country. Companies of all sizes are laying off employees regardless of their talents, years of service or contributions they’ve provided. What is even harder to witness is the closing or splitting up of some large corporations that had employed so many individuals. Many of these people are now looking seriously at ideas for creating income working from home. The question then becomes what are the top home based businesses one can start quickly and with little initial investment.One way to approach starting a home based business is with providing a service or product out of your home. Ideally, the product would be something you are talented with making, but if you don’t have the talent then look for something you can learn quickly and doesn’t require years of practice.If you enjoy being creative and working with your hands, look at top home based businesses that you would enjoy creating products for. Some examples might include:Jewelry Making – Wire jewelry making is easy and with only a little practice you can create some stunning work. There are loads of how-to books on wire jewelry design in the craft stores and you can start with inexpensive material and work your way up.Baking – If you can create some tasty but healthy treats, you might be able to find various health food stores that will buy your goods.Custom T-Shirts – If you look around at the t-shirts marketed towards the younger crowd, you’ll see that lots of them have a grungy, rough, worn or splattered appearing design on them. Just splash a few colors of paint on the front, stamp on the words “Work in progress”, and watch the kids line up for these unique and “cool” shirts.If you are the type of person that is more comfortable with physical work, some top home based businesses might include:Carpet Cleaning – For a small investment you can buy commercial carpet cleaners like the ones that are rented out at many department stores. These do a great job with just hot water and some cleaning solution. They even fit in most cars.Lawn Care – If you already own a riding lawn mower and a truck you can buy some ramps to get the mower into the truck bed. Or, you can get a trailer to put the mower on. As you get more business you can invest in better equipment that lets you complete more jobs in the same amount of time.Cleaning Homes – Take the hour or so you spend each day exercising and clean homes instead. You’ll get the cardio workout from the cleaning and get paid as well. Most clients already have the cleaning supplies they want you to use, so don’t feel you need to stock up on all the supplies.Additionally, some top home based businesses that let you utilize your computer would include:Freelance Jobs – Sites like freelancer.com provide outsourcing for large and small businesses to find experts to complete various projects and tasks. Companies are looking for skills like writing, designing, data entry, sales and marketing as well as technical skills like programming, administration and engineering.website Design – Website design has become much easier as the technology and software has improved in recent years. While it’s a good idea to be familiar with some of the technical jargon, you can focus on the design and flow of a website and outsource the technical development of the sites to someone else.Medical Billing or Coding – this type of online work has become popular as hospitals and insurance agencies are trying to keep costs down. You need to learn the billing or coding process to take on these types of jobs.As with any endeavor you will want to do proper and thorough research in your area of interest. While the list above of top home based businesses is not complete, it provides a few realistic examples and thought starters that will help you get you on your way.
Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up
One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.
However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.
Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.
But why?
In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!
So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)
The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.
Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.
Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.
By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.
You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.
A Guide on Successful Product Creation and Internet Marketing
Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.
The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.
It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!
With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.
With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.