Thursday, February 28, 2008

Legitimate Home Business Ideas

It's difficult to find the work at home business opportunity for you, and once you have, it's even harder to know if it is legitimate. This article will show you how to find legitimate work at home business opportunities, so that you can begin your work at home career.

If you’re considering working from home, you know that getting started can be overwhelming. It’s difficult to find the work at home business opportunity for you, and once you have, it’s even harder to know if it is legitimate. You want to work at home, but you don’t want to become the victim of a scam and wind up losing your hard earned money. This article will show you how to find legitimate work at home business opportunities, so that you can begin your work at home career.
One work at home business opportunity is to work for a call center. Many call centers are hiring work at home parents to take calls from their homes. To take advantage of this work at home business opportunity, you must have a computer and a landline home phone, in most cases. Working from home for a call center would involve a shift of several hours, answering the phone and taking orders or performing customer service duties.
Another work at home business opportunity to consider is going into business for yourself. Starting your own business can be an extremely profitable venture, and a great work at home business opportunity. If you have an idea that works, and possess some basic web design skill, this may be the option for you. Depending on whether you plan to offer goods or services, this work at home business opportunity could require some start up capital, so be prepared.
eBay, and other sites, like Amazon, are a great way to turn your knowledge into a great work at home business opportunity. Many work at home parents make a good part time or full time income by purchasing items at thrift stores, auctions, and yard sales and then selling them on auction sites for a profit. One of the great things about Auction sites, is there is little or no start up costs, which is great for beginners. If you have basic computer skills and a digital camera, this may be the work at home business opportunity for you.
Spending more time with your family is just one of the perks of working at home. When researching work at home business opportunities, avoid any type of program that requires you to pay money to sign up or receive information. Instead, devote your time and hard earned money to legitimate work at home business opportunities that will earn you an excellent return on your investment. Soon you’ll be a full or part time work at home parent, enjoying the schedule and lifestyle you’ve been dreaming of.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

6 Ways That Blogging Can Save You Money

It doesn't have to be a whole new site, just add a directory to your existing site and start blogging. Most blog software solutions are either cheap or free.

Even though I have had several personal blogs for years, I have only been officially business blogging since 2003. So in going back over expenses for the last quarter, you can imagine my shock when I realized that my overall business costs were down about 19%. What saved me so much money? Surprisingly, blogging.

How can you save money with your blog? It's pretty simple, so I'll be brief.

Attract search engine traffic without paying the big bucks

If you want Google, Yahoo and MSN to pay attention to you, blog.

It doesn't have to be a whole new site, just add a directory to your existing site and start blogging. Most blog software solutions are either cheap or free.

And you can find out most basic blog information online for free (really, sometimes just typing your question into Google will do it.) by people who've actually done it. For less than $100, you can build a small library of blog tips and secrets, written by successful business bloggers.

Instead of buying links, get one-way links from blog search engines and directories, as well as getting your RSS feed content displayed at other sites.

Linking is a great way to get search engine attention and click traffic. Some people get links by trading; others by including their links at the end of freely distributed articles. Others pay to be listed, or to get linked.

In each of these scenarios, some type of trade takes place, money, free content, or a link back.


When you blog, you'll find plenty of search engines and directories that are willing to list you free of charge. For the most part you won't need to link back - you'll get a one-way link from site favored by search engines, often using text that you select yourself.

If 90 or more of these free, legitimate links back to your site is worth your time, then get you blog in motion.

Not only that, if you update frequently, other sites may want to display your RSS feed content on their sites. To encourage them to do so, put a link on your page with instructions on how to do so. Ever since I put one on the front of my site, various feeds from my main site have turned up in the most unexpected places.

Cheaper way to study your audience.

As your blog gets more popular, you may start to find that on any given day, you have a representative cross-section of prospects and clients at your site. If you have a question for them, you can just... ask.

True, you can post a link to a survey in your newsletter or on your site, but these are not as interactive as the ability for your audience to comment. They will comment, and you can reply to ask them to expand, or clarify. Conversation gets going and before you know it, a bond is formed, a much stronger bond than occurs in a one-way conversation.

Cheaper (and faster) way to start a resource or authority site.

Five years ago, if you wanted to start an authority site, your best bet was to build a portal with a specialized directory at its core. Three years ago, you were better off starting a forum with a resource section attached to it. Last year, your top bet was a feed-enabled content management system, especially as more parts of content management systems began to have content feeds related to them. (I have 12 feeds for each of my PHP-Nuke based sites, though they don't work as well with Google Tap.)

Now, if you want to be the expert, you want to start a blog.

If you're blogging consistently, you have a hub of information collected that will inspire return traffic. You have a collection of links to articles, sites, and tools. You can constantly write up your own opinion editorials on each of these items, as well as fact-based analysis of news and events that can help your audience make better choices.

As blog software matures you can now categorize, and alphabetize your links, and with the ability to ping multiple sources as well as leave trackback links to other sites, you can send your readers through a ring of related, freshly updated information that ultimately leads back to you.

Spend less money on advertising as your blog becomes more popular

I can not promise you that you will never spend another red cent on advertising costs. However, the amount of free advertising you get from having your blog link or RSS feed listed in dozens of search engines and directories, and popping up in feed readers is not to be underestimated.

You will probably still want to do some ezine advertising when your new ebook or software release is debuted. But you may not need to buy as much advertising or purchase as often.

Then there is the fact that many newsletters that are also published to RSS feeds have wider reach. I have found that it is worth the extra money to appear in both versions ask your favorite publisher for details. For publications that allow this, it is normally only 20% extra

Save money by retaining visitors

You have probably heard a thousand times that it is easier to sell repeatedly to an existing client than it is to find a new one. So how do you get that visitor to come back, and possibly buy again?

A constant stream of new information on a particular topic work is enough to keep people buying a daily newspaper, subscribing to a magazine or viewing a television series.

Frequent updates can work the same way for your site.

With bloggers being named People of the Year by Time magazine last year, if you are not blogging in 2008, you are going to be left in the dust by other sites in your industry that do. It does not have to take up a lot of extra time, and the time it does takes is made up for in the money you can save.