Over the years I have written a number of articles around this topic and they always seem to be quite popular. Many people want to find a genuine home-based business. They want the freedom of working from home, enjoying their families, setting their own hours, etc. The problem is that so many people capitalize on this in ways that are far from honest and genuine. So how do you go about picking out the programs that are worthwhile and those you want to run a mile from?Genuine Home-Based Businesses Should Have a Good Track RecordI admit that there may be some new up and coming business opportunities with great potential and honest owners but when a business has been around a couple of years and has a history of regularly paying people and they haven’t done a hit and run then you can be more certain of their potential. I know some people want to be in the forefront of any opportunity and not wait years to get in but a good track record certainly speaks for itself.To Pay or Not to PayPersonally I think that if a home-based business is genuine then you should not have to pay to start earning. As someone said, ‘why pay someone for my salary?’ If you have earned the money by selling products, promoting someone’s website, etc. then you deserve to be paid for it. There are times when I will consider paying for a program but generally I think its better to find free opportunities, get involved and then if you believe in the program perhaps invest something into it in terms of money.ProductAnother important thing to consider when looking for a genuine home-based business is the product. Before you even get involved you should be able to find proper information and details on what it is you will be selling. These programs that refuse to tell you what you are selling before joining are immediately suspicious.Do Your HomeworkBefore joining any home-based business you should do your homework. See what people are saying about it online. Admittedly you may find some people giving negative reviews of programs that actually are honest often out of pure jealousy or simply because it didn’t work for them whereas its worked for millions of others. Be wise in determining which reviews to listen to and which to ignore. Think about what people are saying and why. Thoroughly research the business itself – find out about its history, its products, its compensation plan, etc.Finding a genuine home-based business opportunity isn’t always easy with all the scams out there so do your homework. Find a free program where possible and one with a good track record. Make sure that you feel comfortable with the product they are promoting and once you are satisfied then sign up.
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.
Effective Marketing Strategies in Product Creation
Marketing includes matters such as pricing and packaging of the product and creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns. There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely secondary to the above.
If you take the freelance route, it is important to ensure that all rights to profit from the final product, or any materials produced in its making, remain yours. Bookkeeping, physical product creation or delivery of goods can be done better with specialized help. Determining the purpose of the product is vital in niche product creation.
Implementation of Methodology – The choice of implementation of Six Sigma methodology depends on whether development is required on existing processes (DMAIC) or on new process/product design creation (DMADV). Determining what you really want to sell, something that you can be relaxed selling is the first step at the creation of a niche product. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts; to complete turnkey solutions, there is no excessive need to worry about spending time on the actual product sold to the customer.
For instance, you should be prepared to either perform yourself or to subcontract the completion of the following tasks:- Product idea research (are there any existing products or patents already existing for this idea)- Product specification document training (what it will do, how it will look, how will it be powered, and how the user will interface with it)- Marketing study (what it will be named, who would buy this, how much would they pay, how will we get customers to purchase the product)- Schematic or electronic circuit design process- Creation of a bill of material or BOM and an approved vendor’s list or AVL for each component in the design, preferably with multiple sources identified, with a BOM and AVL for each assembly level in the product- Printed circuit board layout design process (single sided board, double sided board, or multilayer board; size of the PCB; board material)- Mechanical packaging design with user interfaces (displays, buttons, switches, key. This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer.
No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. Your chosen niche should allow for the creation of more than one product or service.
There are several marketing strategies that are necessary in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site – Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers – Effective use of auto responders (generate automatic email messages) – Online Newsletter – Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect’s email address – Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product) – Advertisement (Ad) Tracking – Back End Sales – Affiliate program etc.