How do I Start a Home Business?

Many people in today’s society have that very thought – “How do I start a home business?”. For some it just seems so impossible, yet others progress along nicely and become very successful home based business owners.

But how do you become a part of that group who do make it over the hump into a seemingly endless flow of income?

Well, when someone ponders about how to start in this industry, they actually need to be more focused on SHOULD I start a home business first.

Why? Because when someone asks about the HOW, they more than likely haven’t put much thought into what they might want to actually do.

Otherwise their question would be more along these lines “Josh, how do I start a cosmetic or nutrition home business?”.

So before we go any further let’s think a little bit deeper about this whole working from home thing shall we?

OK, I want you to mentally answer these next few questions about a home business:

• Why do you want to start a home business?
• What benefits and advantages do you know about them?
• What disadvantages do you think they have?
• What kind of skills do you have that can assist you with the success of your business?
• What are your short term and long term goals for your business?
• Just exactly what products or services do you think you will market?
• Who are your customers or target market?
• What kind of budget do you have until you start generating an income?
• How are you going to produce your products?

So, how did you get on with that list of questions? It’s quite a bit to consider isn’t it?

Hey, if you couldn’t answer all of them this time round that’s OK, don’t worry, because I will gently walk you through the more important points in more detail.

I know this may have been a little wakeup call but I need you to really start thinking on the right track if you are serious about wanting to start a home business that is successful.

Now, let’s continue forward and set you off on the initial steps of how to start a home business.

Find Out What Your Passions Are Before You Start a Home Business

If you have absolutely no idea what you think you might want to do for your home business, then write down what your passions are. Where am I going with this?

Well, if you have a true passion for something, then it most likely means you have a wealth of knowledge on it.

It might be something you do for a hobby, in your spare time or perhaps it relates to your primary job. It may well be sewing, brick laying, gardening or even dog training. If you have a passion for it, then write it down.

Now that you have a few ideas I bet you could share your knowledge and expertise to other people around the world, who are seeking someone just like you so you can help them solve their problems.

The main point I’m trying to get across here is that this is the best place to start, because you aren’t starting from zero, you aren’t required to learn something and work your way up to become an expert.

But by all means, if you want to advance yourself in one of your ideas that really appeals to you, pick up a book and learn more about it. It won’t seem like work, because your passion will turn it into fun!

If you are still a bit stuck follow this link to home based business opportunities to help you start a home business

All right then, now you have some ideas of what you really might want to do. It’s time to hone in a little on your choices. What I need you to do is…

…Identify a Niche Market That Relates to a Passion

It’s all well and good if you know what you are passionate about, but what you need to find out is if you can provide solutions to a need in your area of interest.

It is important that you have a market to tap in to, there is no point in starting a home business on travel because there is just too much competition.

What you have to do is find your niche. What I mean is that you have to narrow down your topic into categories and sub categories if need be.

Let’s go back to the dog training example. Usually people need their dogs trained because they are disobedient. But, you could focus on several niches such as:

• Training for dogs between 3-6months old
• Teaching owners how to make a dog less aggressive
• Provide advice to owners who has a dog that previously came from another owner
• Consult owners how to train dogs over 7 years old

The list could go on and on, but you can see where I’m going with this.

You could also do some research on the internet yourself and find out what people are looking for by joining related forums and online communities. This could be a very time consuming exercise though.

The best way to start a home business, which is what I did, was use a software program (this is the same one that literally showed me how to build my website) that lets you type in a keyword of ‘Dog training’ for example.

Then it will return with how much demand there is for common phrases which are searched for on the internet that have ‘Dog training’ in it. This also gives you new ideas that you may have never thought of too, this is just absolute magic!

You are also told how many other websites there are that relate to the list of keywords.

This is important, because you can see which sub-categories have far too much supply (the amount of competition from other websites).

You can also easily identify the pure gems. This is when a lot of people are searching for a particular phrase, maybe “House dog training” which will have a huge demand and a very low number of websites that relate to “House dog training”.

This tool allows you to pick and choose a niche that can be very profitable. Imagine trying to do this type of research by hand, it will take you hours and hours.

If you want to ask me more questions on the program I used, then just submit a request in the form at the bottom of this page.

However, if you would like to keep your research methods offline for now, then how about going to places where your target audience hangs out.

For example, you could try going to some dog training schools and ask questions on what people’s problems are when it comes to their dogs needing training.

Eventually you are going to pick up on a common need that people are constantly looking for where your competition aren’t adequately servicing this need. This is the ideal place to be to start a home business.

If you do find an unmet need then you have to think how your business can respond to it with regards to what service or product you will be able to supply, bearing in mind that you have some passion and interest in that area.

Consider the Competition

By this stage you should have a fairly good idea of what you are going to do for your home business.

Before you start a home business you need to get some kind of feel for the competition out there who have a foot hold in your potential niche market.

The main purpose for doing so is to determine what kind of competition you may be going up against.

Here are a few things to consider:

• How big is your competition?
• Are they a large company or many smaller companies?
• How well established are they?
• Is their reputation very high, do they advertise a lot, are they dominant in your potential market?
• Are you able to bring anything new to the market that has been overlooked?
• Find out which countries they have a market share in and unexplored countries. You may be able to tap into the market of a country that hasn’t been catered for.
• What end of the market does your competition focus on? Are they neglecting the lower or upper ends?

Your aim should me to determine whether or not you are able to beat your strongest competition (if any) in your niche or at least claim a very good market share of it.

If you aren’t confident in doing this then you should perhaps move onto another niche or sub-niche before start a home business.

Make a Business Plan - Then Start a Home Business!

You shouldn’t only just have a niche by now, but you should have a niche that you have done some decent market research on.

You need to be reasonably confident that you can at least be just as good as your toughest competitor.

To start a home business you need to carefully and thoroughly think about your idea so you can devise a plan of attack.

What is a business plan? Generally speaking, this is a series of precisely selected goals and objectives that you formulate together so you know what direction you want to take your business into and ensures you stay on track.

The effective characteristic of having a business plan is that it really helps to keep you focused.

It significantly reduces the risk of you going off course and losing sight of that ultimate goal at the end.

The added benefit of developing a business plan is that in the process you will come across obstacles and threats to your business that you didn’t see at the start.

It gives you the opportunity to take action now and minimize those dangers before you properly start a home business.

OK, since you now know what a business plan is and the purpose of having one, it’s time to start thinking about what goes into one.

Here we are going to use a little technique called SWOT Analysis. In other words, think about your businesses Strengths Weakenesses Opportunities and Threats.

The strengths that you come up with will be used to your advantage against the competition. You need to think how you can use your strengths to set you apart from your competition.

You might find that your strength is effective marketing skills. You need to try and use this to blow the competition out of the water.

When you discover potential weaknesses, you need to come up with ways to minimize them. A weakness could be as simple as the time it takes to reply to customer inquiries.

So what you could do is hire someone to help extend your capabilities in the customer service area.

Opportunities present themselves all the time in the business world. The ones that you identify should be carefully considered as to how you can use them to your advantage to give you that extra stride to get ahead when you first start a home business.

This could be something like affiliate programs (promoting other peoples products in return for commissions) or other partner opportunities. Having an additional income never hurts.

The threats you come up with are the things that are most likely to bring your business down or seriously damage its growth. You need to be ready to respond in the event of one happening.

It’s always best to plan for the worse, that way you should be able to get by without being affected too badly.

Now, that is a lot to think about isn’t it?

Once you have spent a decent amount of time brainstorming your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, you need to create your business strategy.

What I mean is that you need to think how to best utilize and minimize them.

From here you will be in a position to put together your goals and objectives for your business. Make sure you generate good objectives that will help you achieve each and every goal for as many aspects of your business you can think of.

Here are some examples of the areas where you might have goals in.

• Customers service quality – Do you want to have a good record of customer service?
• Products and services – Is there a certain number of products you want to be selling in 12 months time?
• Your reputation – Do you want to known internationally?
• Sales and Marketing – Do you want to excel in these areas more and go online?
• Income and monetization – How many streams of income do you aim to have?
• Your market share – What size client and customer base are you aiming to own?

Once you have decided on your goals and have the objectives to help you achieve them you should have a pretty good idea of where your business is headed and HOW you are going to get there.

Having this business plan is a very important part of the process when you start a home business as it gives you the big picture of how you are going to succeed.

Remember that you plan should remain flexible and open to change as you progress forward with your business and don’t be afraid to make alterations.

The final product of your business plan will lead to a vast list of tasks that will need to be completed so that your goals and objectives can be achieved.

So Where to From Here?

Now that you have your business plan in hand start doing those tasks!

Yes that’s right, you need to start working on that list of tasks and jobs so you complete your objective and goals. There is no point developing a plan if you aren’t going to act on it.

So the best thing to do is actually start completing each and every task. Get going with a strong pace and keep the momentum there.

Once you see some progress you will be proud of your accomplishments and that feeling is more than enough to keep you after burners fueled for the next set of tasks.

Do them small steps at a time, make the tasks doable, you will find the objectives will be easier to meet that way.

Should I Make the Transition?

When is it an appropriate time to give up your full time job and give the home business your full attention?

That’s a good question, but this could be a little while away yet depending how early you get your business established.

First things first, and that is to constantly chip away at your business each week and don’t slack off. You have to keep going until that first stream of income starts flowing in.

This is a very exciting moment from when the thought to start a home business first crossed your mind.

But once you start earning, you need to remain focused on building the depth and width of that stream of income. At the same time you need to be working on ways to add more streams too.

The time to become a full-time entrepreneur is when those streams of income are stable enough so that your dependency on your regular day job disappears.

The best indication is when an hour of your time at home is worth more than the hourly rate of what you are being paid at your full-time job.

Well done! You now have a good solid insight on how to start a home business!

We have covered a huge amount of information together and it may pay to go through it again more thoroughly so you fully understand everything.

I hope I have given you some useful guidance on how to start a home business.

There are a lot more things to cover once you get started. More specifically, just how you are going to accomplish your goals, tasks and objectives in your business plan?

It can be a very hard road, so if you need some kind of assistance I will do my best to help. All you need to do is submit a question to me in the form below.

Good luck on your quest to success!

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