Tips to Successfully Run a Home Business

Feeling a bit melancholic that all my favorite shows have ended their seasons (9 months till "Lost"!), I started to think about what I will do differently if I were to start my home business today.


My husband and I started PowerHomeBiz.com in 1999, and a decade on the Web has taught me a lot in terms of what to do (and what not to do) when running a home-based business. Here are some in my list:

• Decide what you do best, and focus on it. For other things you can do marginally, consider hiring others to free up your time to do what you do best.


• If you are concerned about the cost of outsourcing or hiring outside help, calculate how much time it will take you to do the task yourself (and the opportunity cost of foregoing things you should be doing), and see which option makes the most sense.


• Little kids and a home-based business are very hard to mix. Either you decide to work only when the entire household is sleeping (that means no sleep for you!); or you hire a babysitter or nanny during the day to watch the kids while you work.


• Sit down and make every effort to understand your business financials. Not only is the knowledge important come tax time, you can achieve your business goals faster if you know where you stand financially.


• Understand your cost structure. You can only price your products well if you know what it costs to produce them.


• You need to be very good in managing your time when running a home-based business. Otherwise, you'll often end up wondering where did time go when the day is over and you've accomplished nothing.


• Don't be ashamed to say that you run a home-based business. Other people might sneer at you for being "too small time", but they don't know that you earn 5x more than they do!


• Create a dedicated space for working in your home, and it must be a place that is convenient to you and suitable for your work habits.


• Even if you consider yourself the smartest cookie in the block, there is much to learn from other people. Participate in forums and even social network sites. Talk to other business owners and network.


• Be out there and trumpet your business. Even home-based businesses can build its brand.


• Do not ignore the social media. Participate in Twitter. Create a Facebook profile for your business. Submit content to StumbleUpon and Digg. But be sure to separate your business from your personal accounts.


• Learn how to chill out and take a break from work. Discipline yourself to stop checking emails while eating dinner with your family. And do not put your laptop in your night stand so you can check emails at 2 a.m.


• Relax and have fun. You are working from home so you can be free from the rigorous demands and timetable of a corporate environment. Take a break from work and enjoy life at home. Hurry up with work so you can live your life -- talking a walk with your dog, having ice cream with your kid, or watching your boy play tball.

My Twitter Experiment: How to Use Twitter to Market a Business

Though I created my Twitter account back in January, I never used Twitter except to send one tweet a month (which is basically nothing in the Twitter world).

Recently, I started to look seriously at Twitter and how to use it to market PowerHomeBiz.com. Maybe it's all the hoopla surrounding Ashton Kutcher's millionth follower, or a friend using Twitter to promote his organization. But in the last couple of weeks, I've been actively tweeting -- and now I'm hooked.

Sending about 3 tweets a day, I have thus far gotten about 375+ followers. I am happy with my numbers, though there are folks who were able to get thousands of followers in just one week. My target at the end of May is to have 500 followers.

Here are some things I've learned thus far in terms of using Twitter to market the business:

• Twitter users are information junkies -- and that means feeding them with quality information.
• Drop your links, but only sparingly. Twitters are easily turned off by what they perceive as spammers. Unless you talking about an excellent article from your site, resist the urge to tweet about your website again and again. That's the fastest way to lose followers.
• If people "unfollow" you, don't take it personally. Some will even come back to follow you again.
• Follow other users. Search for their names or by keywords ("home business" or "branding") then follow the users that interest you. If you follow them, there is a high likelihood that will follow you back -- and increase your follower numbers.
• Twitter is a great mechanism to check what others are saying about your business. Create saved searches of your business name or products and track what others are tweeting about your site. Then thank them for tweeting about your business (or "retweet" in Twitter parlance)
• Use hash tags # of your post's topic. This will enable your posts to become visible when users search for those topics, thus increasing your visibility.
• Use tools such as Tweetdeck to organize your preferred columns
• Track the number of users who click on your link. The URL shortening service Bit.ly http://www.bitly.com/ allows you to track the number of clicks your shortened link gets, and even show the geolocation of those who clicked.

I am still learning how to use Twitter. But I am very happy with the results thus far. It is so much easier to get traffic from Twitter (compared to Digg for example). Referrals from Twitter have increased by more than 100%, and the audiences actually are more engaged. Plus, I get to see what types of info they like by tracking retweets and mentions of our websites.

I will write more tips on how to use Twitter based on my experiences with this fast growing social media site.

7 Smart Things Successful Businesses are Doing to Ride Out the Recession

Jay Abraham, author of the upcoming book The Sticking Point Solution: 9 Ways to Move Your Business From Stagnation to Stunning Growth In Tough Economic Times has written an excellent piece on how businesses can grow in this tough economic climate.

He offers 7 "smart things that successful businesses are doing in order not just to ride out the recession but to grow and thrive as never before:"

1. Break down your numbers
2. Have a systematic, strategic process in place
3. Produce not just incremental gains but exponential gains by recognizing how your business really makes money.
4. Have clarity about all of the factors that affect your business
5. Understand your competitors' appeal, advantage, and differentiation in the market
6. Know the alternative products and services that your prospects can buy in lieu of your products and services
7. Incorporate growth thinking into everything you do

Read the complete article What Does it Mean to Get Your Business Unstuck?

Can Your Business Make a Lot of Money?

When starting a business, our first thought is often: Can I make money with this business?

I previously wrote about how to evaluate a business idea in the article Evaluating Your Business Idea and Product . The article lists some helpful questions you need to ask yourself when thinking of what products or services to offer.

But how can you quickly tell if there’s a demand for your business idea? The first step is simple: OBSERVE.

Take time out and go to the mall, or a park where a lot of people congregate. And observe the whats and the hows of their activities.

In one mall visit for example, two things stood out for me. One, almost everyone has a cellphone (or smartphone) and many can be seen talking on the phone, texting or checking their emails. Two, there’s a lot of baby boomers and older people walking about, shopping or just hanging out in the mall. This observation tells me that there’s a huge mobile market, and that catering to baby boomers can assure business owners of a sizeable customer base.

Let’s use as an example a question asked by someone from Yahoo Answers. He asked if he can make a lot of money tinting windows, both of houses and cars.

I advised him to go out and observe. Walk around the neighborhood, or drive to nearby areas, and count how many windows of homes have been tinted. Or sit down in a bench by the busy street and count the number of cars that drive past with tinted windows.

In my walks around my neighborhood, for example, rare are the houses with tinted windows and those I’ve seen are for their sunrooms. This tells me either two things: there’s a big market for a window tinting business; or that there is no demand for such a service.

The second step is to ASK.

He needs to talk to the neighbors and ask them why their windows are not tinted. Have they ever considered tinting their windows? Do they know the benefits of tinting the windows? If the answer is because they think that tinting windows is not important or necessary, then he’ll have a hard time getting customers for his new business.

While it is good to hire a market research company and scientifically poll thousands of respondents, home business owners can do well by simply keeping their eyes and ears on their target market.

The Importance of Accessibility of Location to a Small Business

The owner of a company I recently featured in Learning from Big Boys in the blog post Lessons on Retailing: Demory's Christmas Memories contacted me through Facebook that after celebrating 10 years in business, he had to announce that the business is for sale.

Their Christmas business operated one store in Maryland. They have a web presence, but more of a very simple (even amateurish-looking) Web site that merely advertises the store. They do not use the Web as an additional sales channel.

After 10 years of doing good business in their Hagertown, Maryland location, fate gave them a low blow last year.

A one-lane bridge near the store was closed in August 2008 for repairs, detouring traffic. The bridge closure dramatically reduced the number of cars passing their road. With fewer cars, their sales plummeted. Even Quiznos in the same area complained in a news article that their sales were down 50% because of the bridge closure.

The business has fought the county on getting a temporary bridge put in to at least ensure the continuous flow of traffic. The state actually approved it but the County Commisioners voted it down.

And what could be worse than a Christmas store not being accessible in the months leading to the Christmas season?

The bridge reopened on Dec. 21, 2008 but by then the damage to the business has been done. Sales dropped and cashflow became so tight. They explored the option of moving the store to another location, but they were not able to secure financing. Unable to run the store any longer, the owners then decided to sell their well establised Christmas store.

I have not seen the financials of the business, so I am not really privy to what went down. But one area that they should have pursued was to use the Web to sell their products. They should have opened an ecommerce store that allow them to sell to a wider customer base. Given this day and age of shopping online, failure to tap the Web as a selling channel can be huge kiss of death. Even with the reduced foot traffic, they could have maintained their sales through their ecommerce store.

But now the business is for sale. It's sad that a once-successful business suddenly found itself with hardly any customers because their location became inaccessible.

What could they have done to save the store?