One Business Connection

Low Cost Home Business Opportunities

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:39:35 +0000

The dream of working from home fills the thoughts of most of us as we drag through a mundane day at your average job place. The dream of being your own boss, setting your own schedule and earning the pay that you deserve is so enticing. You have skills, hobbies and talents that you could use towards your own business but you only have a limited budget to work with. So what home business opportunities are available to those with limited budgets?

There is a number of works from home opportunities waiting for those of us with little money in the bank. You have to remember the key to not spending a fortune on a business is using your resources at hand wisely. For most of us we have the basic set up for a home office. These items include a computer, a printer and an Internet connection.

With these three tools you are more than halfway to several online opportunities. Here are three of home businesses that do not require a large amount of capital.

Customer Service Agent

This home business opportunity requires the above office items as well as an active home phone line and a microphone or headset. You do not have to pay money up front and the training is provided online. You read over the course, take the online exam and submit the exam online. Once you pass your training course you receive a log in id and password to your customer care site.

Phone calls are forwarded to your home phone number and you are in business. The only cost to you is the electric for the computer, the fee for the Internet connection, the cost of the phone service and a headset which will cost you about $20.00. You do not have to spend in excess to begin a home business.

Freelance Writer

As long as you enjoy writing you have the golden opportunity to become a freelance writer. There are several companies requesting various articles or stories for websites as well as magazines. You may have to pay a small fee to join a writers membership but this is not always the case. You can earn anywhere from $16 to $100 per article.

You write when you choose, what you choose. In most cases a publisher supplies a title and writing guidelines for you. You simply research the topic and write the assignment. Mostly you spend time not money, as you make money.

Sales Representative

This job does often require a start up fee that varies between products. For example if you go into business for a company such as Mary Kay or Avon, you have to purchase a starter kit that allows you to begin selling the product. You can spend $200 to $500 depending on the purchase amount.

Other companies such as those selling health beverages or nutritional supplements may require you purchase your first months supply of product for $100-$300 dollars. After you sell the product you are reimbursed. Either way the start up money is far more affordable than beginning your own company from scratch, which costs thousands of dollars before you can even begin to sell your product.

These are only three of the home business opportunities available for those who are on a tight budget. Even if you do not have a large amount of capital you can begin your own home business.

Home Business Success Stories for Women

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:52:22 +0000

As we enter the information age and the world enters a global economy, more and more women today are turning to alternative ways to earn additional income. The old adage of “go to school, get good grades and get a safe secure job with benefits” may have worked in the industrial age of our parents and grandparents. However, relying on old age advice in a new age can be a recipe for financial disaster. What are you going to do if your job gets outsourced to another country? What if you are happily married to a loving husband with three wonderful children and God forbid, your husband dies unexpectedly. In an age where most households are a two income household, how are you going to provide for your children?

Some women make an incredible income and have a job in a very stable industry. However, they never have time to spend with their children. A mother’s worst nightmare is when your youngest child calls the babysitter “mommy” instead of her. It is for these and many other reasons why women are flocking to the work from home businesses and having massive home business success. Here are some examples of home business success stories of successful women who have made the transition to the home business industry.

In a recent issue of Home Business Connection magazine, we learn the story of Ms. Elizabeth Foo. A young, single and successful woman in her mid twenties, Liz had a very successful career as a top salesperson marketing gym memberships. With a six figure income in her twenties, you would think that Liz had the ultimate lifestyle. Unfortunately, that income came with a price and the price was working 6 days a week including nights and weekends with very little time to do anything else. By getting involved in a proven home business, she was able to make $40,000 part time her first year and over $100,000 full time her second year. She now not only enjoys home business success, an incredible income, but she actually has time to enjoy it and the income continues to come in whether she personally works or not.

Dani Johnson has an incredible story of the power of owning your own business. Getting started in the work from home industry, at the age of 19, she really struggled to have success, not making any money and going deeper into debt. However, after investing in herself and getting much needed training and development, she was able to go from being broke to becoming a home business success as the #1 producer in her work from home opportunity and earned her first million by the age of 23.

Margaret Tanaka was a highly successful producer at a public broadcasting station in Chicago, Illinois. However, she and her family were tired of the big city life and wanted to slow down. Of course, with a slower pace in life, her income took a huge hit as well. Prior to moving from Chicago, she got involved in a work from home business but didn’t do anything with it for 3 plus years. She finally made a decision to get started and work her business like a business. It’s a good thing she did that. Her husband unfortunately died at the age of 36. However, because of the time she invested into building her business she was able to take off completely, spend time with her son and still earn monthly checks that averaged $5000 a month.

There are many reasons why getting started in a work from home opportunity is often the right move for women. Success in this type of opportunity is usually based on effectively communicating your vision for what the business opportunity can do for people. Women, generally speaking are better communicators than men, which is one of the reasons why so many women are coming to this industry and are experiencing massive home business success.

Success in this type of opportunity is also based on building effective relationships, another trait that women tend to do a better job at then men. For example, one of the reasons why Margaret Tanaka decided to give her business opportunity another try is because her sponsor, also a successful woman distributor within the opportunity constantly followed up with her through letters and phone calls over the 3 plus year period that Margaret was inactive in the business. As you can see there are many home business success stories for women. The only question that remains is will you be the next one?

Small Business IT – Doing More With Less in 2009 – Part II

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:18:08 +0000

With over a decade of Information Technology experience working with small and medium sized businesses all over the San Francisco Bay Area, Mark H. Jessen’s Small Business Technology articles offer ideas and understanding on how IT helps small business succeed.

Introduction

Part II of this two part article will look at ways you can consolidate your companies IT systems overhead in 2009. There is no doubt that 2009 is going to be a difficult year for business. You can go into the New Year with one of two mindsets; "We’re going to stay the course and hope for the best" or "We will look at this economy as an opportunity to reinvent ourselves into a lean, agile, competitor in our market." My goal is to have you see 2009 as a time of opportunity to find ways of doing the same, or more, with less. Make 2009 the year you use IT to make your company become a lean, agile, market competitor.

Smaller Servers, Doing More, Using Less – If you haven’t already consider migrating your older standalone chassis servers to low profile rack mounted units and blade server systems can reduce costs in a number of ways. They are both good options for reducing the amount of real estate and power needed in your data center. And both are ideal for running application virtualization software to reduce the number of physical application servers needed. Application virtualization is now a very popular way to consolidate both hardware and management costs in the data center.

Consolidate and Centralize Storage – Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Networks (SAN) are two proven ways to make company data management safer and easier. And by making sure all of your work is stored where it will be uniformly and consistently backed up you reduce the risk of lost data. Adding VPN based storage solutions for your mobile users helps keep their work safe and secure too.

Not Your Mothers Appliances – Use dedicated multitasking appliances for consolidating basic network services like Domain Name Service (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam, and Intrusion detection systems (IDS). There are currently a number of appliance makers in the market that have products that can handle your basic network functionality from single 1U rack mounted units. The savings include their reduced footprint, lower power consumption, ease of use, and centralized management.

How many applications are you supporting? – Depending on the size of your business, you could easily have dozens. First, audit all the applications and make sure they are still relevant and contributing to the company’s bottom line. Next, look for overlap between complimentary departments like, sales and marketing, where consolidation of similar applications would be mutually beneficial. And use this economy as an opportunity to renegotiate and right-size your commercial software licensing contracts.

Open to door to Open-Source – Now is the perfect time to look for less costly open-source options. More and more companies are looking seriously at Linux on the desktop. OpenOffice, MySQL, and SugarCRM for example are reliable options and all have strong support communities. Almost any type of business can benefit from open source software opportunities. New, as well as budget strained, small businesses should look seriously at the early start cost savings advantages available

Think Global, Outsource Local – What opportunities can you find right in your own backyard when you consider local or regional outsourcing to reduce some of your application development and support costs. Within a five mile radius of you, there are probably a dozen application developers hungry for your business right now. Use contractors to rapidly develop applications that you can get up and running quickly will help keep you ahead of the field. The sooner your ideas can come to fruition the sooner your business benefits. The agile company that can find new ways to quickly meet its customer’s needs wins.

Summary

Earlier in December 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) announced that the U.S. economy had been officially in a recession since December of 2007. Now the question is when can we expect this recession to end? Best estimates are that by April of 2009, we may be at the low point of the curve, leading economists to estimate that this economic contraction could last as long as 35 to 40 months which means conservatively 2010, and possibly 2011.

This means small business IT management will need to be prepared to meet the challenges of this recession with a list of cost saving measures that will keep your company lean, agile, flexible, and competitive.

So make 2009 the year of seeking out the advantages and opportunities of doing more with less.