Work at Home Tips:
Time management can be difficult enough when the line between your job and personal life is clearly defined, but working from home produces all sorts of new issues.
You maybe inclined to put in additional hours while working in your PJ’s and not feeling like you are actually doing “work” work. Contrary to that, you may be so much distracted by domestic chores and tasks that you may not be able to get anything done.
Some of these distractions come along in the form of:
- Private phone calls and deliveries that you may receive
- Readily available television or internet surfing
- Friends or neighbors dropping by without notice
- Family members who do not recognize that you are actually supposed to be working
These problems will amplify if you don’t have a private office where you can close your door.
Below you will find a few suggestions for you to start with planning your situation to give you the best productivity strategies.
Tip #1: Designate Your Work Space
Even if you don’t have a separate office space, it is important to draw the boundaries as separate as possible from the rest of your home. Low traffic areas and corners of a room would be better especially if you can have your back to the rest.
A divider would do wonders if at all possible to place.
Another important thing is to have well organized work area. It is highly recommended that you create folders for “Process”, “Keep” and “Discard” materials.
You may need a separate folder for your current project as well, the idea being ability to find and place everything you’re dealing with quickly.
Since you are working from home, in majority cases we can assume that you are reasonably comfortable with computer use and one incredibly useful tool would be Evernote. It is highly recommended that you master Evernote as soon as possible.
It is important to keep your desk free from pieces of paper all over the place, unrelated objects, so on.
Tip #2: Realize this is “Real Work”
Just because you are working from home does not change the fact that your livelihood depends on it. It requires your full comittment and focus.
One of the real problems with working from home is sticking to a set schedule and a minimum of dedicated hours to get your projects done.
If you’ve worked in the corporate world before, you can visualize that environment where slacking and procrastinating were frowned upon.
The same should apply to your work from home environment.
Tip #3: Set Your Schedule around Your Most Productive Time
Figure out when you are at the top of your productivity. Some people are night hawks, and others get up early in the morning and produce their best results. Whatever the case, set your work schedule around your high productivity time.
Tip #4: Stay Motivated
Always keep in mind why you wanted to work from home to begin with. Remember the chores of working a regular job, commuting long hours to and from, having to put up with others’ rules imposed upon you etc.
Remember that you have a much bigger potential to make more money through your own business.
Always have a meaningful goal to achieve both monetarily and professionally.
4 Steps To A Highly Successful Internet Business
Planning and preparation are the keys to a successful online business. Too many companies and business people lose thousands or even millions of dollars each year, simply because they fail to understand the real value of proper planning and implementation.
You have to be ready for any possible outcome and budget your time and resources appropriately. Here are 4 simple steps to take your business to the next level and stay successful for many years to come.
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Step 1: Get The Necessary Information
Do your research and studies first before everything else. When you do transactions online, you have to be ready for possible questions and concerns by your clients and fellow marketers.
You cannot waste time researching just when the issue arises. In some cases, it may already be too late to find a solution; or you will have to waste more time repairing damages since you skipped getting vital information.
Allocate around 30 minutes or more at least per day to study your product or services. Spend time in forums talking to other experts and ask the same possible questions that your customers may have.
Know the competition. You will save more time managing the business if you know what your competition is up to. Talk to owners of related businesses, as well as clients, to find out if they’re cooking up some new marketing strategies.
Always stay updated with recent technologies and approaches so you can stay ahead of your competitors.
When getting information, you should always look out for new opportunities to improve your business. Make the necessary updates and upgrades to keep everything innovative. You should ask for client feedback all the time too, so that you can provide them with exactly what they need.
There are plenty of ways to stay ahead when it comes to fresh news. Reviews will help boost your reputation, as well as give you an insight on what clients truly need.
Step 2: Set Up Your Websites
Allocate time to come up with the best possible presentation for your products and services. Get some attention-
Put a list of the frequently asked questions and answers on your site, so that you no longer have to spend time replying to emails or calls for the same questions being asked over and over again. Customers will most likely only contact you for individual concerns not included in the FAQs.
When setting up your web site, make sure that it is very easy to navigate. Most customers do not have the patience to figure out any complicated structure on a web page.
You only have a few seconds to grab your prospects’ attention, so make sure that all the necessary elements are in place, you communicate exactly what you want the visitors to do, and you deliver information in a precise manner.
Step 3: Advertise To Your Target Market
Targeting your niche market will boost the chances of successful sales, instead of just spamming online and getting very few or zero results.
You will save more time by talking to people who are actually interested to buy your particular products and services. There are plenty of ways to gather the right clients. You may join specific forums and online boards, or exchange links with other web site owners having related content.
There are many other ways to market your product online. Some of the most effective include:
- Social bookmarking your sites and non-
self- serving sites at Digg, Stumbleupon, Propeller, etc. Most of them frown upon marketing activities, so it’s best to stay under the radar by posting at least 3 times more non- self- serving sites than your own.
- Creating simple videos and posting them at high-
traffic video- sharing sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Yahoo videos, AOL videos, Revver, etc.
- Writing articles and posting them at high-
page rank article directories like Ezinearticles, Buzzle, Goarticles, Searchwarp, Articledashboard, Amazines, Articlealley, etc. You may also post your content at content- sharing sites like Squidoo, Hubpages, Wetpaint, Google Knol, and Qassia.
Step 4: Finish the Sale
Aim to have every transaction lead to successful sales. Answer the questions and concerns of your clients. Make things easy and convenient for everyone involved, and you can boost the number of sales transactions you get per day.
Volume sales are very useful if you are trying to reach quotas or want to boost income quickly. In other occasions, you may want to profit from low quantity high-
Once you get a client, make sure you do all means to satisfy them and re-
The relationship between seller and buyer does not end with the payment and delivery of the product. You should continue the business relationship by asking the client about their concerns and suggestions. Find out how they find your product or service. Adjust your system to better cater to their future needs.
You may also give a second call or email message asking how the product is, and if they would like to claim a “customer only” discount on another product. You need to have effective customer service to be readily available to clients.
It’s a lot easier to sell to a satisfied past customer than to find new prospects, so keep your customers happy and they would be willing to buy more often from you.
Aside from enjoying repeat sales from satisfied clients, you will build a bigger network because happy customers will refer you to their friends and other potential buyers.
The internet is a great source of information, wherein you can avail of new techniques to keep your business fresh and new. Your staff should be very capable of handling a variety of clients, in order to keep up with their changing demands.
Know how the market responds to your approaches. Create a plan on how you intend to deal with competitors in the long run. Your marketing and management approaches should always have a goal and specific time frame for accomplishment.
Test and track different methods of doing business, select the winners, and continue to improve upon them.
