Work Smart: Sharpen Your Business!
Have you ever cut down a tree? Did you use an axe or a
chainsaw? Was the blade dull or sharp?
If the blade was dull, you undoubtedly found the project to be a
lot of HARD WORK! In contrast, if the blade was sharp, you
accomplished your goal a lot faster and with much less effort.
No matter what the project, we use tools to help us get the job
done faster and easier. A well designed and maintained tool will
be much more efficient and will save us a great deal of effort
and frustration. The tool will actually do most of the work for
us. In other words, working smart is better than working
too hard.
So it is with running a home business. Our work at home business
is a tool to help us make money. How well it does that will
depend on whether we are diligent at keeping it "sharp" and
efficient.
Take a look at each component of your home business.
Typically you have: - Product or Service--this is what
you are promoting, possibly an affiliate program
- Webhost--don't underestimate the value of a quality
host for your site
- Website--what everyone looks at, it
represents your business
- Advertising/promotional
plan--may include email, autoresponders, classified ads, ezine
advertising, traffic exchanges etc.
- System for
monitoring/tracking your website and promotional efforts--don't
neglect this
All these components together
constitute your home business. Why examine each part?
Well, they say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
You can have a great product or service to sell, but if your
advertising is "dull", not doing the job, your great product
probably won't make you any money.
Now look at it from the other side. If you have a "dull"
product, something that nobody wants or needs, you had better
have a fantastic promotional campaign. Even then, you're
going to work much harder to make money than you would if you
had both a "sharp" product and a "sharp" promotional campaign.
How can you make sure your business is "sharp"?
Fortunately, there's a lot of information available on all these
subjects. I have a number of articles and ebooks by a variety of
skilled marketers available on my website. Take time to learn
from these sources.
One thing I strongly suggest as Step One in starting a work at
home business is to carefully choose an affiliate program that
not only gives you a great product or service to promote, but
also provides an excellent program of training, support and
marketing, thus helping you keep your business "sharp" and
profitable.
Let me illustrate what I'm talking about with one of the 2
programs I feature on my home website--the Plug-In Profit Site