What is a home business? This question is asked by many people online.
Some of the people asking this question are looking for a way to make money without leaving the comfort of their homes. They are tired of the 9-5 work routine and are tired of driving in traffic everyday to go to work.
For some, the idea of having a boss is intolerable and they want to be their own boss. Many others are parents with young kids like me who can’t work outside of the home.
Many stay at home moms need to feel like they are helping hubby bring in some income so they search for ways to start a home business. There are a ton of reasons why we are currently in the home business era.
The thing that makes this very possible for many is the advent of the internet. People can now connect to millions of people across the world via a simple website like mine right here.
Today I want to address the question ‘What is a home business?’. I will explain what this is and give you ideas on how to start one. Without any further ado, let me give you a crude definition of a home business.
Definition of a home business
A home business in my opinion is a business that can be done almost entirely from home. In many cases in this internet era, it involves having a website through which you present your business idea to the world.
Your home business can be product sales or service rendering. Either way, it is a kind of business that does not require an hour commute to work and can be done at any time of the day and from any where with an internet connection.
What are the various kinds of home businesses?
There are so many kinds of home businesses now our days. The most popular ones are affiliate marketing, social marketing, email marketing and direct marketing.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing in which one person (the affiliate/publisher ) promotes the product of another (the advertiser) and gets paid a percentage of the sales as commission.
It works by linking a publisher to an advertiser. You do this by getting affiliate links from the advertiser, and posting them on your website or social media page if allowed.
Say for example that you are passionate about hiking gears and have plenty of experience on this topic. You could promote many related products in this category and post affiliate links acquired from an advertiser that is known to make great hiking gears.
If this advertiser has an affiliate program (many companies do), they will pay you the publisher a percentage(commission) of the sale of that product if someone goes through your site and buys the product.
To read more about affiliate marketing, read my post titled, what is affiliate marketing and how does it work?
You can also read the post titled what is the amazon affiliate program to learn more about this program.
Social Marketing
Social marketing is not very different from affiliate marketing. The difference here is, instead on depending on search engines like google, yahoo and Bing for traffic to your website, you use social media like YouTube, Facebook, twitter and Pinterest.
The easiest way to draw attention to your business on Facebook for example is to build a page for you business. Then post information related to your business there and link all this information back to your website.
Another excellent way to draw traffic to your online business is by joining Facebook groups that are related to your niche. Some Facebook groups have thousands of members. If you post great information in some of these groups, you can send a lot of traffic to your website.
Read more about building a Facebook page here.
Pinterest is a great visual platform used by many to make a full time income online. Many businesses post captivating images on Pinterest and link them to their business website. If you want to read more on ways to make money on pinterest, click here.
YouTube has become very popular nowadays. Anyone with a talent for making short captivating videos can make full time income on you tube. There are many ways to make money on YouTube. Read my post titled how to make money on YouTube for more information.
There are many different kinds of social media you can use depending on which kind of home business you have. Some like Pinterest and YouTube are best suited for visual items, others like Yummly are for food related business and twitter is more suited for news flash.
Email Marketing
Lately as I mentioned earlier, many have jumped on the internet bandwagon trying to make some dollars online. They have set up various types of businesses selling different products and services.
When you break these internet businesses down, you will find that the big time marketers all rely on email marketing.
Think about how many people may leave a website after visiting it for the first time without buying a single product?
According to statistics, it mentions that on average only 1% of website visitors make a purchase on the first visit no matter how interested they are in the product or service.
So for newbies in home business, it is wise to make use of email marketing.
Even though there are plenty of low cost and free marketing techniques, you will have to expend plenty of time to maximize your marketing efforts. One of the most popular ways of advertising a business is email marketing.
Email can be a powerful marketing tool, if you know how to use it. No one likes to have spam fill their inbox, and in the United States, spam is illegal, with the Federal Trade Commission going after major spammers.
Rather than spamming millions of email addresses, build a list of customers and prospective customers and market to them. You can learn more about email marketing and how to do it right by clicking here.
Direct Marketing
With direct marketing, you own the product or act as a middleman between the seller and the buyer. Typically, you use sites like Amazon, Esty and Ebay to sell your products.
You pay a fee to display your products and pay a certain percentage to these platforms when your product is sold.
Lets say for example that you are really good at making things from home e.g crotchet hats, sweaters, scarfs and leg warmers. You can sell these things to a huge market at amazon, eBay or esty.
Currently at eBay, you can display your first 50 item for free but you pay 10% to eBay after your product is sold. You also pay some money to pay-pal which is the medium your client will use to pay you if you are selling on eBay.
You can sell a variety of stuff on Amazon. You can also sell digital item such as eBooks and novels. Many people make a leaving writing and sell fiction on Amazon. Read more on how to publish your eBook and paper back on Amazon kindle here.
Esty is a great place to sell art and craft. It is free to join. Read my review of Esty for more information.
If you don’t want to sell products, you can sell your services at sites like Fiverr. You can list a variety of gigs and get people from all over the world pay for your services.
On fiverr, there are a lot of writing and translation gigs. You can teach English to a kid from China and other places via vipkid and other programs like it. The possibilities are endless.
What is a home business opportunity?
I was wondering when you were going to ask this question. A great home business opportunity is one that is centered around a niche. This is sometimes called niche marketing.
This kind of opportunity should have all the tools you need to grow your business. Tools like education, a big helpful community, a domain platform, a website building platform, hosting, security and 24/7 customer service is very important.
When you engage in niche marketing, you are targeting a specific group of people and trying to solve their problem. To find your market niche, you need to answer a series of questions.
What are you passionate or interested in? It this thing sell-able? How hard will selling it be?
Let’s say for example that you are passionate about traveling the world? Ok that’s great but this is a field not a niche because it is very broad.
Now ask yourself, what about traveling do I really like? Is it the hotels I stay in, the sites I visit, the different cultures I experience? Questions like this can help you narrow your niche.
You could decide after careful consideration that you love to travel because of the different cultures you encounter.
This is a step closer to fine tuning your niche. The are thousands of different cultures around the world. This means you can narrow this even further.
You could after even more thinking realize that you are actually interested in middle eastern cultures. You want to learn and try to understand it and will want some of the world to understand it with you. Now you’ve arrived at your niche cool right?
Not really! Once you find your answer, you need to determine whether or not you can make money doing it. The best way to do this is to carry out a keyword research.
A keyword research tool should be a big part of any home business opportunity.
What is a keyword research and why is it so important?
A keyword research according to the online oxford dictionary is a word or concept of great significance or a significant word mentioned in an index.
In lay person term, it is a phrase people type in a search box when looking for something online.
Let’s say for example that you got up this morning and noticed some pinpoint reddish looking rashes that itch like hell on your bottom. The first thing you do like many people is to google it right?
Well the phrase you use in google to find an answer to your problem is called a keyword.
If you are going to start a business, you want to find out if people are interested in it. You will do this by using either a free keyword tool from google or a paid keyword tool like Jaaxy or long tail pro to find suitable keywords for your business.
During this research, you will be able to determine the kind of competition you will face and other challenges involved.
For more information on this topic and how to make a thorough keyword research, read my post titled why is a keyword so important.
Once you determine that your business has a good chance of succeeding, it is time to build it. It does not take long to build a website at all these days.
A good place to go to get all the information and tools you need to build your website and start your business is wealthy affiliate.
They will provided you with all the tools I have mentioned above.
What is best home business to start in? Wealthy affiliate
Everything I have learned about affiliate marketing, email marketing, content marketing, niche marketing and much more, I have learned from the wealthy affiliate program.
I started with their free membership and was able to build a website for free too. I started my business and started making some money about four months after I joined.
It was not a lot but it was good enough to keep me motivated and working hard. I have been a member for two years now and I am a yearly premium member. I chose yearly because it is cheaper and I got a black Friday deal that broke down to about $26 a month with free hosting for up to 50 websites.
Do not take it from me. Visit them at wealthyaffiliate.com and learn more about what a home business is.
Cheers Denise
