Many people who start a home based business are not successful. The reasons why people fail will differ from person to person. I want to have a closer look at the theories of motivation to analyse some of the reasons for failure.

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Due to the structure of this industry, most of the home based business owners do not employing other people on a full time basis. They do not report to a boss on work progress on a regular basis, they do not interact with fellow workers on a daily basis as people working fulltime in a formal job do.

The motivation is totally different for the home based business owner. We must understand it to be optimally motivated every day in this environment.

Quite a lot of the people become involved in a home based business programme due to good salesmanship and not after they have done their homework. They have high expectations of making big bucks quickly, without much effort or work and study.

False Assumptions About Motivation And The Home Based Business

Many people believe that the motivation of people is only money and biological drives like hunger.

Studies have proven that the ability of money to provide motivation is very limited. It is only motivating people when they have a relatively small, simple task to perform over a short period of time. The more complex and long term the task is, the less money will be a true motivation factor.

Having a good lifestyle or the ability to travel and see the world will be considered by many people as nice to have. The big question is whether it will really motivate somebody to perform and work hard over time on a daily basis.

Most of the people that join a home based business group are motivated to join because of the guru or salesman telling them about the new lifestyle and the big money they can earn. The problem is that motivation does not last. It is not enough or a good enough motivating factor to keep that individual slogging and working hard every day.

I believe the fact that the real motivation of people is not being understood well enough in this industry by the gurus is one of the main reasons why so many people join but are not successful in making the big bucks that can be made with the programme.

Newer Theories Of Motivation And The Home Based Business Owner

People will not be motivated in their daily task if their basic needs are not satisfy. Their basic needs are not necessarily the potential better lifestyle or big bucks on some future date.

People are only motivated in the long run if they are doing something that is their passion or that interests them, something that they feel is meaningful. They must have a feeling of being part of a community. They must work for, be part of, and believe that they are working towards something much bigger than themselves. They must build a legacy. This legacy is not the life on the beach or travelling.

Understanding these true motivational factors of people is missing in the marketing strategies of most home based business owners when they sell their product and try to motivate people that have joined their team. Let’s have a closer look at them.

Autonomy And The Home Based Business Owner

One of the big motivational factors for people is autonomy. This is the beauty of the home based business. This is the kind of job somebody can do where he does have absolute autonomy. He has control over his time, tasks, techniques and the people he wants to work with. He does not have a boss to report to.

The home based business owner has complete autonomy over everything he does. He must develop his own business plan, set his own goals, develop his own time scales, decide for himself on his training programmes, and have his own daily plans.

I believe the importance of this as a motivational factor is not being used properly in this industry. Reasons for failure are due to the fact that many people starting out in this industry do not understand all the basic processes involved in planning a business and managing it on a day-to-day basis. More assistance is needed to assist home based business owners in this.

Mastery

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle

People are motivated if they feel that they have learned something, have developed a new skill, applied that skill successfully, and are making progress in the development of their own abilities. They must see and feel the progress. They must be able to measure and evaluate their progress regularly. The athlete preparing for a big event has a training programme. He knows where he wants to be on a specific future date. He is planning his daily exercise programme and is monitoring his progress regularly. That is the only way he can be assured that he will be in top physical form and mental state on the day of the competition. He is being motivated daily during the slogging period of exercise and preparations because he has a dream, a goal, a plan are taking action, monitor his progress daily and give him feedback on the progress.

The same principle applies to the home based business owner. He must know what he wants to achieve. He must have a plan on how he wants to get there and he has to monitor his progress daily.

There is so much knowledge that a home based business owner has to master and learn. He can be overwhelmed by that. He might not have a plan and priorities. By taking small steps every day he will not be motivated daily to keep on taking action and to work towards his goal. He will lose interest.

Purpose

Money or profits have a limited ability to motivate people. We are motivated in the long run if there is purpose in our life. We want to belong also and be part of a bigger community. We want to contribute to others. We want to find meaning in life. In his theories of motivation, Maslow called it self-actualisation. There must be a purpose bigger than ourselves in life.

I believe that in the home based business industry this is not getting enough attention. People are losing interest and becoming demotivated because the emphasis in the industry is on the “self”; my lifestyle, my travel, the way I want to spend my time, I do want to earn big bucks fast.

We must develop a way to motivate people by giving them a bigger purpose in their lives that they can work for or be part of. Every day they must feel that through their daily actions or work, they will improve their own financial situation, but they will also contribute towards the lives of other and build their legacy.

The home based business must look at the integration of social entrepreneurship as an integral part of the industry. We must also develop ways to support and motivate people working with us.

The Lessons For The Home Based Business

“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.” – Tony Robbins

It is a science to motivate people and keep them motivated. In the home based business programme, there are too many people who start but lose interest after some time. The rate of failure is too high. If failure is being defined as people not achieving in the industry what they believed they could or should have achieved, the real reason for this must be determined. My view is that the importance of the correct application of the basic theories of motivation is not being applied correctly in the industry.

The nature of the home based business lends itself to apply the theories of motivation much better. The environment to motivate people is much better than in the more formal work environment. By applying some of the theories of motivation in our business, we will make more people successful and in the process everybody working together will be more successful.

Join our team and we will keep you motivated. Your success is our success. You can reach the sky if you dream-it-plan-it-do-it daily. It will not happen overnight but remember it is a journey to your goal, not a happening.

When I started up my first home based business idea years ago, I just knew that it was going to work. To my surprise, the first couple of home based business ideas I started off with were not successful. Eventually, I gave up all hope. Does this sound like you? If you can find a way to avoid the pitfalls in the home based business world, you too can become successful working from home. Here are some of the reasons why certain home based business ideas fall through:1. Scams – If you’re like me, then you have fallen for quite a few of these. Newbies tend to want to believe everything they read. I mean really, who doesn’t want to believe that they will be making $250.00 an hour in five days? Try to steer clear of businesses that sound too good to be true and you might still have a chance to succeed.2. Too Much Work, Not Enough Pay – Yes, you’re working from home, but is it worth it? If you are an independent contractor who works for practically nothing, you’re bound to end up quitting eventually because you’ll be exhausted from the effort you put into what you do, and disappointed with what you get out of it.3. People Don’t Want What You’re Selling – We’ve all embarked upon a business venture with great gusto only to find that what we agreed to sell was something that people have no interest in. It pays off in the end to research your product and to ask yourself if what you are selling would be something that you would find very beneficial as well. If not, then it is better to try something else.4. Many Are Recruiting Programs – I, for one, am very familiar with this. If only the business itself was as exciting as the opening web page. The advertisements claim that their top earners are millionaires. Some even display photos of the actual people. They tell you that they will offer you free training and be available to you 24/7. After you have finished the training, what you are left with is a bunch of disinterested people and a monthly fee of about $40.00 to $60.00. You might be lucky if you recruit two people within the year. It’s just just too difficult to get people to sign up to programs like these.These are just a few of the reasons why home based business ideas do not work. My recommendation to you is to recognize the difference between something good and something rotten. When in doubt, do your research and always follow your true instincts!

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.