You spent thousands of dollars and at least four years of your life just to start your career. Now after years of hard work you wonder what options exist for you. One of your options is whether a home based business is right for you and your family. This article will give you 7 good reasons why you should start a home based business.1. FlexibilityThe Internet business operator knows the value of being at home. You can work whenever it is convenient for you and your family. If you have an hour or two, you can work on your business. If you know you will be free every Tuesday night, you can plan your business appointments for those times. You control how much, when and where you will spend your time on your business.2. Low costsMost start-up internet-business do not require large sums of money to start. The investment is usually under $100 and rarely exceeds $2000. Additionally, a home based business does not require the large overhead many businesses required. Many home based operators deal with companies that drop ship to their customers relieving you of added shipping costs.3. TimeA home based business requires less time and effort to become successful. With the traditional brick and mortar business requiring anywhere from 3 to 5 years, the traditional home based business usually shows signs of success as early as 6 months to 1 year from start up.4. Service or ProductWhen you know you have a product or can offer a service that will be in high demand you should start a home based business. People recognize the value of a unique skill or product; as a result people will look to you as the one who will bring it to them.5. PeopleThe typical work environment does not allow you to choose who you will come into contact with. As a result, you often are working with people you don’t like, who don’t like you, or people who make your job more difficult. The home based business operator chooses those individuals they want to work with and the customers they sell to. If someone becomes too much trouble, you cut them loose.6. Your CareerYou have the option to continue working your career while you build your online-business. You don’t have to worry about your finances, insurance, or other benefits if you keep your career. You can build your home bases business as quickly or as slowly as you choose.7. YourselfYou may find owning your own home based business brings you greater satisfaction than your career. Knowing you have been able to create a successful business venture is a tremendous ego boost and gives you bragging rights to all of your friends and associates.Running an online-business is not for everyone. Those who own their own online-businesses know the reasons above will eventually lead them to greater financial success while allowing them to feel better about themselves and their life. Once you start your own business you may find more than 7 good reasons why you should start a home based business.
Home Based Business – Beating Off Recession and Securing Your Future
The world has slid into the depths of economic downturn. Many big and small companies have either laid their staff off or trimmed their salaries. All those who have taken housing or automobile loans are worried. They are in a terrible fix as they do not know how they are going to repay the loan amounts or by not being able to loose either their house or car. It is for this reason many people have either already started or are contemplating on starting their own home based business.
Discover your talent:
In order to effectively make it through the present economic crisis you may have to draw up a financial plan. You have to look for a back up plan which will take care of your decreasing income and job security. Find out ways to generate extra income. For this you will have to discover your hidden abilities and hone them to take on the economic instability.
Each one of us has some special abilities or expertise that can be put to good use during adversities. You might have picked some experience, knowledge or skills at the job where you have worked. Now is the time to make use of those qualities to carry you over the difficult times.
You can start your home based business on a freelance basis. Your decision-making abilities, administrative insight and supervisory talent and strengths will prove to be useful.
Honing your skills:
Once you have discovered your hidden skills, you’ll need to perfect them. Get in touch with those who are already doing well in the field of home business. Do research on the Internet. Remember your home venture can prove to be profitable only if you recognize what it takes to make it happen.
You don’t have to be overly eager to make a fast buck. You will need to constructively and gradually improve your knowledge and skills to be able to deliver the goods. Don’t believe in get-rich-quick schemes. You cannot become millionaire overnight with any home based business.
Bidding farewell to your present job:
In your quest to be self-sustaining and financially independent don’t say goodbye to your present job without making sure that your future is secure. You can continue to work from home without having to quit your existing job. You can also get the help of your spouse or other relatives to look after your enterprise while you are at your regular job.
When you run your venture from home, it trains you to pick up some managerial skills that can be used at your ‘real’ job. You can prove to be an intangible asset to your organization. However, you will need to make a choice between your business and your job at some stage.
Press home your advantage:
To overcome the hard times, spot your talent and press home your advantage. Initially you can work freelance. Reach out to your potential customers and tell them about your product or service.
There is no harm in going whole hog in accomplishing your dream but at the same time identify your strengths and acknowledge your limits. Your home based business can help you go from strength to strength only when you have a well thought-out business plan in place.
The Finer Points of Internet Auctions
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.