Internet Home Based Business Advice

Don Miller from Making Sales Making Money contacted me today and asked me if I would cover the topic of home based business and offer some advice on it. Recently he decided to host a group writing project on home based businesses and stressed how important it was if I would chip in a few words of advice.

For me, I never really considered what I do as a “home based business” but I guess that is actually what I have here. Typically, I always linked up a home based business with something like running an eBay store or something like that. I visioned converting your garage into an assembly line and shipping station. In my opinion, that is a true home based business. Another example would be running your own daycare business from home. Things of that nature.

But, I guess running a bunch of blogs and making money with them is a home based business too. So that is the level of advice I can provide coupled with a few common sense items that tend to get overlooked. So here goes:

1. When you launch a blog, don’t automatically think that by doing so, it will make money on its own. Many people see blogs as an easy way out of having to work a real world 9 to 5 job. Yes, I agree… your job sucks but make no mistake, my job managing a boat load of blogs isn’t all that fun at times either. Trying to make enough money by blogging and escaping from a typical 9 t0 5 job just delivers you to a new situation that actually takes a lot longer than an 8 hr shift and it makes far less money for at least a year. When you decide to make the switch, you’ll lose a lot of money the first year. It’s best to continue working and just bite the bullet and not sleep for a year while you establish yourself. Long story short: Blogging is hard work if you’re trying to make money doing it.
2. Working hard is great.. but don’t be a stupid about it. Working hard is NOT as effective as working smart. However if you combine the two, you’re gold.
3. Treat your business blog as if it were a brick and mortar business. Most local businesses invest money into advertising in the YellowPages, they pay for Internet advertising and actively promote their business. Back many years ago when I ran a local computer sales and repair shop out of my house I would constantly market my business. If eating at a restaurant with my wife, I would give the waitress my business card and ask her questions about her computer and quickly identify any trouble or needs she may have had. 9 out of 10 times, there was a need recognized and a solution presented right at the table which eventually lead to either a sale of a new computer or a service call for upgrade or repair. Long story short: Promote and market your blog anywhere and everywhere, but don’t be a spammer. Be helpful, be informative and be friendly.
4. Don’t overload your blog with a million options unless you have the traffic to cover it. It is likely that your blog doesn’t get a lot of traffic. That is fine! There is nothing wrong with that. But don’t think that because your blog doesn’t get traffic is the reason why its not making money. Time and time again, I have said that I’d take a blog any day with 100 daily visits to it. Consider what 100 visits equates to. Back in the days when I ran my local computer shop, I’d be lucky to get 3 to 5 phone calls, one sale and two service calls per day. My computer shop was based out of my garage, and I would probably have flipped my lid if one day I had over 100 people enter into my shop. That would have been paradise to have over 100 people visit my store! Long story short: Value the traffic you have already. Compare that to what kind of impact that would have in the real world and place an equal value to a web site visitor to an actual person opening your door and walking into your store.
5. Focus on getting a positive action per visitor. And what I mean by that is this: If you have 100 visits to your blog, what happens when they visit your site? Do they click your Adsense ads? Do they visit the affiliate product you’re trying to pitch to them? Do they click the back button? Or, do they escape out thru a link on your blogroll? For me, I am able to collect on a lot of money because I closely pave the road that my visitors travel on. Most of my sites make money with Adsense coupled with affiliate based products being promoted as my content. When I design a blog I consider the “If and Then” actions. If the user doesn’t click Adsense, then they will read my content. If they read my content, then they will click my affiliate links. If they don’t click my affiliate links then they will see my related posts, etc.. etc.. etc.. Long story short: I can make money easily with a site that gets only 100 visits per day for the simple fact that I loop and loop the visitor until eventually that user leaves my site with an action that pays me or gives me a high chance of scoring a lead gen or sale.

I could honestly go on and on with free style written advice. Continue reading my blog as most my content caters to this type of subject. While I blog about a lot of things on GCDC, a lot of the things I write about deliver some common sense items that often I myself tend to forget from time to time! I hope that you found this post helpful, I know that it was fun to write. I am sure this will trigger questions, so feel free to drop me a comment. Also if you have any suggestions on things that you would like me to write about, feel free to drop me an email anytime to garryconn@gmail.com.

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