Is It Safe To Start A Home Based Businesss In Today's Economy?

As more and more people lose their jobs in this economy and people realize that the “recovery” is more likely going to take place for them in their own home office or basement, we will see that good home based business ideas will become worth their weight in gold. Niche marketing and trade specialization have been important from the beginning days of business. In times of yore, you didn’t hear of blacksmiths working in textiles, and now you certainly don’t hear of pediatricians dabbling in highly specialized disciplines such as plastic surgery or brain surgery. If you are familiar with supply and demand principles and the forces that drive the marketplace, you’ll know that less competitive spaces on the internet will always be more profitable. I would love to sell ipods for a living on my website, but it wouldn’t be a profitable business model because of the sheer number of competitors in that vertical. Additionally, these are prohibitive because of the razor thin profit margins for electronics. If Circuit City can’t compete with Walmart, Best Buy, and Costco, then I’m not going to try either.

If you are thinking about selling a product, you should come up with a broad idea to start, like outdoors. From there you can begin to drill down to a more specific niche. From outdoors, you would consider outdoor décor, and from there you would choose something to sell like “outdoor wall water fountains”. The thought process unfolds like this: outdoors > outdoor décor > outdoor wall water fountains. Your ideas start broad and develop into very small areas where you can reduce your competition on the web by up to 99%. If you ever think that your idea might be too narrow or focused to be viable for an online business, you'll probably be just fine. Another point to consider would be doing some research on how to develop long tail keyword phrases, which is just another name for a niche market. If you ever need help finding great home based business ideas, there are many resources on the web to help you find your way.

I sell ping pong paddles on the internet.

The first memory I have of ping pong was at the park during hot summer recreation days in California when our city had a program where kids from our town would play caroms, get involved in arts and crafts. In addition, one of the most popular activities was ping pong. I remember that for paddles they had these terrible sand paper monstrosities that could hardly keep the ball in the same zip code even if slightly over hit. This prospect of playing a sport where I had zero control of the ball was hardly motivating for me. Not long after my initial introduction to the sport, someone brought in some beginner level ping pong paddles that had actual rubber on each side of the paddle which was a huge improvement in terms of getting the ball under control. Although these entry level paddles were only a couple of dollars each, I found myself keeping the ball much closer to the table when hit.

Let's fast forward ten years. I hadn't played the game much and certainly didn't put much thought into possible advancements in technologies with table tennis paddles. I saw that there was a paddle that had little rubber bumps on one site (also known as pips) and then smooth rubber on the other. The rubber was much tackier that that I had used previously. This "tack" seemingly gave me more control over the ball because I could spin the ball and control the shots that were hit at me with greater ease. With greater control came greater confidence. I could attack and defend more easily than I ever could. Maybe the difference was that my previous experience with the sport was so lousy. These paddles with pips out and a smooth surface on one side were so much better that I gained more confidence than my opponents using the same equipment. Not long after I began spending some time with better equipment my game improve to the point that my competition became defenseless. 

Fast forward a couple more years and I again gained regular access to a ping pong table. This time I had gotten a chance to borrow a paddle of a co-worker and it was a pre-assembled Chinese import that had a retail value of 30.00. I felt immediately as if I was playing a different sport. My chops had more bite and my loops took my opposition further away from the table so I could easily close out points. To this day, I was amazed with the vast improvement in the quality of ping pong paddle by only investing incrementally more in my equipment. It makes perfect sense to spend the amount of money on a paddle that the professionals do. In the game of table tennis, getting the right ping pong paddles and ping pong rubbers makes all the difference where you stand in the win / loss column. To answer the question posed in the title of this writing, yes. It matters.

BTW, using the best ping pong paddle will allow you to play points like this:

Product Design Review: Dyson Airblade

Now that I have kids, a wife, and in general more reasons for preoccupation with germs and how illness actually costs me sleep, I'm a ton more aware of their impact. Additionally, having worked in office settings for nearly ten years, where there is a lot of alleged hand washing, I have noticed one thing: people are terrible at washing their hands!

I have seen the following transpire at the wash bowl and it makes me crazy to see it:

1) Two seconds of cold water on the finger tips and running fingers through hair after stall business in the bathroom.
2) Users pass on the mere appearance of caring to wash up, as they won't even make a partial attempt at wetting their hands.
3) Head straight for the paper towels. (If you have something to dry off of your hands and haven't washed w/ very hot and soapy water, you are insane).

I am glad to see that in restaurants there are multi-lingual reminders that employees must wash with hot soapy water. This makes me have some sense of comfort, albeit likely a false one. So, the title of this post sounds like it is going to have something to do with a Dyson product review. The three points above are stated so we can see how ineffective the Dyson Airblade really is if people don't wash their hands the right way.

To date, I have only used the Airblade once. I love Dyson products and have been completely impressed by the Dyson vacuum cleaner we purchased over four years ago, but their product design team really ought to consider increasing the size of the the space for drippy, fake-washed hands so that I'm not handling other people's grossness after I've done my part to clean up properly. When I see the Airblade, I usually look for paper towels (strangely this is usually an alternative whenever an Airblade is present) or I will opt to drip dry.

The blue fingertips in the illustration should be a different color to reflect a less clean environment. Please check back in later for more random product design rants/reviews/praise.

Marketing Your Home Based Business Idea PPC vs. SEO

If you want to start a home based business, you will likely need to start devising a strategy for bringing your products or services to market. The web has changed everything from the way we order takeout to the way we pick our partners. Arguably the most prominent and equitable use of the web would be how we transact and do business over the web. Believe it or not, by reading this, you are choosing to transact with me. You might see this page on my site, or that someone linked to my article and re-tweeted it, and you may never decide to buy anything from me, but the fact remains that you are to an extent, doing business with me. Viewership, readership, and distribution of this content means I end up with more dollar at the end of the day. This leads me to my next point. SEO is the act of building links, adding content, and becoming a resource on the web for any given topic or keyword you want to rank well for. Here I am going to compare SEO and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and how they both benefit you now as well as in the long run.
Explanation of SEO: SEO which is short for Search Engine Optimization is the act of bringing your website to the tops of the results pages in search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. There are a number of factors that go into this. Many people think SEO is internet magic or the like and can be conquered in only a short period of time. Ranking a site well requires that other websites link back to you and this takes time. If your link profile is built too quickly or unnaturally, your site may be penalized by the engines, thus prolonging the sweet results of page one rankings. If you do solid research and know your competition and what they are doing to rank well, then your chances of succeeding drastically increase. SEO can cost you close to nothing if you do it yourself, and the results can be amazing because once you get to the top of the engines, you’ll seldom lose your traction unless you do something like abandon your site, completely stop building links, or get greedy and start spamming the web to build more links the wrong way.
How your PPC results will change your life: it won’t. But a well devised PPC strategy can make your life a ton easier because you don’t have to wait for it. I can literally start at the top of the hour, purchase a domain, download a Wordpress template to my host with a simple contact form, use some content from one of my blog posts or articles, publish, create a list of keywords for Google Adwords, launch my campaign, and have more traffic than I can handle within a couple of hours of the site being born. There are two types of business owners: ones that have money or ones that have time. Obviously, if I needs to make sales and generate traffic for my business today, the latter of these two scenarios would benefit me the greatest. There are unforeseen challenges awaiting marketers who choose this path. You run the risk of spending a couple hundred dollars in one day without getting the results you need, if you achieve good ad positions for a specific keyword that is working, your competitors could outbid you and have a direct impact on your advertising costs for the worse.
At the end of the day, both of these marketing strategies are winners and you should rely at some point on using both. It depends solely on personal tastes and budgetary demands associated with the business. There will be more on the subject as volumes have been written on each topic. For now, it seems we have a draw and that most all businesses need both.

Marketing Your Home Based Business Idea PPC vs. SEO

If you want to start a home based business, you will likely need to start devising a strategy for bringing your products or services to market. The web has changed everything from the way we order takeout to the way we pick our partners. Arguably the most prominent and equitable use of the web would be how we transact and do business over the web. Believe it or not, by reading this, you are choosing to transact with me. You might see this page on my site, or that someone linked to my article and re-tweeted it, and you may never decide to buy anything from me, but the fact remains that you are to an extent, doing business with me. Viewership, readership, and distribution of this content means I end up with more dollar at the end of the day. This leads me to my next point. SEO is the act of building links, adding content, and becoming a resource on the web for any given topic or keyword you want to rank well for. Here I am going to compare SEO and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and how they both benefit you now as well as in the long run.

Explanation of SEO: SEO which is short for Search Engine Optimization is the act of bringing your website to the tops of the results pages in search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. There are a number of factors that go into this. Many people think SEO is internet magic or the like and can be conquered in only a short period of time. Ranking a site well requires that other websites link back to you and this takes time. If your link profile is built too quickly or unnaturally, your site may be penalized by the engines, thus prolonging the sweet results of page one rankings. If you do solid research and know your competition and what they are doing to rank well, then your chances of succeeding drastically increase. SEO can cost you close to nothing if you do it yourself, and the results can be amazing because once you get to the top of the engines, you’ll seldom lose your traction unless you do something like abandon your site, completely stop building links, or get greedy and start spamming the web to build more links the wrong way.

How your PPC results will change your life: it won’t. But a well devised PPC strategy can make your life a ton easier because you don’t have to wait for it. I can literally start at the top of the hour, purchase a domain, download a Wordpress template to my host with a simple contact form, use some content from one of my blog posts or articles, publish, create a list of keywords for Google Adwords, launch my campaign, and have more traffic than I can handle within a couple of hours of the site being born. There are two types of business owners: ones that have money or ones that have time. Obviously, if I needs to make sales and generate traffic for my business today, the latter of these two scenarios would benefit me the greatest. There are unforeseen challenges awaiting marketers who choose this path. You run the risk of spending a couple hundred dollars in one day without getting the results you need, if you achieve good ad positions for a specific keyword that is working, your competitors could outbid you and have a direct impact on your advertising costs for the worse.

At the end of the day, both of these marketing strategies are winners and you should rely at some point on using both. It depends solely on personal tastes and budgetary demands associated with the business. There will be more on the subject as volumes have been written on each topic. For now, it seems we have a draw and that most all businesses need both.

eBay Selling Tips For Your Home Based Business Opportunity

When small businesses approach eBay and its vast number of categories and subcategories, they are often easily intimidated by the size of that is seemingly staring them down. Many questions arise: “what category do I put my item, where do I get pictures, what is the ideal listing duration, how much should I list it for, is the sell your item form the ONLY way to put an item on – it is SO SLOW, how do I take payment?” and the list could literally go on forever. I hope to address to an extent at least most of these points, and hopefully you’ll feel better taking the next steps to dominating eBay.
Choosing your eBay listing category is the first step you take when listing your item. Your category is important because those who browse categories will find what they are looking for more quickly. Although picking your category is important, using a keyword rich title for your item that utilizes all 55 characters of space is the biggest key to getting your item found. Research shows that 87% of eBay buyers use keyword search by title to find the items they buy.
A picture is worth a thousand words. We’ve all heard this saying, and it definitely holds true when selling online. Since there are quite a few lightly used items that make their way to eBay, it is important to be as truthful as possible when describing or illustrating the condition of an item for sale. I have sold used items for more because I took extra shots to show a close up of a snag, tear, or crazing (in pottery).  Believe it or not, I have sold these items for more than those being sold as new or in retail condition.
There are a lot of variables to determine the best listing duration. I have seen my sales increase by half again by lowering my listing durations from seven days to three days because eBay search will bring up “items ending soonest by default” so my items would return at the top of the results sooner each listing cycle, so it made sense to boost them to the top more often. This doesn’t make sense every time. You may end up with an item that will be best listed on the site for a total of two weekends. If you want to accomplish this, you can choose a listing duration of 10 days and list it on a Thursday evening. That way, it will run the first weekend, and expire the following Sunday night. If your margins and price points for the product allow, you can feature the item so it stays at the very top of the search for the entire 10 days.
This post could literally go on for pages and pages. I will be concluding this with additional tips on pricing, eBay listing and management software, and taking payments for your auctions /web sales. All of these factors will help greatly when you develop legitimate home based business ideas.

Basement Finishing Tips for Utah Residents

Based on the title, this might sound like helpful construction tips that would help you figure out what to do when it comes time to add on to that lowest level of your home. It is not. Rather, it is a short rant about the ridiculousness of the process. The full rant will be released accompanied with a full report card grading those who did any work in the basement at all. Now that i'm thousands of dollars poorer and tons wiser, I will share with the public what I would do next time: back up a huge cement truck to the biggest window the basement and not stop the cement until the whole thing was full. I mean it. Getting the value back from my investment is the only thing that will keep me from going postal plus. Again, the super sized rant is yet to come.

Home Based Business Ideas for Stay At Home Moms

As the internet grows and small businesses need for good content increases, so grows the need for freelance writing services. The important thing to consider when getting your content for your website is that it be quality content. Some of the content will end up on a website, but most of the writing will be used in article distribution. Because these articles can literally be written about tens of thousands of topics, who better to cover the stories than you guessed it: moms. I have a mom and am married to a person who is a mom. They know a lot of stuff and tapping into that expertise about every topic from "the best way to clean a knee abrasion" to "how often to baste the turkey" while it's in the oven is something that small businesses should be doing.  The vast life experience of moms keeps them busy since their time at home usually has them running from appointment to appointment, recital to recital, and all before anyone even touches homework. 


In the past some moms have excelled at running a tight ship at home and given nary a second thought to the opportunities right in front of them. They fail to realize that by using their experience they can write content to make some money on the side. The need in the marketplace for "blogger moms" and other content developers has become so great now because of their valuable life experience. These instances are a lot more common than you think. I could probably sit down with any of the super moms in my life (wife, mom, sisters, aunts, etc.) and find enough documented life experience to make your head spin. Maybe it's just me, but these are just a couple of home based business ideas that I have in mind for stay at home moms. 

I lost 15 lbs in three weeks eating fatty foods

I officially hate the food pyramid that the government created. Even the new one stinks, you know the one that looks like a pie chart stuffed inside of a triangle with a flight of stairs slapped on the side. I try to follow history as much as a person who is as busy as I am as much as possible. This country's fatness as a whole is a pretty recent development. The top contributors to the really bad health our kids and even more adults suffer from are the following:

• video games and other sedentary activities
• sugary soft drinks (yes, i'm taking aim at you too Sunny D)
• ready access to government subsidized grain heavy processed foods
• low fat diet crazed people who forget that white bread/sugar/flour are poison
• foods rich in nutrients and low in toxic chemicals have been priced out of people's budgets
• text messaging (that is more of a contributor to societal brain rot than people's physical health)

I really have only started here and I could start six different blogs about each of the above points, but I have a hard time believing that weight loss should be as difficult as people make it out to be. I eat a steady diet of the following foods:

• Scrambled eggs with steamed/sauteed vegetables
• Grilled chicken with sour cream, cheese, and salsa
• In-N-Out Double Double burgers served protein style (wrapped in lettuce)
• Low Carb Six Dollar Burgers from Carl's Jr.
• Any Cafe Rio Salad without the tablecloth sized tortilla
• Spinach salads with grilled chicken
• Chicken ceasar salad from Costco
• Salmon sandwiches on the paper thin Orowheat whole wheat bread
• Steamed veggies with BBQ chicken breast
• Cottage cheese with fruit (fruit consumed sparingly)

I don't know how you feel about these foods, but I love them. I am never hungry, I take good multi-vitamins, I have a ton more energy, and I don't feel like I'm being poisoned. Just in losing 15 lbs, I feel like I've had a water softener salt sized bag of crap removed from my system and mid-section. Mark's Daily Apple is a blog that promotes this style of eating (I'm pretty hesitant to call it a diet because it's not something I really want to abandon after time, as I would like to sustain health in the long term). If you've had a hard time in the weight department, check it out. If you have experiences or comments, please share. Back to my cheese cube snacks.

Is eCommerce Better Than Affiliate Marketing?

In promoting products, the two major means of making money are affiliate marketing and eCommerce or selling a physical product on a website. Both of these options have their pros and cons. I am going to give you a rundown of these scenarios. When you are drumming up ideas for your home based business, you should determine the best platform and strategy to make money. 

Affiliate marketing is a great strategy for people who want to advertise in a variety of methods including PPC, Facebook, cost per view, and other varieties of paid advertising. Once you are accepted into an affiliate network, you can start making money relatively quickly. It requires and advertisng budget, but results can be close to instant.

With eCommerce platforms, there are set principles that you can follow to get where you want to be. You can write articles, submit to certain directories, and you can start creating press releases and ramping up on your blogging efforts. These will help you build a long term presence on search engines and improve rankings. With ecommerce, you are creating a website with categories, finding a supplier who will hopefully dropship items for you, and essentially trying to stay around as long as it takes to make sales on your site.

Ultimately it is up to you to figure out which strategy you'll use to promote your products or offers. Important points to consider include, cost of development for your product based website, an advertising budget for promoting offers with affiliate marketing, and your willingness to wait for search engines to rank your site and bring you the visitors you'll need.

How To Find A Niche Market

When people are looking for opportunities to start their home based businesses, they usually miss the boat. Where they fall short is their broad, open-ended approach to picking a product or service to sell or promote on the web. Because we have access to so many tools online, there is absolutely no excuse to launch a website or start a business without having done proper research. The tools available to marketers and small businesses include keyword list generators, reverse search tools, and even a few that allow us to assess how much competition we will have upon launching our websites. With all of these pieces in place, we have little or no excuse for picking a bad niche.

If you were going into battle, would you pick an enemy that was 1 million troops strong, or would you rather fight a group of strays who are few in number and less ready for combat? The same question can be asked when you are going to compete in a given niche or marketplace on the web. I know there is a lot of competition for home and gardening wares, and that there would be seemingly limitless competition here, so I would want to consider niches like composting or even pruning equipment. Competing with the bigs like Home Depot, Lowes, et al would be a bad move in this situation. When you choose a smaller target like composting equipment, you make it easier to do well in search because you have fewer customer types. Considering your competition is as important as determining how much demand there is for that product. I have fought tooth and nail with clients who have wanted to sell or promote things that based on Google (and let's face it, who else would you need to base it on?) do not exist and have no market. Don't market to non-existent customers. Simply put, there are factors such as supply, demand, and competition that need to be a huge part of the conversation when picking a market niche for your home based business ideas.