Annies Home Journal

Annies Home Journal contains information and articles, about working from home, as well as business opportunities, and what it takes to make a home based business work.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Creating Best Online Business

There are many different ways to make money on the Internet but this article today will focus on one particular idea, creating the best online business.

The method that we will focus on today is creating a website in a small but profitable niche. What all businesses come down to is finding and maintaining a strong and solid customer base that can constantly make them money. This is true no matter what type of business this is, Internet or retail. The only way that a company makes money is by attracting a solid base of customers and then building off of that. If you are able to build a solid base of highly responsive customers, you will have the opportunity to print your own money.

The first key in creating the best online business is to help you identify a niche that you can work in. This can be a bit tricky, but you must make sure that it has a few characteristics. First, you will want the subject to be something that you are interested in hopefully. To truly create a website that people will want to keep visiting, you will have to have a great deal of information and different ways to keep them interested. You will probably need to be researching these topics quite a bit, so a strong interest within the field will help you. Secondly, visit www.findhotniches.com.

That was great information but here is the rest quickly. You want your website to be built around those keywords so that Internet searches bring up your website among the first page of search results. By doing this, you can start gaining traffic to your website. By constantly writing articles, you can develop a repeat client base which you can begin selling to. Once you are done developing the website, you need some sort of product to sell. This is not necessarily something that you have to come up with. If you go to Clickbank.com, you will find many different products that you can probably sell within your particular niche. You will get a share of the profits and the system is automated so that you just have to guide your clients over to that particular website and everything else is taken care of for you.

If you decide and look into developing a newsletter, then you can promote a product at the end of the newsletter, which could bring you in a great deal of money.

Hopefully this article on creating the best online business will help you out. If you want to succeed, try this idea but keep testing as it takes great time and effort to become a strong and profitable website.

Check this business out:

One Great Business

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

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List Bandit

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Viral Marketing Giveaway 6

Viral Marketing Giveaway 6 is Going On Now! Grab over $14,237 worth of ebooks, software, and memberships, Free!



P.S. There's no catch, but some of the downloads are limited, so don't waste any time in checking it out for yourself. I hope it helps!

Viral Marketing Giveaway 6

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Finding your “Niche”

When you are considering starting an online company, (or any other business for that matter), you want to make sure you find the right product. What do you want to sell. What is your passion. What subject or topic do you have a lot of knowledge about. Let me start by telling you that selling an information product online is easier than selling a service. But, selling a service online makes more money with monthly memberships.

Before you spend all your time working on a website and writing up eBooks, you want to be sure that your customers are going to be interested in what you are selling. Do your market research. Start by seeing how many competitors you have -this is a good sign. Read through newsgroups, discussion boards, and chat rooms and learn about your target market customer base. If you already have an email list, send them a survey to see what they are most interested in.

Most internet marketers preach that there are three reasons why a customer will want to buy your product. Your product has solved a problem for your customer. Your product has made life easier or more comfortable for your customer. You are very passionate about your product and it shows in everything you do.

When researching your niche, you may want to use www.Amazon.com and find the current top sellers. Find out what people are reading about. You will want to research keywords with keyword tools such as www.wordtracker.com. You need to discover which keywords are being searched for frequently.

Doing a little poking around your competitors sites isn’t a bad idea. This is one way to come up with ideas on what would make your company different or better. Take a look at their traffic rankings and their related links. By analyzing this information, you can see how many visitors they have each day and how profitable their company is.

Once you find your passion, (and you must find your passion!!!) ask yourself does this serve my customers' needs. Remember, you want to provide an excellent service to each and every person that spends their money with you. This cuts down on complaints, bad reputations, and, worse of all, chargeback’s.

Check out My Niche

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Some Facts About Women In Business

Since mentoring many small business hopefuls, I have come to realize a very disturbing fact. Many very bright and hopeful female entrepreneurs have crossed my office threshold with the mistaken idea that just being a woman gives them an advantage over their male counterparts. Sadly, this is not as true as we have been led to believe.

Certainly the female population of today is much better off than their mothers or grandmothers, but obtaining financial support/loans is not viewed by bankers any differently than it is for male entrepreneurs. A myth has been circulating for years that has led entrepreneurs to believe that women-owned and minority-owned businesses can obtain loans easier. Unfortunately, that is only a myth.

If your entrepreneurial dream requires a bank loan, the process is not any easier if you are a woman or a minority. The only slight advantage is that there may be additional lending sources available if you are in either of these categories. But you still have to sell the lender on your business and means of repayment.

Both male and female executives in the corporate arena have much in common in terms of professional aspirations. However, the playing field is far from being equal. A survey was done by a non-profit research group called Catalyst recently. Male & female executives at 1,000 of the largest corporations in the U.S. were surveyed and more than half of the women said that they aspire to a CEO position. They were even willing to make sacrifices such as delaying a marriage and/or children, and that very willingness shouts to us that the field is not equal.

Other survey results were as follows:

49.5 percent of all employed managers and professionals are women, but they still tend to manage only other women.
The highest-paid female executive still earns only 68% of the salary paid to her male counterpart.
Firms that include women on their senior management teams showed greater improvement in corporate performance.
62 percentof the firms that included women on their senior management team saw their market share grow, compared with only 39% of companies with no female senior management.

Advancements in technology should help ease the movement of more women into leadership. Computers enable women to work more flexible hours and better balance work and family commitments, which is not expected of their male counterparts. (How equal is that?)

So-called feminine leadership traits will grow in importance in the 21st century, according to more than 160 international companies and 75 senior executives’ view of their firm’s progress toward gender equity.

Most respondents, predominantly male, predicted wide-spread abandonment of the “command and control” managerial style for a more “team-oriented” approach. That does not seem all that bad to me. I can think of a lot of companies that could use more teamwork and less monarchy leadership.

These business gurus saw this new style as requiring skills that are “more feminine than masculine,” thus giving an edge to female managers. However, another 15-year study has shown that female managers are no more inclusive or democratic than men when making workplace decisions.

As grim as these facts might be, I do not want to discourage any prospective female entrepreneurs. We female business owners know that we may have to work twice as hard for half the recognition and pay, but ladies – statistics show we will outlive our male counterparts.

We know that any woman who is a wife and mother and also in business, could do the job of two air traffic controllers without breaking a sweat even as the airport burns to the ground.

If you are a woman looking for a great business opportunity that will give you residual income and enable to reach beyond your wildest dreams then you need to see this:

A Great Business For Women

Friday, June 01, 2007

21st Century Business Women

When the first generation of women entered the workforce in earnest in the 1970s, they succeeded in the only way they could – by imitating men. Authoritarian leadership and tight control was the hallmark of that day’s businessman, and women were not exactly welcomed into the ranks of management. Well ladies, that was yesterday, and today is today!

Forget what your mama or your boss told you, because following the rules can be bad for your career. Today’s CEO/Entrepreneur can no longer her company’s full potential using a “command-and-control” style. The 21st century business woman needs to be able to build a vision based on the awareness of economic transformation, then help her partners and staff fulfill that vision. She must draw on a wide range of skills to get to the top and stay there. Following are 7 Key Characteristics that are essential:

1. Sell the Vision: A leader with a fresh, independent plan for her company’s growth and future has a distinct advantage in luring and keeping great talent and investors. Vision is not some lofty ideal, but an obtainable concept that is easy to understand and will make the company grow to another level.

2. Reinvent the Rules: While women have traditionally been socialized to please others, the 21st century leader knows that good girls rarely post great returns. The strong managers/owners today not only anticipate change, they create entirely new organizations that respond to shifts and search for innovation.

3. Achieve With A Laser Focus: Go where others fear to tread! Being aggressive and ambitious has long been considered male traits, but they are key qualities for new leaders. Today’s business woman has the ability to home in on opportunities that others may simply not see, and then excel in that uncharted territory.

4. Use High-Touch in a High-Tech Era: When a number of leaders are conducting business by e-mail, voice mail, passwords, and PINs, the female entrepreneur succeeds because she guides with a strong, personal, bed-side manner. Today’s business woman is just as technologically savvy as her peers, but her skill with staff and customers is “high-touch” which gives her a critical edge and separation from the “pack”.

5. Challenge or Opportunity? – Women are great at turning a challenge into an opportunity instead of using the “slash-and-burn” approach. They are able to make bold strokes, but they also win the cooperation of others in the organization in making any transformation a success.

6. A Customer Preference Obsession: In this information age which makes it easier to shop around for the best “whatever”, businesses must work harder to give people what they want before their competitors do. There is no substitute for spending time with clients to become expert at their businesses and learn their demands. Female leaders are almost intuitively adept in doing just that, and without the client even suspecting.

7. Courage Under Fire: Show me any career woman or female entrepreneur today that isn’t able to “stand-the-heat” in any tough-call situation. Their decision-making skills are rooted in a high level of confidence, because they’ve had to weather and surpass any and all “corporate” storms they’ve encountered over time.

It takes a certain mind-set and bravado for anyone to start their own business and succeed, but it’s even more difficult for a female entrepreneur. Let’s face it, ladies! We’ve always had to be twice-as-smart and twice-as-confident as any male counterpart in the corporate world. After all, if we can bear and raise the future generation, how can running a successful business scare us?

See what this woman is doing in the 21st Century!

21st Century Business Woman