Work At Home Business Options

Archive for July, 2009

During the hot summer months, I like to keep cool by following these 8 helpful tips. Several of these tips can be implemented today and can be used by your entire family.

1. Dress in lighter layers of clothing, light weight cottons and linens are good choices. Wear short sleeve shirts, tanks and shorts. People often comment that they stay cooler by wearing pale colored clothing.

2. Drink hydrating cold beverages through out the day, such as: water, lemonade, iced teas and cold fruit juices.

3. Use ceiling fans or oscillating fans in your home to circulate the air.

4. Avoid using your oven during the hottest times of the day. Try to do your baking very early in the morning. Instead of serving your family oven baked meals, try stove-top recipes or use your outdoor barbecue grill.

5. Cool down with a cold frozen treat like popsicles, ice cream, frozen yogurts and rootbeer floats. A special treat we like to have during the hot summer months is frozen green grapes.

6. Do your outdoor yard work during the coolest part of the day, usually early in the morning or very late in the evening. Dress in light layers of clothing and take frequent breaks while working outdoors.

7. Weatherize your home before summer gets here. Make sure you have good windows, screens and an energy saving air conditioner. If it has been awhile since you have had your air conditioner serviced, time to get it checked out.

8. If you are going to be outdoors for any length of time, carry around a small water mist bottle. As you feel hot, you can give yourself a light misting to help cool yourself off.

My family follows these helpful tips during the summer months to help stay cool.

Shelly Hill has been working from home in Direct Sales since 1989 and is a Manager with Tupperware. Shelly and her husband live in Pennsylvania and during the summertime enjoy spending a lot of family time outdoors. You can visit Shelly’s Shakin ‘N Bakin Recipe Blog for some easy Summertime Recipes.

This article is copyright by Shelly Hill, 2009. All rights reserved.

When it comes to having an online Direct Sales business, having a business blog can prove to be beneficial to your established customers and to attract new ones.

I have been publishing my own blog for approximately 3 years and have seen my business increase by 50%. Furthermore, I find that I get 25% more re-orders from my established customers because they are visiting my online site.

Now you might be asking yourself, what can I blog about in regards to my Direct Sales business that my customers will be interested in reading?

Here are a few ideas:

1. If you sell cosmetics, you can write posts that deal with make-up application, shade selection, proper storage of cosmetics and your sales specials.

2. If you sell kitchenware or gourmet food, you can write posts that provide cooking tips, recipes, spice and herb storage, kitchen organization tips and your sales specials.

3. If you sell jewelry, you can write posts about the current jewelry trends, jewelry cleaning tips, jewelry organization and your sales specials.

4. If you sell clothing, you can write posts about the current clothing trends, closet organization, proper care of clothing, recommended accessories and your sales specials.

You can write and make posts about anything related to the type of products you are selling.

The most important thing to remember is to fill your blog up with valuable content that your readers will want to read. Keep the sales ads to the minimum and be consistent with publishing your blog posts.

Shelly

Are you flexible with your home business work schedule? Are you firm about not working on weekends? If so, you might want to rethink your flexibility.

I try to be as flexible as possible when it comes to working from home as I often get recruit leads and new customers who do not live in my local time zone. Some of these leads and customers work during the week and prefer contact on weekends.

If I was not flexible with my schedule to accomodate them, they would move on to another consultant to handle their questions and needs.

Do I work every weekend? No, I do allow plenty of time to spend with my family on weekends, however, I do pencil in 1 hour on Saturday and on Sunday so that I can make call backs to recruit leads and customers who prefer weekend contact.

You can do these call backs when your family is showering, taking naps or when they are preoccupied during the weekend which will allow you 1 hour to do a little work.

If you allow just a little bit of work time on the weekends, you can and will see an increase in your business.

~Shelly~

How To Make And Freeze Homemade Pierogies

As a busy mother and wife, I don’t always have time to cook an hour long dinner in the evenings. To solve this problem, I like to make our own freezer meals that I can thaw out, reheat or cook…and have on our dinner table in less than 30 minutes.

My family enjoys homemade potato and cheese pierogies so I like to spend an afternoon every couple of months making them and freezing them for future use. The following recipe is the one that I like to use.

Potato and Cheese Pierogies

Filling:

2 lbs. Velveeta Cheese, shredded
8 ounces Sharp Cheese, shredded
5 lbs. white potatoes, peeled and boiled
4 small onions, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1 clove of garlic, minced

Fry the minced or finely chopped onions in 1 stick of butter and set aside. In a large stock pot, boil 5 lbs. of potatoes; drain water, mash the potatoes and set aside. In a large bowl, combine potatoes, Velveeta and Sharp cheeses, minced onions, salt, pepper and garlic.

Dough:

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup shortening
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs mixed with 1/4 cup of water

You will need to make several batches of dough but only make 1 batch at a time. I usually end up making 3-4 batches.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, shortening, salt, eggs and water until the mixture forms a stiff dough. Roll out the dough onto a floured dough board. Use a 4-5″ round circle cutter or empty coffee can to cut out dough circles. Place 2 tablespoons of potato filling in the center of each dough circle. Fold the circle in half and wet edges slightly with water to pinch them close.

In a large stockpot, bring 2 quarts of salted water to a boil. Add the pierogies in a single layer and boil them until they float. Drain on paper towels and let them cool. Once cool, place on a cookie sheet and freeze for 1 hour. Remove from freezer and place in plastic freezer containers, boxes or bags. They will keep for 9-12 months in your freezer.

You will need to thaw them for 20 minutes at room temperature before frying them in a deep fryer or frying pan. This recipe will make 12-13 dozen pierogies.

This article is copyright 2009 by Shelly Hill, All Rights Reserved.

I have been in Direct Sales since 1989 and over the years I have seen excuse after excuse as to why people fail to work their Direct Sales businesses.

I was recently visiting an online wahm and Direct Sales forum where the topic of conversation was why several individuals were complaining that their summer sales and bookings were low. They blamed it on the so-called Summer Slump.

In my personal opinion, there is NO SUCH THING as a summer slump. These individuals were using the summer season as an excuse to not get out there and work their businesses during the summertime.

Sure…there are people who have children home from school, people who are taking vacations and yes, summer is generally a busy time of the year for people. However, there are still millions of other people out there who want to book parties and buy merchandise.

If you are a Direct Seller who is home for the summertime with children who are out of school…that is no excuse not to be out working your business. There are millions of women who successfully work at home with infants or 5+ children and they are getting it done!

Instead of spending your time complaining about the slump in business you are seeing, take that time and turn it into productive work time. Get on the phone…start making calls, send out some catalog mailings, get out to the park and take a tote bag full of catalogs, samples, business cards and order forms and start talking about your business to everyone you meet.

Sitting around and complaining is not going to get you bookings or sales! The summer selling and recruiting season is what YOU make of it and what YOU put into it.

With the down turn in the economy, recruiting in most Direct Sales companies is on the rise. You need to take advantage of these economic times and get out there and work your business.

Quit making excuses and take the bull by the horn. It is time to get busy with your business this summer.

Shelly

When it comes to recruiting for a Direct Sales home business, it’s not about adding a slew of new members to your team.

As a recruiter, it is also your job to help train your new team members and to help them to become team leaders too. All of this takes time on your part along with your knowledge of the business.

A mistake that I often see by fellow consultants in Direct Sales is that they are too focused on the numbers. Yes, you need team members…but you also need to concentrate on developing those team members into strong leaders. It’s not about signing them up and moving on to the next one.

Take the time out of your schedule and focus your energy on team management and training…You will find that you will retain new team members for the long run and they in turn will build their teams making your job a lot easier.

A strong healthy team…starts with the team leader.

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