Work At Home Business Options

Archive for October, 2009

Many people keep asking what are the best advertising methods and I can list a bunch of them that work for me, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you and vice versa.

It’s important to test all your advertising methods. Don’t just give it a few days, but give it at least a month or more. Keep in mind as well if one marketing method works today, it may not work tomorrow or three months down the road and what doesn’t work today doesn’t mean it won’t work in the future.

To track your advertising campaigns, you can use ad trackers, Google Analytics, email or simply add a special coding to the URL

Email Example: mailto:you@yourdomain.com?subject=ad1
URL Example: http://www.yourdomain.com/ad1

Ad Trackers
Adminder
HyperTracker
Link Counter

Some of the best advertising methods include:
Signature Advertising
Article Marketing
Word-of-Mouth
Blogging
Social Networking
Paid Advertising
Pay-Per-Click

What has worked for you?

When our daughter was a little girl, she always wanted to eat pizza. As a mother, I knew it wasn’t the healthiest of meals to be feeding a child so over the years, we found ‘other’ ways to satisfy her craving for pizza.

Tip: To save time, we microwaved our potatoes for 10 minutes in the microwave. We then topped them with the goodies listed below.

Potato Pizza Toppers Recipe

1 to 1 1/2 cup prepared pizza sauce
4 white potatoes, baked
Pepperoni slices, Italian sausage, cooked and crumbled
Mozzarella cheese, shredded

Spoon pizza sauce evenly over each potato. Top with pepperoni and/or Italian sausage as desired. Sprinkle with Mozzarella cheese. If desired, place under a broiler or in a toaster oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese.

Over the years, I have read many articles online about how important it is to have your business listed in your signature tag.

If you are not familiar with what a signature tag is, let me explain.

A signature tag is a link and some text that is attached to all of your outgoing emails and on your forum board posts. The hope is that whoever is reading your emails and/or your forum board posts that they will see it and click through to your website.

I have been networking my home business online for the past 10 years and I am often asked, “Does signature tag advertising really work?” My answer to that is yes…however, you will not get hundreds of sales or thousands of website visitors by utilizing a signature tag.

To be honest with you…You will get some website visitors and you will occasionally get some product sales by people who see your website link and click-thru to your website.

With all of that being said, you need to keep a few things in mind when you are setting up your signature tag. Here are a few pointers:

1. You should have no more than three links in your signature tag at any given time. Anything over three is considered link spam. You will find that a lot of online forums will only allow you to have two links in your signature tag and some others will allow you to have three.

2. Double check your links for typos. I can not tell you how many times I have come across a signature tag that had broken links in it due to typos.

3. Keep your signature tags short, simple and to the point. No one enjoys reading a paragraph long signature tag.

4. When adding text to your signature tag, make it compelling. Give the reader a reason to want to click through to your website. When I say ‘compelling’, I don’t mean sales pitch spam!

5. Change the text in your signature tag often. Those who see your signature day in and day out will eventually quit paying attention to it. To keep people interested, change up your signature every couple of weeks.

Will you get thousands of website visitors and make millions of dollars by using signature tags? No, you will not…but the few sales and visitors you do get will be worth your time and effort on setting up and maintaining proper signature tags in your outgoing email and forum board posts.

~Shelly~

When the fall season kicks into full gear, I enjoy making a variety of foods for my family where the main ingredient is pumpkin.

This recipe was given to me many years ago and it’s one of our favorites. You will find that children love this dessert, just as much as the adults. This if a fantastic dessert to serve any time, including after a nice holiday meal.

Pumpkin Crunch Dessert Recipe

1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin
1 (12 oz.) can evaporated milk
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 box yellow cake mix
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 cup melted butter
non-dairy whipped topping to garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease bottom of 9×13″ pan. Combine pumpkin, evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl.

Pour into a 9×13″ baking pan. Sprinkle dry cake mix evenly over pumpkin mixture. Top with chopped pecans and then drizzle melted butter over the top.

Bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool and serve chilled.

Garnish with non-dairy whipped topping when serving.

If you are in Direct Sales, you have probably noticed how popular themed home parties have become. These days party hosts are looking for something different. We have all been to those parties where a consultant just stands up there and shows you her business products, but these days, those type of parties are less appealing.

Party Hosts now want an interactive and fun themed party. I have compiled a list of some very popular home themed parties for you to consider that are seasonal in nature, meaning that they are great at certain times of the calendar year.

1. New Year, New You Party: (great for home organization ideas, weightloss and healthy eating, pampering and spa type of parties).

2. Beat The Winter Blues Party: During the winters months, people get the winter blues from being stuck indoors. If you have a fun and exciting party concept, try labeling it the “Beat The Winter Blues” party. You can have all of your guests dress in blue or have them do the opposite and dress in sunny cheerful colors.

3. Halloween Costume Party: If you are doing any parties during the month of October, turn it into a Halloween Costume Party and have all the party guests wear their favorite costume.

4. Men Only Holiday Shopping Party: Invite the men over to shop for gifts for their wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters etc.

5. Holiday Baking with Children Party: If you are with a gourmet food company or one of the kitchen companies, this is a great party theme around the holidays. Have parents bring their children along to the party for some baking fun.

6. Holiday Cookie Exchange Party: Have all the party guests bring a dozen of their freshly made holiday cookies to the party with them. Have each guest take home a few of the cookies that others brought to the party.

7. Secret Santa Party: (have the guests make a list of 3 items below $25 each) then have each guest draw a slip of paper and they have to buy one of those items on that list for the Secret Santa pal without letting them know its for her. Then you have the second half of the party in a few weeks when the orders come in and invite guests back to exchange their gifts and for them to try to guess who it was that was their secret Santa!)

8. Secret Santa Office Gift Party: A lot of workplace offices these days do secret santa parties and exchanges. I make up a list ahead of time of all items that we sell that are $12 and less! I attach the list to the front of the catalog and only demo those items. Guests are always looking for affordable gifts for their secret santa office parties and you can help them find them!)

9. Trim-the-tree party: Have the hostess put up her Holiday Tree and dig out her holiday tree decorations. You all have a tree trimming party and afterwards you can hold your regular sales party.

So when it comes to booking parties this fall and winter…think of a theme to suit the season. I find that my bookings and rebookings increase when I do theme parties…and in turn, my party sales are higher as my guests enjoy themselves a lot more!

Do You Need More Bookings? If so, check out that site!

When it comes to using proper business phone etiquette, I am really amazed at how many people don’t practice good etiquette when making their phone calls.

When you are on the phone making business calls, you need to remember to always act and speak like a professional.

Here are a few tips:

1. When making your calls, your customer deserves your undivided attention. Customers don’t need to hear screaming kids in the background, your dishwasher, vacuum cleaner and other ‘distractions’ that are going on. Try to make your calls when the house is quiet and when you can give your customer 100% of your attention.

2. When making business calls, keep your personal life out of it. No one needs to hear about your fight with the neighbor, problems your kids are having at school and so forth. Business is business…your phone call should stay on topic and be about business.

3. Be courteous at all times. I always start out my phone calls by introducing myself to the person I am speaking to and I ask them if this is a good time to talk. If not, I ask when I should return the call. If so, I let them know upfront why I am calling. I don’t string them along for an hour and then deliver my sales pitch. You should never be rude, obnoxious or in a foul mood when making your calls. Before ending your call, you should always thank the person for their time and for taking the call. If its a sales call, you want your customer to know that you appreciate them, their business and respect their time.

These are just a few tips on proper business phone etiquette, there are many more! When making your business calls, you need to always be the professional.

Shelly