Work At Home Business Options

Archive for March, 2011

Over the past 15 to 20 years the internet has become the hottest way for consumers to purchase their goods and services. With that said, you will find various online business partnerships that consist of jointly owned web site businesses that are owned by two or more people.

When two or more individuals partner up to run a business online, it is important to have legal and binding contracts between all parties involved. This contract should detail all costs involved, who is responsible for what and it should list out what will happen if one partner decides to leave the business.

When one of the parties decides to leave the partnership, they should give written notice to the other parties involved. This written notice should include your reason for leaving the partnership, what you expect from the business from now until your end date (if it is not in the legally binding contract) as well as any other details that pertain to the business. The notice should be given to all of the parties involved several weeks in advance (if not 2-3 months, depending on the type of business arrangement), so that the partners have sufficient time to adjust to the change and make any necessary new arrangements.

It is very important that once an online business partnership has ended that all parties remain civil to one another. Over the years…I have seen many new ventures come and go and when these partnerships break up on bad terms, things online can end up getting really ugly. When it gets out of control it reflects badly on all parties involved. One way to keep it under control is to have a clause put into your business contracts where none of the parties can disclose publicly the reason for the breakup. Having this important clause in your contracts will save you a lot of grief down the road should any of the partners who were involved in the arrangement decides to gossip or slander the business or individuals involved.

When partnerships break up…it is important to do it legally and civilly. There is no need to be cut throat about it when legally binding contracts are in place. Take your time when making your decision, follow the guidelines of your contracts or the advice of your attorney. The most important thing to remember is that when it ends badly…keep the ‘dirt’ out of the public eyes.

This article is copyrighted 2011 by Shelly L. Hill, All Rights Reserved.

The Pen and Winning Number Game

This party game is super simple and is great for consultants who don’t want to stand up in front of guests and play a 5-10 minute long party game. For this game…you will want to place a label on each pen that you hand to guests with their order forms.

Ask each guest to write the numer down that is on their writing pen onto their order form and circle it. At the end of the party ask your host to select a number and the guest who has the winning number/pen will win a prize.

The Catalog and Winning Number Game

This is just like the game above except you place a number on the back of each catalog that is being used at the party. At the end of the party you ask the host to select a number (at random) and the guest who has that number on the back of his/her catalog will win the prize.

7 Basic Blogging Tips For New Business Bloggers

If you are trying to build and market an online business, you should add blogging to your marketing efforts. When you have a business blog…it is a great way to communicate with your customers and clients on a more personal level.

If you are just getting your feet ‘wet’ with blogging for your business, here are a few of my favorite tips.

1. Organization: Your blog should be kept clean and organized. It is important that it have a professional laid-back appearance but not overly stuffy. Your topics should be listed in tabs across the top of the page or along the side, so that readers can easily find the content they are interested in reading.

2. Color Scheme and Layout: The color scheme you choose for your blog should be easy on the eyes and appealing. You should avoid dark backgrounds and neon colors for a business blog. Stick to contempory colors or neutral tones. Your layout should be user friendly and easy to navigate.

3. Content: You will want the content that you post to be related to your business niche. This content should be informative content. If you fill your new business blog up with nothing but sales pitches and advertisements, readers will stay away as it gives the appearance of a spam site. Readers want information…so walk a fine line between the advertisements and informative content that you post.

4. Graphics: When possible, post original graphics within your blog posts as it adds interest to the post that your readers are reading. You never want to ‘steal’ graphics from another site without that site’s permission. If you don’t have access to a digital camera and can’t provide your own graphics, you can find free graphic sites and low-cost graphics online that you can use. You will need to appropriately post ‘sized’ graphics to fit within your blog’s template.

5. Engage Your Readers: A great way to engage readers is by asking and posting questions or asking your readers for their opinion on a particular product or topic. A fun way to engage readers would be to offer the occasional giveaway of your products or business services. Everyone likes a great giveaway for free goods!

6. Back Up Your Blog: It is very important that you back up your blog on a weekly basis or after you post new content to your blog. In this day and age…you never know when your blog might go down and you will need to repost all of your material.

7. Consistency: To get a loyal following of readers to read your blog…you will need to be consistent with posting new content to your site. I personally recommend adding new content at least twice a week. Keeping your content fresh and updated will keep your readers coming back for more.

Blogging for your business can be an enjoyable and profitable experience if you start your blog off on the right foot. Spend some time reading various blogs and make some notes of what you like and don’t like and incorporate those thoughts into the design of your own business blog. Having a great blog that readers want to read…takes a lot of dedication and hard work. Keep with it and you will see fantastic blogging success.

Shelly Hill has been blogging for business for the past 4 years. Shelly owns Work At Home Business Options located at http://www.workathomebusinessoptions.com where you can find free business articles, tips, ideas & resources. Shelly Co-Owns the site Two Classy Ghostwriting Chics with her business partner Chris Carroll located at http://www.twoclassyghostwritingchics.com. Shelly and Chris can write articles, web site, blog and newsletter content for you to use on your own web site or blog.

In my first post yesterday I was trying to be nice and tactful by not naming the company in my post. However, I have decided today to state that the company I am referring to is BambooPink. Since making my blog post about this, I have received numerous messages of support thanking me for speaking out about this and these people knew which company and reps I was speaking about…that alone tells you that this problem is out of hand. In addition, these supportive people who contacted me, all say they are fed up and they have also received numerous spam messages and emails from BambooPink reps that they don’t know.

While I can appreciate that these reps are excited about their new business opportunity, I don’t appreciate nor do hundreds of others…appreciate all of this spam. Spam is illegal. Spam is clear…you do not send private messages, facebook invites & messages, blog comments nor emails to people you do NOT know and offer them your FREE business opportunity. When I have confronted all of these spammers, they have “all” claimed they didn’t know it was spam. Personally, that is BS! They knew it was but didn’t care…they were just hoping to get you to sign on the dotted line and join their team. What is super bad about this is the fact that there are some BambooPink reps who are doing their marketing the right and professional way and then you have the other half of these reps who don’t care and are tarnishing all of them by behaving this way. BambooPink the company itself is partially to blame because they need to make it CLEAR that sending out all of these emails, blog comments, private messages, etc. to people that the reps don’t know is SPAM and will not be tolerated and the company needs to clamp down on it and enforce a policy for their sales force that forbids any type of spam messages to strangers.

In my personal opinion (yes personal opinion) the statements contained within all of these spam emails are nothing but over-blown hype and nonsense. If you offer a FREE opportunity for folks to join a company…sure, you are going to get thousands upon thousands of folks lining up. That doesn’t mean that your business model, compensation plan, consultant support nor products that you sell will be any better than any other company. The only reason you have 22,000+ who signed up is because you offered it for FREE and that is the bottom line. You can’t state it’s because your company is doing anything different than any other company for the simple FACT that NO ONE is selling anything yet. Matter of fact, 99% of your “so-called” sales force hasn’t even seen a product with their own eyes or hands yet!

That is great that a new Direct Sales company is launching but what is NOT great is the fact that there is NO leadership guidance and NO plan in place to rope in thousands of reps who are torturing innocent people online with this massive overload of spam.

For those of you who joined this company and are marketing it professionally & ethically I applaud you. For those of you who adopted the practice of spamming this nonsense to folks who didn’t request this information from your nor do these folks even know you…shame on you for tarnishing this company in this manner.

I also invite you to read Ivette’s post on this subject matter over on her WAHMBAHM blog.

Steps to a Writing Effective Press Releases by Diana Ennen

Want to get the most media attention and spotlight for your business? Then the first place to start is with a great press release. Now I can almost see half of you leaving now, dreading the thought of having to write one of these. But wait. I’m going to show you easy methods to make your press release work for you and get the attention it deserves. Ready? Let’s go.

We’ll briefly go over the basics because of their importance. Editors want to see things done the RIGHT way. I would bet that a lot of good releases simply get tossed out just because they aren’t set up properly. To a busy editor, that all too familiar three-second glance says a lot for you and your business and if you’ve done your research enough to warrant that release to be placed in their newspaper or magazine or even on their website.

Here are your essentials:

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” on the top left of the page.
Your contact name, phone number, e-mail address, and website follows. Double check this. No, triple check this. You don’t want to waste a good release because they can’t get ahold of you.

The headline is next, normally in bold and centered on the page. Summarize what the release is about and capture their attention. Spend almost as much time on your headline as you do writing the release. It’s that important. Make sure to get those valuable keywords in there and hopefully in the first few words.

The press release body starts with the location of the release and the date (Margate, Florida, January, 200X.)

Most press releases are between 400-500 words, and no more than a page. The first paragraph has the most important information. Don’t save the best for last, it won’t get read. Make sure that you explain the title of the release in this first paragraph.

It is recommended that you write press releases in the 3rd person and use short sentences and paragraphs. Do not go over board, trying to dazzle the editor, it won’t work.

Target your release. You will be sending your release to a specific audience so make sure that in your release you keep to what would appeal to that audience. What don’t they know that you can add? Nothing works better than getting an “AAH HAA” when an editor is reviewing your release. Also, keep in mind with the Internet today, that press releases, or news releases as they are now frequently called, are read by your target audience just as much as the editors. The buyers of your products or services are reading this, tell them what they need to know.

Provide statistics. Do some research and find some relevant information that applies. Research and make sure that if you are providing accurate quotes and not from some fly by night company. Remember your reputation is riding on this release. (Well, not exactly, but you don’t want the editor to read this and red flag you.).

Provide a quote from yourself or include relevant quotes from experts in your field that will reinforce what you are saying. You can approach authors, leaders in your Industry, and other experts in your Industry for a quote. They will normally appreciate the added publicity and you get the quote you’re looking for. For example, as an author I’ll often get asked to provide a quote for an article on home-based businesses or the virtual assistant industry. I welcome the opportunity as it provides me more publicity.

The last paragraph should be your call to action. You’ve talked the whole release about your business or product, now tell them what to do with this knowledge they just got. Too many leave out this vital step.

At the bottom of the release include ### to indicate you are done.
Double check this for accuracy. At this point, you’re tired and done with the Release. Well if it goes out to the world with the wrong web address, you’ve wasted your valuable time even writing the Release.

That’s it. The basics for writing a press release. Now one other thing I’d like to add in, they work. They truly do. You also want to make sure that you submit them out, but that’s another article.

Diana Ennen and Kelly Poelker are the co-authors of numerous books including Virtual Assistant: the Series, Become a Highly Successful, Sought After VA and accompanying Virtual Assistant the Series Workbook, and Virtual Assistant – The Series: Working Virtually, A Guide to Working Remotely as an Employee. Stop by their site for complete information on starting your own VA business http://www.vatheseries.com. Article is free to be reprinted as long as the author’s bio remains intact.

Article Source: WAHM Articles

A new Direct Sales company launched a few days ago and for the purpose of this blog post I am going to refer to the company as JANEDOE.

I have been in Direct Sales for over 25+ years and I love direct sales. However, there is a right and a wrong way to go about promoting your business.

When a new Direct Sales company launches we all realize that the reps and consultants are excited about the new opportunity they are involved with and that is fantastic. However…many of these reps & consultants get overly excited and start promoting their new business and the new JANEDOE company incorrectly. What do I mean?

Well, the new JANEDOE company launched this week and since the company launched me and hundreds of other people have been repeatedly spammed via email by overly-excited reps that we do NOT know. These reps are spamming hundreds if not thousands of online home business sites and blogs. In addition, many of us are finding this JANEDOE company info spammed to us on Twitter, Facebook and in blog comment posts.

While all of the new reps are excited about their new company business it is STILL ILLEGAL to send out emails to people you do NOT know & within that email is an announcement about you, your JANEDOE company and their FREE sign-up biz oppty offer is WRONG! It doesn’t matter that your email starts off with…Let me introduce myself and my new JANEDOE company to you, it is STILL email spam. Let me repeat myself…

IT IS ILLEGAL TO SEND EMAIL TO PEOPLE YOU DO NOT KNOW OFFERING THEM A CHANCE TO JOIN YOUR NEW DIRECT SALES COMPANY! (it doesn’t matter if it costs or if it’s free). SPAM IS SPAM and hundreds of us are getting fed up with this.

Does the newly launched company hold any responsibility in this? Yes they do! It should be CLEARLY stated in any and all sign-up information for this JANE DOE company that reps may not send emails to people they do not know offering them the business opportunity. Established companies make it clear that their consultants are forbidden to spam others on the internet and this new JANEDOE company needs to clamp down on this immediately. In the 5 days since launch, I know personally that I have been spammed via email numerous times by new reps and spammed numerous time via Twitter and blog comments. When I griped about this on Twitter, at least 20+ other direct sales professionals answered my tweet to tell me that they are also getting spammed by JANEDOE company’s reps.

Dear direct sales consultants with any business….it is unprofessional, it is tacky and it is ILLEGAL to send out spam emails and messages to people you do not know offering them a chance to join your paid or free home business opportunity. Please…conduct yourself in a professional manner and you will see that professionalism is what gets you the new team members.

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