Home Business – Being Prepared For Emergencies

When it comes to having a home based Direct Sales business, it is important to be prepared for life’s little and big emergencies. By being prepared ahead of time, your business can still operate in your absence.

What do I mean? What if your child, husband, parents or even yourself becomes sick and you need immediate time off? What if there is a death in your family? What if a natural disaster occurs in your area? Is your home business prepared for your absence?

Lets remember…if your business is closed due to an emergency…you are not making any money!

Once way you can be prepared ahead of time is by making a list of everything that you need covered in your business. Here is an example list:

1. Answering emails
2. Returning phone calls to customers, clients, leads, etc.
3. Submitting pending orders.
4. Packaging and shipping.
5. Demonstrating at home parties & events that are already booked & on your calendar.

As you can see, that is just a short list, but there is a lot that needs to be covered in a home business should you need some time off.

As a home business owner, I decided to train a local consultant to me to cover me should I need time off. This consultant would go out and do my parties, events, submit orders, run training meetings and so forth.

If you are a Direct Sales home business owner, I suggest you find someone that you can trust who is willing to be trained by you…to handle your business should a personal emergency would occur. This person should be able to step into your shoes and run your business until you can return.

Customers, clients, hosts, recruit leads, etc. will not wait days or even weeks for your return. Most of the time, these people will move on another consultant who can help them so in essence…you lose business.

Do you have a back up plan in place should an emergency crop up and you need time off?

Shelly

How To Set Up A Direct Sales Business Blog

When it comes to Direct Sales, many consultants these days are chosing to start an online business blog as a way to reach out to their established customers but more importantly…as a way to attract new ones.

Before you make the decision to start a business blog, you need to contact your Direct Sales Company to make sure you are allowed to have one online & to see if they have any company rules regarding online advertising. You also need to make sure you have the time to stick with updating your blog before you even get started.

After you have made the decision, it’s now time to decide where you want to build your blog online. Two of the most popular sites for online blogging is Blogger and Wordpress. You will want to open up an account and get your blog set up. Once you open up an account, you can pick out a design. There are thousands of free online blogger and wordpress templates for you to choose from. Once you select one, you need to install it onto your blog.

Now that you have that completed, it’s time to get busy making some posts onto your blog. When it comes to blogging about your business, it is important to keep your new blog strictly about business and not your personal life. In addition, you don’t want your blog to come off as a big fat spam ad…so make sure you fill it up with informative content about your company, your services, your products and so forth. Once you got some content onto your blog, it will be time to advertise its web address.

You can advertise your blog online by joining a few online blog directories, putting your link in your signature tag, announcing it on your Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In Accounts and so forth. There are many ways to advertise online and you can find additional ways to do that by reading other articles here on our blog.

My best tip about blogging for business is to keep at it. People don’t just magically find your blog…just like they don’t just magically find your business services, so it’s your job to promote your new blog & to keep it fresh & updated with new posts.

Happy Blogging!

Shelly

5 Ways To Add Content To Your Blog When You’re Not A Writer

Good content is important to a blog because that’s what bring people to it, but what happens when you’re not a writer? Don’t worry you don’t have to be a writer to blog.

Hire a Ghostwriter
A ghostwriter can transform your ideas and opinions into a professional and well-written article or post. When you work closely with a ghostwriter, your ghostwriter can infuse your voice and personality into a blog post so it sounds like you and not someone you’re not. No one will know a ghostwriter wrote it unless you say so.

Tip: Get recommendations from your business associates or friends on finding a reputable ghostwriter. Check their references and ask for writing samples.

Have Guest Bloggers
You can find several guest bloggers to help you add original content for your blog. Guest bloggers bring a new perspective, expertise in a subject you’re not familiar with and reach out to a broader audience.

Tip: Look to your fellow bloggers to be contributors or network through social media sites. Many are happy to take on this opportunity as it benefits them in getting more exposure for themselves and their business.

Buy PLR Content
PLR stands for private label rights. These are articles sold in bundles to a limited number of people. Depending on the PLR terms of use, PLR articles can be used as is, completely or partially rewritten or repurposed.

Tip: Avoid unlimited sale of PLR articles which means if you don’t rewrite the content, there could be thousands of the same content found on the web. To have original content on your blog consider writing it in your own words and add your own ideas and knowledge. It’s the only way to guarantee you won’t have the same content on your blog that is plastered everywhere else.

Few places to find quality PLR articles:
EasyPLR.com
ThePLRPlace.com
AllPrivateLabelContent.com

Article Directories
You can find thousands of expert authors on article directories who write on a wide range of topics. It’s extremely important if you go this route to include and make all links clickable in the author’s resource box.

Tip: When using reprint articles on your blog, you should write your own introduction. For example, tell your readers why you chose the article or offer your take about the article.

Vlogging
Video blogging is great way to add personality and a personal touch. It also allows your visitors to see a real person and hear a voice. You can perform demonstrations, show how-to make something, offer tips etc. which is easier than trying to find the right words to write.

Tip: Have a good microphone and web cam. The most popular place to host your vlog is on YouTube.com.

As you can see, you don’t have to be a writer to blog, you just have to know where to find the resources and these five resources are excellent ways to add content to your blog.

Sophia McIntyre offers ghostwriting services working with you to create quality and professional articles.

She’s the founder of WorkAtHomeSpace.com, a free work at home resource focusing on providing work at home company listings, daily telecommute job leads, articles, business resources and other work at home related topics.

More Twitter Tips on Social Networking

Many know now why Twitter is a good choice for marketing yourself and your business. You get a lot of exposure, spurts of high traffic and it can be extremely viral. Do it wrong and you get nothing.

Twitter is social networking. It’s more than a two way street. It’s like a traffic jam or an opened store front. Eventually people who don’t know each other will find something in common to talk about and if you talk long enough, you’ll become friends.

When you haven’t seen a friend in a long time and one day you bump into them, it’s a great surprise. You’ll have lots to catch up on and talk about. Wouldn’t it be a bit odd if you haven’t seen or spoken to a friend in a long time and out of the blue get an email from them asking for a favour? I would find it a bit strange.

The same goes with social networking sites. To be effective you have to be present and you have to be engaging. Before you build your business relationship get to know a bit more about the person each day. Things happen and people get busy or their priority change. Don’t automatically assume that because you’ve chatted and gotten to know each other a bit in the past, you can solicit your business to them. Both parties have to be willing. There’s no point in introducing your business to someone who’s not on the same page as you. Take the time to rebuild and reconnect.

Social networking is not about the numbers. It’s quality. It’s not possible to connect with all of your thousands of followers on Twitter and that’s fine because you follow people for different reasons, right? It’s not about “I’ll follow you and you follow me”. Choose and find people that you want to inspire, help, grow and that they can do the same for you.

~Sophia

How to Move Your To-Do list to DONE!

It’s our pleasure to have Melissa H. Dery, The Golden Rule Virtual Assistant (VA) as our guest blogger. She offers her expertise and discuss how a Virtual Assistant can alleviate your daily work load so you can focus on the other aspects of your business.

Thank you Melissa for sharing with us such a great blog post!

Take a moment and look at your current To-Do list. What are the tasks you keep moving from one-day to the next because you just don’t have the time or the desire to get them done? These are the tasks that you know will help your business grow, keep you organized and prepared. However, each day you have good intentions to get them done, but other pressing tasks like talking with customers, meeting with prospects and training new team members takes priority. This is where delegating can be vitally helpful to taking your business to the next level. This is how a Virtual Assistant can help move your business forward.

There are many different definitions of what a Virtual Assistant (VA) is, the way I explain it is, I’ve been an administrative professional for over 20 years, I just decided to provide the same professional services virtually. While you work from home building and growing your direct sales business, I work from my home to provide you the support services you need to help you gain more time in front of customers, prospects and team members.

When you took a look at your To-Do list, did it include the following tasks?

•Send invitations for current parties
•Enter new customers into database
•Create a system to organize contacts and schedule follow-ups
•Send thank you, birthday, anniversary cards to customers, team members
•Create and send a newsletter to customers
•Create and send a newsletter to team members

These are just a few examples of projects I’m working on with direct sales superstars like you. There are many ways a VA can help support your business so that you can focus on growing your business. Take some time to review your to-do list and see what tasks you would love to turnover and get done! Schedule a free consultation call and let’s discuss how you can get some tasks off your to-do list and in the hands of a trusted professional.

Melissa H. Dery is The Golden Rule Virtual Assistant (VA) providing administrative support services to leaders in Direct Sales. A former direct sales consultant, who also grew up in a direct sales family, Melissa has a personal understanding of the “behind the scenes” work required to help your business run and grow.

With over 20 years of experience as an administrative assistant, Melissa took her talents as an assistant and combined it with her desire to help support those in direct sales to become The Golden Rule VA. Where her mission is to treat your business as if it were her very own, with respect, creativity and professionalism…it’s her rule!

Melissa is married to her best friend and lives in New Hampshire with her two boys. She has a Bachelor Degree in Business Management and a “Ducktoratte” Degree from Disney University. She loves coffee, running and most of all go camping with her family.

Homemade Guacamole Recipe

If your family is like mine…then they most likely love Guacamole with some Taco Chips for family snack time. However, it is much healthier for you to make it fresh & homemade yourself instead of purchasing it jarred at your local supermarket.

Making homemade Guacamole is fairly simple and takes less than 30 minutes to make. You will want to keep it refrigerated until you are ready to use it. This recipe makes about 1 1/4 cups of dip.

2 ripe avocados
1 red tomato, finely chopped
1 small jalapeno pepper, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon of mayonnaise
1 Tablespoon onion, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 Tablespoon of fresh lemon juice

You will want to chop all of your vegetable ingredients and then mash them with a fork or mash them in a blender. Add the rest of the non-vegetable ingredients and stir until all ingredients are well blended together. Place Guacamole in a container and refrigerate it until ready to use.

This is a great Guacamole dip to use with Taco Chips…I like to make it for our family game or movie nights.

Shelly

Work At Home Job Tips: Smaller Gigs Can Lead To Bigger Jobs

Some people think accepting smaller, low paying gigs aren’t worth their time and I agree and disagree. Here’s why…

Only you know what’s good for you and your financial situation. No one should say to another that accepting XYZ job is not worth the time. Of course, you’ll have to evaluate how long it will take for you to perform the job and it could be well worth your while.

There are smaller gigs that pay decent and are simple and offer a lot of flexibility. They don’t require a lot of experience and often if you stick with them, they open doors to other paying opportunities or jobs that offer higher paying wages.

It’s true what they say. Little things add up quickly and this also applies to smaller paying gigs.

~Sophia

Are You Prepared For A Natural Disaster?

My husband and I were recently discussing natural diseasters and emergency preparedness and both of us realized that we really are not prepared for a real emergency.

Do you have a plan? Are you and your family prepared? If not, it’s time to get prepared!

While surfing the interenet today for more information on this topic, I found a great web site that I would like to pass along to our blog readers. This web site has a FREE printable emergency preparedness checklist that you can print out and put into action NOW before a real disaster happens.

You can also purchase items that you and your family may need from this same web site (we are not affiliated with this site in any way).

The site is called Preparedness.com and I really think you should check it out. It is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to a real emergency.

Shelly

Business Blogging – Topics That Can Drive Readers Away

When it comes to blogging for your business, you really need to pay attention to the type of posts you are putting up for your readers to read. If you post the wrong topics on your business blog, you will drive your readers away which defeats the purpose of blogging for your business.

I read hundreds of blogs each and every week. Some of these blogs are business blogs, some are personal blogs and some are a mixture of both (which I totally disagree about mixing business & pleasure together on a blog).

There are some topics that should never be discussed on a business blog (unless you have a business blog that is totally geared towards a certain industry) and I would like to touch upon those today.

When a customer or potential customer is reading your business blog, they don’t want to read about the following topics:

Your Love Life
Your Home Life Is A Mess
Your Spouse Left You
Hate Words, Curse Words, etc.
Your Neighbors or Your Boss
etc. etc. etc.

A Business Blog is just that…a place where you can share information with others about your business, the types of products or services you offer and a place for you to give indepth service & product knowledge. It is a place to give your readers more information about your business…it is not a place to gossip about your love life, your family or your neighbors.

Case In Point: Just last week I went to check out a persons business blog…but yet…when I got onto her blog, 90% of the posts were chit chat family and personal stuff. What turned me off even more was when I saw a lot of inappropriate language (including curse words) on what she calls “Her Business Blog”. Geesh, that is one sure fire way to drive your readers away for sure and more importantly, it makes you like UNPROFESSIONAL.

So here is my advice….if you want to post chit chat family stuff, you are better off to make a second blog. Keep one blog for business and one for personal.

You want to draw potential customers to you and not drive them away.

Shelly

Organizing Your Online Job Search

Being an active job seeker requires organization. People often don’t keep track and if they do, they don’t think of putting a lot of information of the companies they apply with.

When you work virtually, some companies take a long time to get back to you. It doesn’t mean you should forget about them because they may have open positions at a later date, but would you remember what position you applied for two months from now?

There are different ways you can keep track of your online job searches. Using a spreadsheet like Excel works beautifully. You can also use Word or resort to the old-fashioned way — pen and notebook which eventually your information will become stale and the bookkeeping becomes messy.

Keeping the information on your computer is convenient, but make sure you have hard copies and back ups.

JibberJobber.com is a free web database for job seekers to organize their job searches. It’s more functional than using Excel and since it’s not something you download to your computer, it won’t get accidentally deleted or lost.

You can do so much at JibberJobber.com and it’s not just keeping track of where you applied, but you can also keep track of the people you have networked with.

JibberJobber allows you to keep track of the information you collect during a job search. Track the companies that you apply to (Target Companies). Track each job that you apply for, and log the status of each application (date of first interview, date thank you letter sent, etc.). Want to know where you sent your different resumes? Use JibberJobber to keep track of it!

How you manage and organize your job search online is critical in finding a job. Don’t let jobs pass you by because you forgot to send a follow up or look silly for applying three times to the same company within the same month.

Stay organized and on top of your online job searches.

~Sophia

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