Do you take advantage of the resources the government offers to help you run your home business legally?

You may generally prefer to avoid the IRS, but they do offer some resources that can be quite useful in ensuring that you are keeping up with their requirements for a home or small business. Not sure if you need an EIN? Worried about tax scams? Just need a form? The IRS website has that and much more for you.

Even though much of the information is more than I need, I also enjoy getting the Small Business Advocate newsletter from the SBA. It’s just a generally interesting read many times.

Blogging is a hot trend for home business, but are you reaping the benefits?

Blogs are a great way to generate traffic, build trust and tell people about what you have to offer. But just like a website, it takes time and effort to get people to visit.

In some ways, however, it is very different to get visitors to a blog than a website. Bloggers have a different perspective. Blogs are often more personal than websites when it comes to business. They may be less formal. Bloggers form a community online that is very different from the regular visitors.

This can be a benefit. Your visitors and customers can post comments or questions on your blog, giving them another way to provide you with feedback. Information can be made available without making huge changes to your website, and if someone really likes your information, it can come to them directly though a feed, so they don’t lose you in their bookmarks.

I am currently experimenting with one way to get visitors to one of my blogs. I am using BlogExplosion, which is essentially a traffic exchange for blogs. Now, regular traffic exchanges don’t work, but it appears to be different for blogs. I think that it must be that the people who tend to blog enjoy the information presented in blogs more, as it is not uncommon for visitors coming through BlogExplosion to visit several posts, rather than surf through as fast as possible, which is the typical behavior seen in regular traffic exchanges.

Will I benefit from this? We’ll see, as today is my first day really doing this. If it works on my Work at Home in Progress blog, I’ll add more of my blogs to the rotation and see what happens. It’s time consuming when I find an interesting blog, but also fascinating.

I’m running into one of those situations where I am intensely grateful to have a home business. My infant son, Gage, has just turned one month old, and is probably going to have surgery to repair his scaphocephaly (he has a long, narrow head) in a month or two. Having a home business means I don’t have toworry about how I’m going to be there. I was able to go to see the pediatric neurosurgeon yesterday on a moment’s notice to discuss this condition. We’ll be getting a CT scan of his head to confirm the diagnosis in a couple weeks, and surgery when they think he will be old enough, probably before he is three months old.

Of course, this will have an impact on my ability to work on my business, but if you can’t be there for your family, what’s the point?

On a lighter note, do you use any of the tools at Digital Point. The keyword tracker just got an upgrade. You can now track results on Yahoo! and MSN in addition to Google. You just have to put a php script on your server, since queries are limited by IP address. It’s really great to be able to see where you rank on a variety of search engines. Probably the best way to view results is graphically, so that you can see trends. If you don’t use this tool, I hope you are tracking your rankings somehow. It’s good to know where you need to focus your efforts and when a good keyword is getting up where you want it without having to search for it yourself.

It’s another web event though Jupiterwebevents. Now, I don’t know what they consider to be a qualified attendee, but if you’re trying to get serious about measuring the true results of your search engine optimization results, this looks like a good one. I suspect from the registration form that they will prefer larger businesses… considering the form asks about your company’s annual revenue, and the smallest dollar amount listed is “Under $5 million”.

So what do the rest of us do?

Take advantage of free tools such as Digital Point’s Search Engine Keyword Tracker and the stats provided by your webhost. Consider buying a more in depth product to analyze the logs from your website. One relatively pricey version comes from ClickTracks Web Analytics. You can choose the version that is right for your business.

Success with the search engines is only one aspect of your online business. You still need to think about advertising offline, using pay per click search engines, and don’t forget word of mouth. Every method you use to get visitors to your website improves your odds of success.

Seems like everyone’s doing something right now… at least if you consider the “big 3″ search engines.

MSN is getting ready to launch their own pay per click search engine. No word on the date, but they have a contract with Overture right now, so some think it won’t be until 2006. It’s been lightly released already.

Yahoo is getting ready to launch ads to run on publishers’ websites, much like AdSense. People who haven’t been able to get into AdSense or have been kicked off the program for various reasons look forward to this one.

Google just updated the terms for AdSense. Now you can discuss your total monthly earnings, and direct deposit is finally available.

Google has also unveiled a new kind of ad - AdLinks. I’m testing them right now on some other sites - not here yet. As I understand it, clicking on an AdLink takes you to a page of ads, at which point you can click any ads you find interesting. Yes, that does mean it takes two clicks before any money is earned, so I don’t know if they’ll be terribly effective. But it does step things up a little for the competition, which is something Google seems to enjoy doing.

When you have clients come over to your home business, you run certain risks. In most cases, you don’t know anything about the person coming over. Taking some basic safety precautions can make running your home business much safer.

If you can arrange a separate entry for your clients, this is an excellent idea. This will keep clients from seeing what you have inside your home.

Consider whether you can have a business partner or friend present for meetings with clients. If this is not appropriate, think about whether you can have the meeting in a public or semi-public place. It is not uncommon for libraries to have small rooms you can use. You may want to consider renting a space in a business center if a more professional location is necessary.

Have a neighbor watch out for you, just as you watch out for them. Neighborhood Watch is a good idea in any case, not just for your home business.

Have emergency numbers on speed dial. This should include both police and a neighbor. You want someone to be able to come help you quickly in case of a problem or even if you just feel nervous about a person.

Just as in your personal life, don’t let the world know that you’re going on vacation. Consider hiring a virtual assistant to handle your emails and/or get your telephone messages. Tell any clients who must know that you are going to be out of the area.

It’s not too hard to be safe when running your home business, but it does require a little bit of forethought. Planning ahead can save you from being robbed or worse.

Don’t do this one yourself if you catch an AdSense cheater, but go ahead and laugh at this one: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=11041.

Just remember if you ever think about cheating AdSense, Google will take your unpaid earnings from you and it is not impossible that they will pursue legal action as well if they catch you doing anything against the TOS. Not to mention, you’ll annoy any AdWords advertisers who happen to see what you’re doing. You never know what your readers are doing, so keep things legit.

This one isn’t for everyone. You have to qualify. It’s coming right up on March 9 at 2 pm EST. It’s through Jupiter Research and sponsored by Wells Fargo. But if you are interested in international online business, it might just be for you. You’ll learn about translating your site, when to do so and what mistakes to avoid. If this is an interest of yours, you might want to hurry up and apply.