One of the biggest hazards of running a home business is overworking. Believe me I know and I’ve done it many a time. But would you believe I’ve found myself more productive when I have deliberately taken time away from working?

I’m probably a fairly typical home business owner. Married, two kids. I work a lot at home and my husband works outside the home.

I do spend a lot of my day working on the computer. Since I do best at article writing I spend quite a bit of time each day on that task and probably not enough time on marketing or figuring out more ways to earn money. As I said, probably pretty typical, at least in the sense that I work most on my favorite parts and not enough in other areas.

My kids obviously pull me away from the desk quite regularly. My basic rule is that stories can be demanded at just about any time, as can playtime. Some exceptions, but mostly I’m pretty available.

But that’s not really much of a break, especially if I keep thinking about work. Read the rest of this entry »

When I watch many internet marketers at work I wonder what the real point of their business is. So many seem to be geared strictly toward buying and reviewing internet marketing products so that they can tell their list to buy and market that product so that… you get the idea.

Is there really a point to all that?

You may have noticed that I don’t review a lot of products. For that matter, I don’t buy that many. That’s because I know that all too often I will forget to use said products, so why waste the money?

This leaves me in a great condition to watch what other marketers do without falling into that cycle.

The launch of this product or that is always a big deal. There’s the hype, the talk of the great new secrets, and of course, anyone who doesn’t buy is going to be way, way behind on the curve, lose their business, go bankrupt… well, maybe I’m exaggerating just a little. Read the rest of this entry »

The rules of AdSense use have been changing lately. Make sure you’re up to date.

The changes mostly make a lot of sense. No more lining up pictures with the ads, for example. Yes, I know many publishers loved doing that, but the advertisers definitely weren’t so fond of the practice. Remember, AdSense is nothing without willing publishers. Losing the pictures means losing a major tactic for improving your clickthrough rate, but it’s not too bad a thing.

One to be very careful about is the use of competitive ads. You aren’t allowed to use the same colors on competitive ads and your AdSense ads if they appear on the same website. This appears to be a per site policy, not by the page, a very important difference.

A tough one to enforce but one that should really make things interesting for scraper sites is that ads are not to be published on sites with copyrighted information that you don’t have the right to publish. I like this rule, since scraper sites are a major problem, but the enforcement should get interesting. Don’t quite know how it will all work. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever noticed those ads online that make it so easy to get rich. They make you feel like 15 minutes of work is all it will take for you to start earning a fortune online. They don’t reveal what it really takes.

If you use pay per click, it really can take that little time for your ads to start showing, so yes, potentially you could start earning money that quickly. It is far more likely that you’ll lose money at first, however.

Pay per click marketing is not something most people master with their first ad, even after reading an ebook on the subject. Writing good ad copy is tough and researching solid keywords takes time.

The simple truth of the matter is that even if you learn about writing ad copy it will take you some time to master it, especially if it’s not something you’ve had experience with in the past.

There are some good tools that can help you to learn how to write good copy and are kept up to date with what pay per click search engines really want in an ad these days. Try Perry Marshall’s Guide to Adwords, Rosalind Gardener’s Super Affiliate Handbook or Chris Carpenter’s Google Cash. Read the rest of this entry »

I always like to keep my eyes open for good website hosting solutions. There are many options out there and you have to figure out what is going to be best for your business.

Today I got the chance to take a look at Data Center Solutions Raleigh as an option. I’m not likely to pick a dedicated server for myself, but a managed solution is certainly one I’ve considered as an option to shared hosting. The thought of having greater flexibility than is offered by having shared hosting is quite pleasant.

Being honest here, I don’t know anything about maintaining a server securely, which is why when I start doing well enough to graduate from shared hosting I’ll want a reliable company to handle those issues for me. There are just too many ways for security issues to develop and I wouldn’t want to waste my time on that. Makes much more sense to me to pay someone to handle that while I run my sites.

Having a solid company take care of your server is just good business sense. Unless you’re really good with computers and really understand online security you don’t want to mess around with it. Hackers love an insecure system.

This kind of solution is for the person or company who is really serious about having their server the way they want it. I like that you can decide whether you want a colocated server, dedicated or managed. Each of these gives you quite a bit of flexibility which is wonderful for more advanced webmasters.

I don’t expect to reach the point (unfortunately) where I need a dedicated or managed server quite as soon as I would like, but I do look forward to that time. For now I’ll be sticking with relatively (but not too) cheap hosting that gets the job done with excellent uptime. Almost changed one of my hosts recently for downtime, but when they fixed the problem I decided to stay put a little longer.

I’ve recently learned of an interesting trick that can allow you to insert your customer’s names into a page if they click through from an email or a page where they have entered their name.

This is a trick many do with software, but it’s not too hard to do on your own. Mostly it’s just knowing how to put in the PHP to add in the names. And you know what? It’s not all that difficult.

You will want to create a page in PHP. Name it as you want, but you will want it to end in.php.

If you name the variable “name” (without quotes), you can insert the name into the page with:

< ?php echo "$name"; ? > (take the space between ? and > or < out).

You can use this over and over again in the page.

Of course, there is the question: How does the page know the name? Read the rest of this entry »

In some kinds of home business it is very important to sometimes look very professional, beyond what you can do from a home office or P.O. Box. In other words, yes there are times that a physical office is a big advantage.

Not every home business is going to need this. Your typical direct sales opportunity certainly won’t. Neither will your typical affiliate marketer. But what about website designers and others who provide services?

Companies such as Advantage Office Suites can be great for home businesses for those times. Many cities have similar companies that allow you to rent out office space at need. This particular company also has virtual office solutions for those who want more than a P.O. Box for an address. You can even use conference rooms if you have the need.

As I said, many home businesses won’t need this kind of solution. But others will. If you have the need, don’t let your home office limit the potential of your home business.

When I see people talking about starting a home business, they often ask what others think would be good for them. And very often they include that they don’t want to sell anything.

Say what?

The very nature of business means you are going to have to sell something. Even if you create a purely informational website you have to sell people on the idea of visiting it. And if you actually want to make money you’re going to either have to have pay per click ads on it or recommend… that is, sell, products or services.

What most people mean when they say they don’t want to sell is that they don’t want to go into a business where they have to be harassing their friends and family to buy from them. And who can blame them? No one wants to lose friends just to make a buck.

While you’re going to have to sell to start a business, you need to realize that there are different ways to sell. Not all of them involve harassing anyone. Actually, no program can require that you harass anyone. It’s just a picture many people have and fall for, thinking they have to really work their warm market much too hard. Read the rest of this entry »