One of the keys to success in running a home business is connecting with others. Good relationships with other people in business can help you to build your own. It’s also just a lot of fun.

DirectMatches.com is for people who are running a home-based business. You get to network with other people as well as have the chance to win prizes.

In the setup, it’s rather like a lot of social networking websites. You have your profile in which you can tell other people about yourself and your business. There are networks to join, a blog to post in, contacts to be made. But the focus here is on business, not on the personal side of your life. Members can also post videos and classified ads.

One of the good parts is that it is free to join. There are paid memberships as well, but you can start out free before deciding if paid is for you.

DirectMatches.com claims 65,000 members, which is a good base of people for you to start meeting and help you build up your home business. The ads along the sides are member sponsored, which gives you an idea as to what you can be paying for on this site.

I’ve been trying Facebook out just a little. Not working it very hard; my account has a whole two friends, one being an acquaintance from high school who happened to be there too.

And then this morning I read over on Shoemoney’s blog about Facebook Flyers. I’d never noticed them before. But I immediately decided I needed to give it a try.

Facebook offers two choices. You can pay a flat rate for a number of exposures, or pay per click. I chose per click because the article on Shoemoney mentioned starting out with a really poor clickthrough rate. It’s a very minimal campaign for now, and aimed at getting subscribers to one of my newsletters.

Once I’m comfortable, I’ll start looking at how to earn through these links. Newsletter subscribers are very nice to have, but I’d love to see what can be done to earn some good old money too. But the plus is that I will know very quickly if I have new subscribers. As with many areas, no doubt things that are initially free will work pretty well, so pay per lead is probably a good idea.

Of course, I’ll have to be pretty creative since I’m sure the Shoemoney post will bring a lot more people to advertising on Facebook. But that’s all a part of the game.

Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook flyers, advertising on facebook

I was having a little fun Stumbling around when I came across a post called How I Made $100,000 by Spending 25 Minutes and $0 on Marketing on the Self Made Chick blog. It’s worth a read. She’s not joking, and it’s a great reminder that when you come up with an idea that should get you easy business, even if it’s not quite in your comfort zone, you should probably run with it.

If she keeps up posts like this, her blog is likely to be popular pretty quickly.

Getting out of your comfort zone is tough. I’ve made myself do that a few times, and it has always felt good, even if it hasn’t had quite the results Christine’s had. I even tried promoting myself as an expert for a local television show once, and I’m the girl who could barely talk in front of her class in high school. It didn’t work out, and a few months later the show was cancelled anyhow, but I tried.

Think about what you’ve been putting off. What should you be doing to grow your business that you haven’t yet?

Technorati Tags: procrastinate, procrastination, grow business, home business

Google’s Landing Page Quality Score has a huge impact on PPC costs. If you don’t have a good quality score, you pay more per click. It can be pretty painful.

But today the Google AdWords blog has a post on the topic. It goes into the types of landing pages that will tend to get low quality scores. They can even refuse to run ads for some sites. The pages that will generally get low scores include (from the blog):

• Data collection sites that offer free gifts, subscription services etc., in order to collect private information
• Arbitrage sites that are designed for the sole purpose of showing ads
• Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor’s computer

Seems pretty reasonable to me. They also include”get rich quick” and similar sites. Seems to me I still see plenty.

I know a lot of people find Google’s standards pretty tough. It’s not always the easiest advertising to do, especially if Google declares that your page that was converting well for you “low quality”. But that’s all a part of the game.

Technorati Tags: adwords, ppc, quality score, landing page

Let’s be frank here. Only a few home business ideas these days need investors. Most can be done on your own. But if you’re selling something that is going to require significant investment on your part, or develop something that is going to cost a good amount to get going, finding investors can still make sense.

Finding venture capital funding can be challenging if you’re new to it. But RaiseCapital.com is trying to make it a little easier. Their goal is to connect entrepreneurs and investors.

They’re pretty simple to use. Just type up your business idea or what the existing business you want investors for, what kind of funding you are looking for, and the site will allow potential investors to contact you.

Depending on your membership, you can use just plain text, images or even video. That’s a lot of flexibility to really get the idea of your business across.

Getting investors doesn’t have to mean you need millions. RaiseCapital notes that investments made in businesses can be as small as a few thousand dollars.

The investors are allowed to look at your profile anonymously, then contact you by email about your needs. This allows them to look freely for opportunities.

Getting an investor can be a great way to spread out the risk of starting up a business. While it’s definitely not for everyone, a lot of businesses do better with more investment than an individual is likely to be able to handle.

Blogging can be a hobby or it can be serious work. But if you want to succeed at whatever your blogging goals may be, you need to work at it.

Success is a very individual thing. For some bloggers, having a good readership with lots of comments is success. For others, just posting is sufficient. Still others want nothing more than to make a living off their blog.

In all cases, there are major mistakes you can make as a blogger.

Mistake 1: No comments allowed

Some bloggers just find this easier to deal with. And a few big bloggers even get away with it and still have good blogs. But for most blogs, allowing comments is very much a part of getting people involved with your blog.

A related mistake is failing to check your comments. I strongly recommend having Akismet installed as a minimum. It’s a part of the standard WordPress installation, and is available for other platforms as well. Make sure it’s turned on.

You’ll still need to watch out for spam comments. I get all comments emailed to me, so I can check them over. Spam comments are deleted, generally before they even show on the blog, as I moderate first comments at the very least.

Mistake 2: Inconsistency

There are a few kinds of inconsistency. You can get too personal or not personal enough for the overall style of your blog. You can post so rarely that no one cares to read your blog. You can vanish for long periods for no apparent (to your readers) reason.

With paid services such as PayPerPost out there for bloggers to earn money, it can be easy to blog about things you wouldn’t normally discuss. No matter the temptation, a blog is best off being held to consistent topics. If you can work in paid posts, do so. It’s little different from posting about affiliate products, if you do it well. But if you go off on wild tangents just for the money, you risk losing your readership.

Mistake 3: No goals

Even if you’re blogging for fun, you should have some goals in mind. Blogs need direction. Without that, they won’t interest many readers..

Goals are even more important if you want to run it as a business. Goals can help you keep going. They provide a focus to the topics you blog about. They let you know if you’re succeeding.

Mistake 4: Being unprofessional

Even if you just have a personal blog, there’s a degree of professionalism you should consider. This includes being professional to people who vehemently disagree with you, or at least not resorting to name calling.

Being professional can also mean getting your own domain name and hosting. While a free solution such as Blogspot is fine for personal blogs in many ways, most blogs do best being hosted elsewhere. At the very least, this gives you more control. If you’re hosted by Blogspot or another company, they can delete you with little or no notice. Do you really want to risk losing all your hard work?

You should also be reading up on your topic so that you can discuss relevant current topics. This can help to inspire you. News is often great blog fodder.

Mistake 5: Unrealistic expectations

If you think your blog is going to be an overnight success, expect to work really, really hard, on a spectacular, attention getting topic. Most blogs take months or years to really be discovered.

Yes, there are many bloggers who have made it big. There are many, many more still struggling. Your writing style has to appeal to your potential readership, you have to choose great topics to write about, and you have to market well. Only a few people manage this in only a couple months.

On the plus side, blogging is a great way to get started working from home. It’s cheap to start, and you probably have most of what you need. You can blog on almost any topic that interests you. You can be as personal or as private as you like. It’s also a lot of fun for many people.

Technorati Tags: blogging mistakes

It’s common to run a home business where you offer a service. When you do this, it is very important that you know how you are spending your time. Even if you aren’t charging your client hourly, knowing how much time you are spending on various aspects of a project can help to to see if your pricing structure is accurate.

Journyx has an interesting timesheet software. For starters, it’s free if you have under 10 users on it. That is, most home businesses won’t have to pay for it. Always a nice deal.

It also looks to be a very powerful solution for tracking your hours. You can set up multiple users, which could probably be used if you need to hire some help or use subcontractors. It is very flexible. And if you really need help figuring it out, you can pay for training classes to get you moving. There’s also a KnowledgeBase for those who are more comfortable learning these things on their own.

You can run Journyx Timesheet on a server if that best suits your needs, too. You’ll need a good server with a lot of space for your projects in that case, but I can see that as being practical too. Much more accessible, especially if you do have multiple people using your copy.

Free traffic sounds good to any website owner. So do free links. A lot of website owners try various tactics, from providing useful tools to writing lists.

Why are lists so popular?

A good list does well in bringing in traffic from a variety of sources. They can do well on social bookmarking websites. People send them to friends.

But better yet, bloggers may post about them, adding links to your site into the mix.

What makes lists work?

Not every list is going to bring in significant traffic or links. You really need to offer something unique. You need to come up with something that will really make your list valuable as a resource.

Sometimes that’s making a really long list. 100 best directories to submit your site to.

Other times a shorter list that provides greater detail is better. Share 5 of your favorite social bookmarking websites and how to best use each one.

The key is to create something of value that most people haven’t thought of yet or haven’t figured out how to do. If your list is too much like what can be found on every other website in your niche, it is not going to bring a lot of attention to your website.

You should be aware that some people hate list pages. HATE them.

This is really quite understandable. So many lists are just this side of useless, thrown together in an attempt to garner traffic. If you’re looking to write a list to build traffic to your website, make it something special. Not average, not boring.

A list can be created for any industry. Just start brainstorming. Think about what people you want coming to your site will enjoy. It’s really just like creating any other link bait. A skin care site can list 10 steps to more beautiful skin, 20 foods you should eat for healthy skin, 10 secret beauty tips and so forth. A gardening site can post a list of beneficial bugs.

I really think the trouble a lot of people have with lists and other kinds of link bait is that so much of it is done so very poorly. It’s about getting the traffic, not about providing something really useful. The trouble is that once people realize you’re not providing, they’re going to ignore you. That’s just the way it is.

Get to work. Start thinking about lists your website visitors will enjoy reading. Then do your research and write something that will really draw people in.

Technorati Tags: list writing, link building, link bait