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Starting a Home Based Business? 5 Steps to Follow

Starting a home based business on the Internet has never been easier. With the current state of our economy it’s one of the best decisions that anyone can do to dramatically change his/her life. It has been statistically proven that for the first time in internet history, millions of people seeking their way out in this industry every day and the numbers are continuously growing.

People come to the internet looking for answers to money problems, home loan problems, real estate problems, and looking for employment. All these searches performed on Google or any other search engine mean potential customers for individuals who already run their online business.

If you have a solution to the searchers problems, there is tremendous potential in creating online wealth.The internet has millions of searchers each day and that information will equate to a six billion dollar e-commerce revenue projected for 2011. Internet revenue is expected to continually grow exponentially every year through 2015. Conservative analysis now estimates global Internet sales at 10 billion dollars in 2016.

Since we are just slowly recovering from the recession that hit millions of people, many entrepreneurial minded people are beginning to consider starting home based business as a good idea. And they are right but only if they will do their research and due diligence.

Many who will just jump blindly on any internet advertisement that says “Best Home Based Business Opportunity” will fail miserably. Unfortunately there is nothing like Get Rich Quick Scheme or a Push of a Button Scheme that would bring money flying out of your computer. You are better off buying a lottery and hoping for a good luck or miracle to happen..

The online success will not happen overnight. It takes commitment and hard work to build a successful home based business. Only with everyday devotion the success will be built gradually. By starting home based business you have to give up two things at the beginning, time and money. The reality is that those who will invest their time and money at the beginning will see the results ten times down the road.

Learning Internet Marketing is the best future investment that you can make right now.

Here are 5 simple steps to follow on how to start home based business that can put you well on your way to building an online business this year.

1. Starting Home Based Business – Think about a type of product or service that you would like to promote and sell. Make sure to do extensive research if that particular product is what others are searching for. Find a way to promote and sell it to them.

2. Creating a Home Office – Create a place where you can close the door and fully concentrate without any interruptions. Make sure you talk to other family members not to interrupt once the door is closed. Allocate specific time blocks when you going to work on your business. Time management is the biggest downfall of many home based business entrepreneurs.

3. Invest in training and education – Spend at least 60 minutes a day learning new internet marketing skills for the next 6 months and your business results will be ten times bigger than without the proper training. You can set up your own schedule and save tons of money if you study at home instead of spending 4 years in college.

4. Leading Home Based Business Corporations – Many of the leading home based business companies promote multi level marketing programs where you tell one friend and that friend tells another friend and so on earning small commissions that build from one friend to another. Or you can tap into Network Marketing companies that offer higher end education products or lifestyle related conferences. These are great long term residual income producers that can create huge incomes for those savvy enough to market their product.

5. Top Legitimate Home Based Business – Once you have found the top legitimate home based business for you, you’ll need to start marketing that business online. By becoming a member of a legitimate MLM or Network Marketing company, you will be provided with all the necessary tools and resources, you need to be successful online. There is usually a “Back Office” with these programs that will guide you through the sales procedures. Many of these companies will even supply you with your own website. Your job is to market their products online. You simply drive traffic to it through different social websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google Groups, and hundreds of other sites that you join to discuss your products and services. I will also recommend to market with Google AdWords, Video Marketing and Blogging.

Starting home based business can be very easy if you have the right mindset, tools, resources, training, and system that you can follow and carbon copy.

The Finer Points of Internet Auctions

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

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Benefits of Targeted PPC Advertising Campaigns

PPC or pay per click is the most widely used paid advertisement option on the Internet. Small and large businesses as well as individual marketers are able to market their products and services in a very cost-effective way. Advertisements placed in print media, radio and TV do not give any guarantee of traffic conversion. In these types of advertisements, the advertiser never gets to assess the impact of advertisement. Such methods proved ineffective because the advertisement is watched by thousands or even millions of people but only a few of them buy that product. That is not the case with the targeted PPC advertising. This advertising method is so popular because of various advantages that it provides to businesses of all types and sizes.

Genuine Potential Customers
The first advantage with the targeted PPC advertising is that only people who are really interested in the advertised product or service click it. This means, the company receives only those visitors who are really interested in the company’s product. Such visitors can be converted easily into customers.

Cost-Effective
Compared to other advertising options like TV and print media ads, the targeted PPC advertising provides value for money. The advertiser has to pay only for genuine visitors who are really interested in the company’s products. Every penny spent is worth it because it results in gaining customers who need that product and are ready to spend money for that. Profit is lot more than the money spent on PPC advertisement.

Track Performance
The money spent on targeted PPC can be tracked for effectiveness. An ad solution provider provides all types of data analysis tools. This helps assess clearly if the advertisement is proving beneficial for the company. The analyzed data can be used to plan the advertisement strategy properly. Things that are working can be continued and strengthened, while ineffective promotions can be discontinued.

Dynamic Advertising
PPC advertisements take care of various permutations and combinations of the keyword. This eliminates the need for the advertiser to come up with the perfect single keyword. The advertisement shows up for different combinations of the main keyword.

Control Budget
With the help of targeted PPC advertising, a company can spend only the right amount on the advertising. Besides, the money is spent on advertisement that provides targeted customers and clients. This helps plan and manage the budget properly and efficiently.

Connect with the Right Customers and Clients
PPC advertisement is not clicked on by people who are not interested in that product or service. The company receives only genuine customers and clients. If these customers turn out to be long-term buyers then the advertiser keeps making money for years to come from a lead that cost only a few pennies.

Increase Brand Value
The targeted PPC advertising helps increase the brand value of the company. People rightly assume that if a company is capable of paid advertisements then it must have some substance. They also understand that a company spending money on advertisement has the financial wherewithal to provide all types of support system to make the purchase hassle-free for the customers.