Starting and running a successful home-based business is not as easy as you think. Sometimes things can and do go wrong. Also, many businesses fail unfortunately. The percentage relating to business failure is very high. If you are going to start your own business at home then you need to make sure that you follow all of the steps required for success. The purpose of this article is to share with you three important tips that you need to consider when starting your own home based business.You can’t sell to everyone- Even if everyone could potentially use your product it does not mean that everyone will buy your product. You need to make sure to carefully define your niche and target your market accordingly. If your home-based business involves selling predominantly online, one of the best ways to target your market accordingly is with long tail keywords. This involves you making sure to regularly use keyword phrases in your content that people search in Google. With Search Engine Optimisation you aim to have your webpage appear high in search results for your chosen keywords.Success requires work- Running your own home-based business requires work, and in the beginning it will require a lot of hard work. You will need to put in a lot of setup work, developing your systems, and you will have to do most of your own marketing, sales and customer service. As your business grows you can bring on staff and contractors to outsource a lot of the work you need to do in the beginning. Unfortunately get rich quick schemes are schemes for a reason. They do not work.Success requires goal setting- You need to set goals for your business. These goals need to be SMART goals. They need to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. Without setting goals for your business, you will not be able to measure whether you are actually successful. You need specific goals (e.g. you cannot say “I want to be rich”) that are measurable (you need an amount). They need to be achievable and realistic (most people won’t be an astronaut) and there needs to be a deadline for you to achieve your goals.Almost everybody who sets up a home-based business has the ability to be successful. To do this, the work from home entrepreneur needs to define their target market and work hard to achieve their goals.
The Pros and Cons of Distance Education
In the recent past, the cost of education has shot up tremendously. Even the developed world in which education is supposed to be readily available is experiencing this change.
Since necessity is the mother of invention, the runaway cost of education led to the emergence of distance education, which is an approach to education where tutors and their students interact remotely. Like everything else, distance education has its pros and cons as explained below.
The most prominent benefit of distance education is the convenience it offers. The busy individual, as well as the one who prefers comfort, is well catered for here. Classes can be attended anywhere and at any time. This aspect effectively eliminates much of the stuff that makes education unsustainably costly.
Closely related to convenience is the flexibility that distance education permits. Conventional education has specific location and time demands. Distance learning eliminates these constraints and allows a student to set a pace that suits them. Slow and linguistically challenged learners can, therefore, move at their own pace and grasp more.
The cost factor also comes in quite strongly as a benefit of distance education. Many students miss study abroad opportunities because they can’t afford travel and accommodation costs. Thanks to distance learning, such costs are no longer an impediment.
On the cons side, the most prominent factor is the lack of direct contact with instructors and peers. Even with online forums, this problem remains unsolved. The lack of direct contact eliminates question and answer sessions, which are in most cases highly insightful. This setback makes distance education suitable only for those who are self-driven.
Additionally, since students conduct their studies wherever they choose, they miss the ambiance provided by the campus atmosphere. Campuses are typically designed to maximize learning and, as such, those who study off-campus miss out on this critical benefit.
Further, distance education still faces stigmatization despite the extensive growth it has realized along the lines of popularity and credibility. Employers often question the integrity of distance learning. Consequently, beneficiaries of these programs may find the job market quite hostile towards them.
In conclusion, a close-up look at both the pros and cons of distance education as discussed shows that they are genuine. As such, to draw the full benefits of this educational approach, necessary adjustments need to be made with the view to address the concerns that surround it. Otherwise, the benefits of this approach are likely to go untapped.
Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up
One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.
However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.
Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.
But why?
In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!
So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)
The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.
Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.
Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.
By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.
You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.