A legitimate home based business is what we all looking for, something that we can be proud of and gain wealth and recognition for. The problem today is there is so many sheep in wolfs clothing it has made people very sceptical about what to invest their time and money into and rightly so. In this article I would like to look at the things to look for in a legitimate home based business and what should make alarm bells ring.Which route you take to become a legitimate home based business owner will depend on the investment capital you have, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the more you have to spend the more successful you will be or the less susceptible you will be to being taken for a ride. Internet scammers have become very good at charging just the right price to make you believe you are getting value for money.What you need to remember is that the people that are supplying you with a business in a box are doing it for one reason and one reason only; to make money. What you have to look for is a business model that is going to make you money in the process, of mutual benefit. An example of this type of legitimate home based business is multi level marketing, not to be confused with pyramid selling.Multi level marketing is fast becoming the business model of choice for major companies across the globe, suppressing its bad reputation from the early nineties. It was confused with pyramid selling in which only the person at the top really made any money and it was just a dream that was sold to people down the pyramid. Today Multi level marketing is used for the distribution of quality products through sales reps that earn commissions and also have the opportunity to recruit more distributers, thus earning commissions from their sales as well.One should be aware that not all multi level marketing opportunities can be legitimate home based businesses, although not breaking the law beware of companies that require you to buy large amounts of stock up front, this should start the alarm bells ringing. If the product was in demand enough and sold at a reasonable rate the company would be happy to supply straight to your customers. Look for high levels of training within the company; this displays an interest in their distributers and their need for you to succeed.

If you have decided to work from home then the best way to make money from home is to start a home based business. You may work from home on various jobs and on contractual assignments but those may not make you rich. A home based business, if run well, can make you rich and financially independent. To secure a sound financial future, you should start a home based business and you should endeavor to succeed in it.Here are a few tips to succeed in a home based business.Do Not Buy The HypeEverything that is hyped is not bad but most hype is exaggerated. When you decide to start a home based business, venture into a domain that you specialize in. There may be a lot of hullaballoo about affiliate marketing but if you do not know how to create a network, how to market and sell products then such a program or idea would be futile for you, irrespective of how promising the idea may be. Do what you can do and do it in your own way. When you let your belief take the lead and you are driven by self confidence, you will succeed, the only difference would be whether it is sooner or later.Create A Niche Out Of Your ForteYou may be a good chef and might want to start a home based business of catering. You can work from home and you will make money from home with a catering business if you are a good chef but there are many good chefs in any major neighborhood, town or city. What is your specialty? Whether you are a chef or a programmer, you will have a certain forte, something or some facet of the skill that you are excellent with. You should make this forte a niche of its own. When your unique selling point or USP is something that others cannot match or beat, you would witness exponential growth of your home based business.Be Organized Right From The StartYou may work from home and make money from home with your home based business but you should always treat your venture as any traditional business. You must take care of all the registrations, licenses and insurances, should have the accounts organized and deal with every facet of the business professionally. You never know when you may need a loan from a bank or you would crack a big deal when your entire past profile would have to be presented.

According to a recent survey published by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills 13% of the workforce is now classified as self-employed and in America between 2008 and 2012 there was a 431,000 increase in the number of people working on their own. Many self-employed people work in industries that have traditionally used a lot of freelance workers, such as IT and construction but self-employment is increasing across most industries and statistics show that in the period March 2011 to March 2013 64% of the newly self-employed are managers or professionals.

Some of the newly self-employed have little need for sales and marketing skills, for example a builder who consistently works for the same main contractor hopefully has as much work issued as they require, however for a lot of newly self-employed people learning the basics of sales and marketing will make the difference between just surviving and positively thriving.

This article is designed to help the newly self-employed gain the basics of the sales and marketing skills and knowledge they need, and if they cannot find the time to develop those skills themselves show them where to access the professional help they need.

It covers

• The difference between sales and marketing

• What is an integrated marketing message

• Online and traditional media

• Precision Guided Marketing – targeting the right prospects

• Using prospect appropriate language

• Sell benefits not features

• Find something unique about you and your offering

Sales and marketing, what is the difference? This is nice and simple and really they should be in the other order, because chronologically marketing comes first. Marketing is simply anything you do to find prospects to try to sell to. The sales process then attempts to turn those prospects in to customers. It is only at the end, when a transaction has taken place that the sales and marketing process is complete. Marketing encompasses all forms of advertising and promotion, the trick is finding the method that is most appropriate for you, whether it is advertising in papers and magazines, via a website, running a stand at a trade exhibition or sending out promotional material by mail. Any of these can work in the right context, the skill comes in ensuring that you choose the most cost-effective method to achieve your desired results and so keeping accurate records of your marketing spend and the results you get is essential. The easiest way to choose an appropriate marketing method is to observe what the best of your competitors is doing, and try to improve on that. The sales process that follows can be face to face, as in a retail environment, via telephone in a telesales environment, or increasingly online via an ecommerce site.

What is an integrated marketing message? An integrated marketing message is one that features in all your different forms of advertising and across all different media. Even if your business operates in a retail environment it is still crucial that you have an online presence, whether that is a simple website operating like an online brochure, or an ecommerce site that allows you to sell your products to a much wider geographical market. You should ensure that your business and its offering is consistent, so logos, products and any offers should be the same across all formats, so they compliment rather than undermine each other.

Online and Traditional Media

Of course there is still a place for traditional media marketing, newspapers, magazines and the like. Depending on the products and services you offer some local newspapers allow good, cost-effective coverage and specialist industry magazines can be excellent, if sometimes expensive to advertise in. The drawback with traditional publications is their shelf life, how long does your target audience retain the publication and establishing a presence in a local newspaper for example requires consistent advertising over a long period that can end up costly. Online marketing has grown exponentially and will continue to do so, so it really is essential that you embrace this. It is relatively simple and inexpensive to establish a website, although of course the more time and money you invest in it, the better the results you are likely to get. It is important to co-ordinate the initial website design with search engine optimization. You need to take the time to ensure that your website scores highly with the search engines for the most appropriate keywords and phrases by investing the time in research. There are online tools that can help you with this, alternatively you may need to engage the services of a website design and SEO company, if you do not have the time and skills to do this for yourself.

Precision Guided Marketing, involves targeting the right prospects. It may by an unpleasant analogy, but just as the air force no longer simply carpet bombs an area, in the hope that a few of its bombs land in roughly the target area, but instead uses precision guided munitions, to home in on a precise target, so the marketing industry has evolved to use carefully targeted marketing. If you know your target market, by geographical location, lifestyle, income range, ethnicity even, there are now available marketing solutions to ensure you do not waste your marketing message and budget on the wrong targets.

Using prospect appropriate language means that you should tailor the wording and tone of your sales and marketing message to your target audience. If you are selling a very technical product or service then it is reasonable to assume a certain level of knowledge in your prospects and your marketing literature can be worded appropriately. However most marketing messages could benefit from increased simplicity, and you also need to remember that the public’s attention span is getting shorter. I have also noticed a real trend towards more conversational style language in successful marketing, as the increased use of social media takes its effect.

Sell benefits not features, means that most people do not actually want your product or service, they want the benefits that it brings. Given that you are likely to know your product in much greater detail than your prospect, it is easy to slip in to the habit of just listing the features of your product or service, if nothing else you need to remember the simple phrase “which means that”. If you say this after the listing the feature then it gets you in to the habit of then stressing the benefit of that particular feature. If you cannot think of a relevant benefit, then the feature itself lacks relevance to that particular prospect.

Find something unique about you and your offering. People who are new to sales and lack confidence often struggle with this one, but it really is the most simple. It is highly likely that your product or service does contain at least one unique feature that sets it apart from the competition, that you can use the “which means that” phrase to link it to a benefit that is just not available anywhere else. If that is not possible then you do have one absolutely unique feature to offer, and that is yourself. If you prospect invests with someone else they are going to miss out on you, and all that you bring to the table. This should be your number one benefit, and the one you believe in above all others.

Sales and marketing really is not difficult, practice and analyse your results, use feedback from your prospects and hopefully clients, positive and otherwise, as lessons to improve your performance and you can master the process. If you struggle to find the time, given the other tasks you have to perform for your business, or find you really do not enjoy it you may have to consider engaging the services of a specialist sales and marketing company to help you. If you have at least a basic understanding of the sales and marketing process it will help you choose the right company to help you.

Just like any information medium, the internet cannot survive without the advertisers. Most websites and online services are fueled by advertisement. For business newbie’s, the internet is one of the most cost-efficient ways to reach a larger number of potential customers and to increase sales.

Cost-per-action (CPA) advertising is an online marketing process where the advertiser only pays whenever an action that is indicated in their advertisement has been made like sign up a registration form or buys a product. For instance, a client is asked to sign up a form with their e-mail address and zip code, when they submit the form, the client will be paid by the advertiser.

Unlike the traditional cost-per-click (CPC) model for marketing where an advertiser has to pay for every click or view of their advertisement without the assurance of getting a lead or if a product would be sold, CPA is a much better choice for low budget advertisers.

CPA advertising is strictly a performance-based advertising. There is more assurance that the money that an advertiser pays for advertising will be converted into profit unlike assuming that a product will be sold by just seeing the advertisements.

In CPA advertising, a return of investment is also assured especially for an up starting company or individual who is only starting to build a business. It is also an effective way of reaching out to a larger number of prospective customers without expanding the limits of a business’ resources.

A CPA network takes charge of the CPA advertising. The network pays out affiliates in exchange for their traffic from the agreed fees from the advertisers for the cost-per-lead or cost-per-sale. Conversions-meaning conversion of advertisement to leads (visitor to a site that discloses personal information in order to be approached for a product to be sold) or sale of products-are dependent on the traffic while at the same time; the network is dependent on conversions. More conversions mean larger revenues for both the network and the advertiser.

It is best to take note that an advertiser must make sure to provide a high quality product to produce high-conversion rate for the product or service being sold. In this way, a CPA network will immediately approve an advertiser’s application especially when one is new in the business.

Because a company or businessman can save in this kind of advertising, more likely, they can save more for their online advertisement campaign and use their savings for other aspects in their campaign.

Because this kind of advertisement is also being utilized by major branded corporations, it can also be used by companies as testing grounds for the effectiveness of their advertisement before launching into a major advertisement campaign.

Whether an advertiser relies on CPA advertisement or not, the success of a high rate of sold products by advertisement does not rely on the mode of advertisement but on how the product is packaged for the consumers to buy the product. Keep on track and see if what’s best for a business’ advertising needs.