i) Straight forward strategy
A good business strategy and planning instantly distinguish between your own business with the competitors, and give your potential or existing clients no reason for not to do business with you. A good home based business strategy should have considering the targeted market needs, the competitors and the strength and weakness.

Many home based business owner try to provide all services or all type of products to all peoples during the business start up, which i can say this is having no proper strategy set at all! The business owner must have to concentrate and develop the business start from a small niche market and slowly expand to provide an one stop solution.

ii) Follow the plan and set your budget
Develop a business plan before you start the business, and update it from time to time during the business goes on. A proper planning and proper budgeting would help the business to attain higher goals that if you just plugged always at your business one day at a time. The plan, if properly developed, it can even help the business owner to get back on track if something gone wrong.

iii) Protect your cash!
Running a small home based business, you are going to constantly battle to hold on the cash. Overruns in start up cost, lower anticipated profit margin and sales grow slower than expected are among the most common cash drains in business. As the business owner, you have to learn to guard your cash in the sense of rejecting to many different demands on your business. Learn to project the business cash flow in fair degree accuracy is the most important aspect in a home based business. No discipline in controlling the cash would easily cause the business falls into failure.

iv) Watch the profit margin
Many business focus too much on the sales but overlook the profit margin, even some of them are under pricing the service or product provided. Even increase the selling price might be crucial, but consistently work on lower down the cost may be more effective. A small change in the cost structure would lead to a big change on your profit margin.

v) Have fun with the business
Make sure you are running a business that falls into your own interest otherwise you will feel boring just because you have treat the business as a daily routine job that doesn’t means for anything.

Scope of product
Creating more product lines is one of the strategy to provide the client an one stop shopping service.

State of art product
Create an technically advance product or service can form a powerful strategy if the business has the capability to offer state of art product, and usually this type of product will cost more than a normal one.

Brand name product
Generally a product established with strong brand name would command at higher price and create a memorable brand would usually cost the business expensive in term of advertising.

Niche market
Offering the product or service to a target niche market is one of the common strategy for small business. Usually smaller volume of product would cost higher operating cost, but the business would face lesser competition in the market.

Service
Offering a world class customer service can be used to differentiate a business from the competitor who offer low class of service quality or totally not at all.

i) The customer – You must understand the market needs, be focus on a niche market as well as how often the prospect will buy your product or services. You must also know exactly what those customers are doing even you have to know in which sector they are belong to. Understand the customer well is important to your home based business, because they play an important role in rating your products or services and how well you have done on the customer service and follow up. As a business owner, it is also important to know what question would your prospect ask before they raise it to you.

ii) The products – Before you launch the product into the market, you as the business owner (sometimes the product designer as well) have to know in detail what your product is. You have to do your homework on research, training and as well as feedback from customer to get the full knowledge about the product. The better you know about the product, you will be able to identify the potential problem or question that your customer would face, thus you are able to provide a prompt solution to the customer in case they raise. With this, the image for your business in terms of customer service also increase.

iii) The tool – The tool that i mentioned it here is not the tool that you use to create the product or the tool you use to repair the product. The tool that i am talking about here is strategy that you use to sale your product, this includes product sample, customer testimonial and etc. I would say every type of home based business would have a different set of sales tools.

iv) The competitors – Know your competitors well is very important in fighting for the sales in a niche market, you have to know what your competitors doing, how long they have been in the market, the price they charge, their key person in business operation, the customer service level and whatever thing that they are doing in they sales strategy. By knowing your competitors well, you are basically able to plan the sales for now, tomorrow and the far futures.

i) Choose a spare room and convert it to home office so that you can properly segregate between your family and business while you are working.

ii) Choose a place where you can totally out of the disturb of noise from your living hall and kitchen.

iii) Choose a place where it is large enough to operate your home business.

iv) If you are choosing a room as your office, try to have a separate door where they can enter directly rather than allow your clients to pass through living hall, kitchen, and bathroom before reaching your office.

v) Choose a place where the noise generated from your business (i.e. car repair) could be completely isolated before reaching your neighbor’s ears.

Try to incorporate these tips into your own home based business and try to utilize it if possible.

Once you have the logo and slogan designed, as a business owner, you should consistently relate it with whatever products or services from your home based business. The more often the logo or slogan expose to the consumer attention, the more higher the chance they will remember your business, and remember, branding of business requires time, it will not happen over night.

Business logo and slogan play a vital role in establishing your home based business in today’s world, especially for those in simple and able to attract people’s attention from the first impression. A very good example is when you hear “nothing is impossible” and you will think of ADIDAS, when you see “swoosh” you will think of NIKE. These simple tools are acting as a bridge in connecting the trust between the consumer and the business. When you are in the stage of developing the business slogan, think of the biggest advantage that people receive when they deal a business with you, and keep the slogan simple and easy to remember and also make sure it have not being used by other business.

Many of the home based business owner might stretch their head when they are trying to design the logo and slogan, fortunately they are ton of design agencies that will be more than happy to do it for you. Depending on the complexity of the design, a logo design service would cost you from $50 – $1000. Again, you have to make sure the logo have not being used by other company and you can also trademark your logo and copyright your slogan so that nobody can own what you have created. Some of the famous design agencies from the web are listed as follow:

i) logoyes.com
ii) logodesignguru.com
iii) e-logodesign.com

Furniture

Furniture represent your business outlook, you are actually projecting an image with the type of furniture that you choose to outfit. Furniture not necessary to be a new one, if you are purchasing an used furniture, make sure it is in good condition. Don’t down grade your home based business image just because of saving bucks in furnishing. Try to look for the furniture with plain color, simple and look organized to your office. The most important is make sure it is comfortable and ergonomically to be used.

Phone

Depends on the nature of your home based business, most of the business, e-commerce for instance, would often use email as an communication tool instead of phone. Think carefully whether phone is necessary for your home based business and try to sign up with suitable call package from the service provider, to be cost effective.

Computer

Computer is a must for any business running down the road in today’s world. It can be used for basic accounting management, email communication, prepare to do list and meeting minute, research from internet and if you are running an online business, you would need to use it for updating the website with your company latest product.

Fax machine

It is nearly impossible for business not using fax machine, some of the home based business use a stand alone machine while some others fax via computer controlled by software. With whatever home based business you are running, equip a fax machine, you will find it easy and convenient to send and receive information, because some of your business partner or customer would prefer faxing instead of emailing.

These are just a few basis office equipment that you should equip it in your office, you may find any other suitable equipments to work with depends on the type of home based business you are running. Manufacturing equipment should out of this topic.