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.

There are so many benefits that you could get when you start your business online. Some of them are, you could reach a wider market worldwide, you don’t have to worry about office supplies since you work from home, and you could minimize the expenses to build a new office.

For some people who don’t know about how to build a website, they choose to trust other people to build it for them. In short, they hire a web designer to create a great website for them. The web designer, especially the professional one, often understands about your needs. They only need to know in what purpose you want to create the website.

If you want to build it for your small business, they could create a website that feels professional and fits with your target market. If you want t a personal yet professional look, they will make it looks friendly. Getting a website from the web designer often leads you to purchase the complete package. Web designer often will offer you a complete package for your business website, including the web template, web hosting, and a domain name. This will make you easier to get all you want in one spot.

Before you choose to buy the complete package from your web designer, you need to watch out for several things first. Ask them where is the URL of the web hosting and the domain name provider that you want to purchase in the package. Spend some of your time to read the offers in those websites, and find out whether it matches with your needs or not. Several things that you should look out for are the uptime, bandwidth, and disk space.

Uptime will show you about how long your website could be accessed by other people. You need to shot for at least 90% to 99.99% uptime for this. The higher the number, the longer time for your website to be accessed by visitor without getting the server crash problem. Bandwidth will show you the amount of website or files that being accessed in or out from your website.

For startup business, you need to get at least 5GB bandwidth to make sure more people could accessed your website before you run out of bandwidth. Disk space itself will be used as your website storage. Either you want to put your website pages, files, videos or anything, you will put it in here. Getting 1GB of disk space is a minimum requirement for your small business.

If you don’t know how to choose the best web hosting packages that contain web hosting plan, template, and a domain name in the same place, you could ask the package from your web designer. He will gladly show you which web hosting that is better for your small business website.

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.

A good marketing plan should include the analysis of the potential targeted market include the customer’s behavior, the competitors and the strength and weakness of the business compare to the competitors. A marketing plan is not as simple as just a list of advertising or promotional activities. The conclusion to a marketing plan is to predict competitive reaction and a brief consideration of possible longer product term options.

Creating a serious and well planned marketing study take into consideration of each individual product or service group will definately create analysis overlaps between other product or company-wide strategies. It is strongly advised that each product line or service are look into detail separately. Doing a research for each product may reveal the individual product characteristic that may not be considered by other businesses.

E-zine is usually distributed at no charge to the readers/subscribers but you could be supported by the advertisers in your e-zine who are targeting the interest of your subscriber in the relevant topic. For example, if your e-zine is talking about PC game featuring tactic of the game or weekly update of the game, the advertisers would probably from any games retailer, PC shop and cyber cafe.

The secret of success in this home based business is to create unique and informative articles where your subscribers or readers couldnt find it elsewhere. Try to avoid publish too many advertisements so that the readers will not find your e-zine annoying by just reading tons of advertisement but informative articles. Although advertisement maybe your main source of income from this home based business, however try to squeeze both contents and advertisement in a well presented format.

Estimated cost of start up: USD 1500
Basic start up kit: PC/laptop, internet connection, website(hosting + domain) and e-zine template.

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.

You are the BOSS

By starting your own home based business, you have the change to become your own boss, you do not have to report to anybody else in your own company, you have the freedom to make decision and you accountable for whatever decision you made, either gain or loss.
By the means of having full freedom, you wear what you want, you start work whenever you want and you work wherever you want. As long as the deal between you and the customer is done and the customer satisfy with the service/product that you provided, you can even work in your house’s bathroom if you wish. Personally, i think the best is you do not need to involve in the office politic.

You have the right to earn more

Start your own home based business may not bring you a good wealth, but in some situation, you have the potential to earn more than what you earn from your full time job. If you work for somebody else, you probably generate more sales for the company by working longer hours, and in return you earn more commissions or OT pay. If you work for your own business, you can probably double up the sales revenue by hiring more people to work with you, if your employee is able to generate as much sales as you can generate during your work with other company, you are doubling up your income. As your home based business is established over time, you can slowly expand the business by generating more services/products and it can greatly increase your personal income and equity.

You work within your own pace

One of the most influence factor to start a home based business is have the ability to work at home. By working at home, you probably have the chance to pick up your kids from school, meet your friends and even wash your own car if you wish. By setting up your schedule effectively, you will have the chance to enjoy more time on your personal interest without losing the business. By starting your own business, you have the change to set up your own home office where you have no right to do so if you work for others. Develop your home office wisely and equip with only necessary equipments.

Tax benefit

This is one of the best advantage in term of financial benefit, by running your own home based business, portion of your utilities bills are tax deductible against your business revenue, the same applied for transportation and education for business purposes. However, you will still have to pay for self employment tax. For more information, please refer to your local taxation department.

The outline of a business plan can be broken into few categories:
- Introduction of the nature of business
- Executive summary of the business
- Industry analysis
- Business overview
- What is the product or service provided
- Competition analysis on major competitors
- Marketing plan
- Operation management
- Financial analysis

A standard business plan is usually written in a standard A4 size plain paper with 12 point of single space Arial or similar font. Write your business plan in a formal standard with proper outlook, this would definitely increase and give a positive impression to the reader on your home based business.

i) A successful home based business entrepreneur is willing to work long hour with smart thinking.

ii) A successful home based business entrepreneur must be think optimistically, self confident, and have a strong wish to take control of their future.

iii) A successful home based business entrepreneur work according to plan, they believe no planning is planning to fail.

iv) A successful home based business entrepreneur love challenges, they believe experience are gain from challenge and mistake.

v) A successful home based business entrepreneur is able to think positively and willing to accountable to the decision they have made.

vi) A successful home based business entrepreneur like to listen to comments and advices.

vii) A successful home based business entrepreneur is able to optimize their time efficiently, they are well organized.

viii) A successful home based business entrepreneur are proactive when facing difficulties and take accountability to solve problem.