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This page is basically your starting point if you don't already have a home based business. When I first started mine I quite honestly bad NO idea where to begin. It is my hopes that this section will save you a lot of time and grief. If you already have a home based business you may still find some useful information here as there may be some items that you may have not thought about when starting up. So let's begin...

The very first thing you need to do is decide what kind of business you want to run. Take my advice. Get involved in something that you have some kind of interest in to begin with, otherwise you will lose interest and your business will suffer. I got into marketing and advertising because I was originally a marketing major in college. I then branched out to Web Design because I always had an interest in computers and web pages. My Internet days go back to the beginnings of Compuserve.

After you decide what it is you want to do the next thing you need to do is research the area you are interested in. Why? Because you better know what your competition is or you are dead from the start. For example, if I wanted to get into the sale of books I better know who the biggest book sellers are online. Imagine trying to compete with Barnes and Noble. Not an easy task. My suggestion is to find an area where the competition isn't so strong. That doesn't mean there can't be a lot of companies out there promoting the service or product you want to sell but if there is no one company that stands out then you have a pretty good shot. For example. Think about web design. Is there any one company that stands out in your mind? Not really because there are so many out there. That is why I get my fair share of customers. It will all come down to advertising at that point.

At this stage, what you do next will be determined by what business you have chosen. There are basically 2 types.

1) Retail Sales or Service of your OWN product.

2) Retail Sales or Service of someone else's product.

Number 1 is obviously much harder to do. If not obvious then let me explain. To promote your own product or service you have to create it from scratch. That's what makes it your own. For example. My web design business. I had to create my own web site, buy my own web authoring tools, etc. There are some items you can get ready made for this but custom made is always the best idea as it will have the exact look that YOU want for your site.

In the case of number 2, this is much easier and quite honestly it is what I recommend most new marketers to do. Why? Because you are selling someone else's product. The product already exists and in most cases you will be supplied with a web site free of charge or for a very nominal fee. This is commonly referred to as affiliate marketing. This was how I got started and then branched off into my own businesses.

So, what are the advantages and disadvantages?

The advantages of selling your own product is that it is your own and you get to keep all the profits. The disadvantage is that you are basically on your own. You are responsible for every aspect of your business which includes any complaints from unhappy consumers. With affiliate marketing the owner of the product takes care of those matters and handles all expenses relating to site maintenance, upgrades, etc. Yes, selling your own product is a LOT of work.

The advantages selling someone else's product is basically the reverse. You don't have to worry about site maintenance, repair bills, complaints, etc. All you do is advertise this person's product and get paid a portion of the profits. There lies the disadvantages. Aside from the fact that you have NO control over the product itself you only get a portion of each sale. Some affiliate programs pay very little so you have to make a lot of sales to make any kind of significant income. Still, I like affiliate marketing because I know what the good products are, what's easy to sell and how to sell them. My affiliate marketing income alone is substantial enough to justify my continuing to do it.

At this point the decision you make will determine what you do next.

If you decide to go with Affiliate marketing there isn't a lot you have to do in order to set yourself up for business. These steps are in simplified form but I'm sure they will be detailed enough to understand what will be required.

1) Sign up with the affiliate program you are interested in. If you need a good site to find affiliate products you can go to Clickbank. They are the number 1 site for affiliate sales of digital information.

Here is the URL

www.clickbank.com

If you are looking for a good product that is easy to sell, I recommend purchasing the "Secrets Of The Big Dogs" e-book. It is only $19.95. The affiliate program fee is only $10 a month and is a very easy book to sell because of the price. The payout to you on the $19.95 sale is $8.73 which is very good. 5 sales and the book and monthly fee are paid for. I personally sell about 25 of these each month. The book will teach you the actual advertising sources to use in order to sell the book so you don't have to drive yourself nuts looking for effective ways of promoting.

Here is the URL if you are interested.

hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?swagen/bigdogs

2) After signing up with the affiliate program you then need to decide what avenues of advertising you intend to use. I cover all the advertising mediums in the reviews section so you may want to check that out before making your decision. Some forms of advertising online work better than others and some don't work at all. So please educate yourself in this area before deciding how you want to advertise.

3) After choosing your advertising sources you then need to actually work on writing your ads. Please read the section on ad writing before doing this as a bad ad will kill any chance you have of success.

4) Make sure you have all the tools you will need in order to efficiently run your business. Please read the section on utilities so you will know exactly what you will need. Trust me, some of these things you probably would have never thought of. I know I didn't until it was too late.

5) Sign up with your advertising sources and place your ads. Make sure the URLs you place in your ads conform to the affiliate guidelines. For example. You can't use Clickbank URLs directly in an email ad. This is just as well because you don't want to do this anyway. Why? Because you want to track your ads in order to get an idea of how effective an advertising campaign is. There are many free ad tracking services you can use. These will also be covered in the utilities section.

6) Monitor your results constantly. Reply to all inquires as soon as you can. Keep careful track of your commissions due to you. Report any problems to the affiliate owner ASAP. Just because he is running the program doesn't mean he knows everything that is going on out in the field. For example. His site may be down and he isn't aware of it. This is why I check the site's status first thing every morning. If you find a problem report it to him right away. He will thank you for it and this is a great way to build a relationship with the owner. In the long run he will remember these things and it may very well lead to a sale coming your way because of this. Yes, it has happened to me.

7) Keep tabs on the program itself. Is there talk of problems with it? Do you personally see problems? Are sales dropping steadily over the course of several months? These are signs to look for as it may indicate that there is a problem with the program itself. Don't stay on a sinking ship. Also don't be hasty about your decision. Contact the owner. If you believe there is a problem, confront him with it. Listen to his explanation. Of course he is going to try to paint his program in the best light possible so you have to use your judgment if you think his answers are legit or not. In the end you have to go with your gut. It's not always right but it's all we have unless we have concrete evidence of a problem.

8) Make sure you keep records for the I.R.S. Running your own business, YOU are responsible for reporting your income. Some programs will send you a 1099-misc form if your income is over $600. If you are running a good affiliate program your income for one month should be twice that. So please don't try to bury this under the rug. The I.R.S. will eventually catch up with you.

Let me stress that one of the keys to running a successful affiliate program is consistency. Make sure that you stick to a schedule. Treat it like a real job or you're going to get in trouble with your boss, YOU. If you need to advertise everyday then make sure you advertise EVERYDAY. If you need to write and ad everyday then make sure you write and ad EVERYDAY. Eventually this will all become second nature to you and you won't have to think about it. But at the beginning you may have to make a checklist of things. I still use my checklist because I have a terrible memory. I'd be lost without it.

If you decide to sell your own product or service, then this gets a lot more complicated and I can't possibly cover all the things you will run into but I will list some common things that should apply to any business that you start.

1) I can't stress this enough. Make sure that your web site is TOTALLY complete before sending out your first ad. The last thing anybody wants to do is go to a web site that is not done. No under construction pages, no "grand opening in 2 weeks" pages. When your first customer goes to your site that need to see a site where they can purchase your product or service right then and there. Now, in getting your site up and running you will need a hosting service and a domain. You just don't put up your own web site in thin air. Domains, the name of your site, are usually 1 year subscriptions that usually cost about $20 a year. I suggest you shop around to get a good price. And don't forget to renew your domain each year. They do NOT do this automatically for you and if you let your domain lapse you will lose it and with it you have just gone out of business. Web hosting companies are also a dime a dozen. Again, shop around. Do as much research as you can on each one. I was burned by a hosting company that let me domain lapse. Yes, I let them do this for me. Bad move. Learn from my mistakes. After you get a domain name (i.e. www.mysite.com) and have secured your hosting company for the domain, you can then put up your site...after you've designed it. You can either do this yourself or if you don't feel this is something you want to do then you can hire a web designer to do it for you. I'd love to help you here but I am so swamped with other businesses (not the least of which is this site) that I just don't have the time to design a full blown site at the moment. If things change I'll let you know. After your site is designed and completed and set up with your hosting company then, and ONLY then, can you start promoting it.

2) Make sure your company is registered with the proper agency before you open your doors. This will vary depending on where you live. I personally had to go to the city hall and register and name and get a tax ID number. You will probably have to do something similar. The reason you can't do before getting your domain is because you don't know what domains are available. Imagine wanting to call yourself "Shoes4All" only to find out that www.shoes4all.com is already taken along with www.shoes4all.net and www.shoes4all.org as well. Now what? So see what domains are available first.

3) From this point everything is about the same as above. The only difference is NOBODY is going to report any problems with your site to you. YOU have to keep an eye on everything. If your site goes down you have to contact your hosting company right away and let them know because there is a good chance that they have no idea there is a problem.

Yes, running your own business is a lot of work. Most people can't handle it. There are days I wonder why I do it. But I must admit that the satisfaction of seeing your own company succeed is like nothing else you will experience. Affiliate marketing is okay as far as the thrill of actually making sales if you've never done it. But nothing beats the thrill of www.mysite.com.

I hope this page has given you some idea of how to start. Obviously running any business is much more complicated than this outline but at least this will give you a foundation. We will build on this elsewhere in this site. I suggest you go on over to reviews next to find out what programs on the Internet are your best bets to begin with.