If you are planning to come up with a business and you need some tips on how you can start, consider the following:

1. Start with an idea. This doesn’t have to be a brand new invention or new product. In fact, many successful small businesses have found a way to deliver an existing service more efficiently or economically or have customized an existing product or service.

2. Put together a business plan. This doesn’t require hundreds of pages with thousands of charts. Use the plan to research things like how much you can charge for your product/service, how much it will cost to produce or deliver (include variable & fixed costs), and the size of your potential market (i.e. # of customers). The plan should evaluate your competitors – how many competitors, how strong are they, where are they, how will you compete. The plan should state what is required to enter this market, barriers to entry such as high fixed costs (factories, restaurants) and government regulations that must be met.

3. Determine if you need financing. Your business plan will include a section on financing. How will you pay the costs to start and run your business? Do you need a bank loan? Use credit cards? Self finance? Also, you’ll need to consider how much salary you need to support yourself while starting your business.

4. Put together your initial marketing plan. Marketing need not cost a fortune. Some businesses require very little. For example, many service businesses such as accounting firms build their practices through word-of-mouth referrals. You can join free or low-cost associations to build awareness of your small business. Again, your business plan (product, customer, competitor) will help you determine the marketing efforts you need to undertake.

5. Build your infrastructure early. This doesn’t mean build a big factory or a fancy office. In business ownership, it simply means keep accurate customer records, a clean set of updated books and a technology foundation, if necessary. One of the downfalls of many small businesses is that they don’t know if they’re making or losing money (i.e. the need for a clean set of books). Another downfall is when small business owners try to sell their company years later but lack accurate customer history and customer information. Many times, the customers of a small business are its best asset, and, without the records, the small business can be sold only for salvage.

Learn more about my favorite tool for starting an online home business here

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Most businesses these days have some sort of online presence. Sometimes, it’s no more than a 1 or 2 page brochure. Other times, a business may have a full-fledged website with a good amount of pages and online interactivity. But neither one makes them a true online home business, if they also have an offline or bricks & mortar operation (think your local gift shop or repair service).

When I use the term “online home business”, I’m referring to a one-person business that operates out of your home and whose sole presence is online. Now, there are many types of online home businesses. Here are just a few…

• Affiliate marketing, where you promote other people’s products for a share of the sale price
• Selling advertising space on a content website
• Online auctions
• Selling your own digital or hard products

It’s my feeling that there is probably some sort of online home business model for almost everyone, no matter what your skill, background or interest. Or even your start up budget. It’s just a matter of figuring out what you want to do and then learning how to do it.

Running an online home business does present some challenges however. One of those is that you need to have the right discipline… or you’ll soon find yourself wasting hours and even days of time. And that’s no way to make a living. You have to admit… working from home sounds, great, doesn’t it – work when you want, in your pjs  with the kids playing under your desk, or wearing your swimsuit while you’re staring at the ocean on your latest vacation.

And yes, working from home does give you a huge amount of flexibility, but there are also quite a few pitfalls that you don’t really hear about until you’re knee deep in it already. Here are some of them. Let me know if any of this sounds familiar…

• You’re constantly interrupted by your spouse, kids or friends who just want to ask you something quickly. (Really, it won’t take a minute!)

• Your “office” also happens to be the living room, so you end up trying to focus while the television is going, and people are running all around the house.

• You spend almost every waking hour either actively working on your websites or thinking about marketing strategies, product ideas and such when you should be spending quality time with your loved ones.

• You waste hours each day surfing the net (and call it research), checking your stats or answering email.

The point is, we all develop these bad habits that don’t make us very productive. I bet that almost everything you’re doing in  your usual 10 hours plus workday right now, you could accomplish in under 3 hours provided you set yourself up to be really productive during that time.

And that’s exactly what you will learn in this new report called “Homepreneur Habits: How To Run A Successful Home Business”.

Find out how to set up your online home business workspace, structure your day and most importantly, structure your online home business for maximum productivity and results. This report wasn’t created by just anyone, either. It was written by Jimmy D. Brown, one of the most successful Internet Marketers who fell into all the traps you’ve been falling into and then turned it around to a point where he is running and growing a huge home business spending just 3 hours a day working.

This isn’t just some dry theoretical report. Jimmy shares exactly what he does and how he has is office set up (with plenty of pictures) so you have plenty of “real life” examples. Grab the report here:

http://www.online-home-business-connections.com/recommends/homepreneur-habits.html

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