Alan’s Simple Work From Home Blog

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Here we will look at some very effective steps to start a home based internet business.

1.   Set up a home office.  Essentially what you need is a bright, quiet space where you can work in comfort and without distraction. Although you are working from home, it is important to keep some boundaries between work and leisure.

Because the majority of businesses based at home deal in affiliate products or services, you don’t need a big storage area, just enough for some records and office equipment such as a computer, telephone and fax.

2.  Set up a website.  Make sure it is kept simple, without too muany graphics and gadgets. You want to attract people’s attention, but not drive them away before they take some action you point them to.

Good content is vital to get good results.  Keep adding relevant content to keep things fresh, and monitor which areas of your site get the best results.  Make changes one at a time to carefully observe the effect they have.

Remember, your website is your shop window to the cyber-world, so make it attractive for the window shoppers!

3.  Get a blog up and running. It is a great way of communicating with your customers, and adjusting your business to their needs. The more flexible your home based internet business is, the greater the chances are of becoming successful.

4.  Get an email list started. Be careful to build this list organically through your own efforts. Stay clear of buying “leads” which have been passed on to many internet marketers before they get to you. You do not want to get the reputation of a “spammer”. A well built contact list is the life-blood of every successful business online, so ensure that yours is growing all the time.

These are some basic things to consider in starting a home based internet business. To learn more about the topic go to Home Based Internet Business

Alan Thomas

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Many of you will have your own small business, and many more will have thought getting one started. If you choose to start a home based small business, very often you will encounter distractions that will cause you to loose focus, and deflect you from your planned path to success.

 Here is a portion of an article I found very useful in helping me keep focused on my own small home based business goals:

 When you are the owner of a home business, you will find hundreds of distractions that vie for your time, energy and focus.

Common distractions include: children, family, friends, neighbors, pets, phone calls, mail, household chores, video games, television, neighborhood children, visitors, and so many more.

As an owner of a home based business, you must always remember your purpose in bringing your profession home. What was your reason for wanting to own a home business? Was your goal to work from home so that you can share in the lives of your children? Was your goal to be out from under the rule of a tyrannical boss? Was your goal to have the freedom to work when it is convenient for you? Was your goal to make tons of money working for yourself?

Here’s a few good tips that will help you stay focused on your home business goals….

To Read More of this article go to Small Home Business Goals
 

Alan Thomas

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If you have a website of any kind, and you are looking to increase your traffic to that site, then Search Engine Optimization is an area which you must pay attention to.

For those of us who run a web-based work from home business, this becomes a vital aspect to consider when planing the growth of your business.

The subject of optimizing your web pages can seem a little daunting and complicated, but help is at hand.

I came across a helpful article today on Leon Bowe’s blog which made a lot of sense to me, so I am re-printing it for you here:

GOOGLE IS WATCHING YOU

How to get a higher Search Engine Ranking?

To know that, just think about what you do yourself when browsing on the Internet. You type a key-phrase (lets say PHILIPPINE SEO) and click on one of the 10 results you see. That’s the time Google starts watching you!
If you return to Google in a very short time, the webpage was obviously not what you were looking for…
Mr. G remembers that and gives that page a lower position in the results.

So how to make sure your visitors stay a long time on your own web-pages?
Make articles that talk about the key-phrase your visitor is looking for; interesting content; easy to read and entertaining.

Google will reward you for the following:

1) Interesting content; easy to read and entertaining because he will count how long a visitor stays at your page. The longer the better your placement.

2) Relevant content; a visitor that lands on your page when he typed ‘SEO PHILIPPINES’ in his search-engine want to read about Philippine related SEO tips.

3) Unique content; Google doesn’t want to stuff his data-base with the same articles.

4) Content that is concentrating on one ‘theme’ only; do not include subjects that do not relate to your product/service.

5) Age of your website; the older your website, the more you have proven to be serious (you survived the test of time).

6) Frequently refreshed and new content; that shows you keep it up to date.

7) Outbound links; to relevant (-quality!) sites (or web pages) that talk about the same subject as you do.

Inbound links (back-link popularity or pagerank); from relevant web sites or pages going not only to your homepage but also to deeper pages.

Hubsite or Authority site ?

You have to make up your mind; which system you use for your web site?
Both are loved by Google, Yahoo etc.

A hub site is where the visitor can find a lot of outbound links to other relevant sites related to the informative articles which are also found on the hubsite.

I see you thinking “How to earn money from that?”
Well, Google and Yahoo are hubsites..! Need I say more?

Lets say you are a search engine ranking firm in the Philippines; make a hub-site about SEO-marketing related issues and put a link to all relevant websites you can find; for free, even to your competitors. The result is a genuine-good-quality-helpfull-website and the searchengines/people will love it. That’s the time you gently offer your stuff…

They might click away to a webdeveloper, but maybe they remember you later when they need SEO?
The hubsites are easyer to make than authority sites.

An authority site consists of copywriting about one certain ‘theme’ or subject and it has not many outbound web links but mostly back-links.

Can you use the next tricks ?

How about making a lot of little extra websites that link to your main site?
Nope. If you host them on the same server, Mr. G. will see that.

How about making a lot of comments in Blogs?
Nope. Most blogs have a ‘No-Follow’ for the URL or text-link that you add in there and thus search-engines do not see it.
Those with a ‘Do-Follow’; how long will your comment stay there?
Note also that most blog-pages have a pagerank zero. (squidoo.com has a very high pagerank but their pages not).

How about link-exchange (reciprocal links)?
Nope. ‘I give you a link if you give me one back’? That’s an insult to G.

I admit that these tricks can help a little but eventually only genuine good quality helpfull websites will survive.

If you have a website that people love, you do not need SEO optimization!
Really, they will come in droves, stay very long on your pages, will tell others about you (back links!) etc.
Your website will be around for years to come which give you still more credit; the sky is the limit.
Even when there is an ‘Algorithm Change’ (search engines sometimes change their analytics to judge your website; new rules) it will barely effect you.

Sure there will always be ways (tricks) in search engine marketing to get you to the top; but for how long?
And mostly they will cost you heavilly ($$$) or it might even attract the attention of some ‘real people’ working for Yahoo and then they take a look et voila; you disappear from the screen altogether.

Do I see tears welling up in your eyes?

Do not despair (yet), mostly you will get a very good pagerank by following just a few of these guidelines. And if your product or service is in a niche, you can easily get a number 1 position.
Also be reminded that there is still a lot of gueswork and luck and ‘Trial-and-Error’ involved, so do not spend too much time listening to those self-proclaimed search engine placement experts exept me
Because eventualy YOU have the most knowledge of your product/service.

If however you want to hire a SEO specialist to do the work for you; remember that this is a very labor-intensive job which makes it interesting to outsource to the Philippines. Check if they offer a ‘No Cure No Pay’ or tell them you only pay if you make extra sales.

This article is published by Steve Brall, a USA free-lance search optimization wizard operating from the Philippines.
E-mail stevebrall@yahoo.com

Now personally, I would recommend the services of Suzanne Morrison when it comes to getting good advice on Search Engine Optimization.

Alan Thomas

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Setting some goals down on paper is quite an easy step, but for these goals to become effective it will take a little more planing and effort. You may hear some people say they have tried goal setting, but it doesn’t work. Very often, this is because they failed to take all the necessary steps for it to work properly.

So, we can see that it is not enough to merely pick some goals and hope that we will stumble across success as a result.

Here are four goal setting tips to help you set meaningful goals, and to follow through and actually achieve them. They should at least get you pointing in the right direction.

To read more of this article click here - Goal Setting Tips

Alan Thomas

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Well done to all those people who won prizes in the Warrior Forum bloging contest, especially Leon Bowes who was the overall winner. It was a lot of fun to be involved, so the next time a similar competition comes up, I recommend you all take part.

I have a new article published yesterday…

“When you are planing to go about setting goals, what makes the difference between it working spectacularly well for you, and being a waste of time? Well, one very important area to focus on is the part of choosing suitable areas for goal setting. Without careful thought in this area, all your effort may be for very little reward, so take some time to choose your areas for goal setting.

The only real way goal setting will work is if you believe in the goals you are writing down, and work hard towards them. Goals have to be personal, or the belief factor goes out the door….”

To read more of this article go to Areas For Goal Setting

Alan Thomas

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Many people like the idea of starting a work from home business. What puts them off is the feeling that they lack the expertise and confidence to run a successful business.

The good news is that if this applies in your case, it shouldn’t prevent you from achieving big things. It is possible to get your home based business up and running, and build your skills as you go along.

With this in mind, here are two simple work from home opportunities you can start without huge skills, and which can provide a good secure income if you work them consistently.

  To read more of this article, go to Work From Home Opportunities

Alan Thomas

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Over the last few posts we have looked at various aspects of goal setting basics, and here we will look at using good time management practice to help in setting and achieving our goals.

 In many respects, goal setting begins and ends with time management. Perhaps the most common reason for people failing to achieve their goals is because they “lack time”.

It is a fact that each of us lives a 24 hour day. The difference between those who consistently reach their targets, and those people who don’t, is in how they manage the 24 hours they have been given.

 The concept of time management has been in existence for more than 100 year believe it or not. Unfortunately, the term “time management” often can create a false impression of what you are able to do.

Time cannot be managed, it is uncontrollable, and we can only manage ourselves and our use of time. That is all that can be done. Time management is actually self management.

For our time management to be effective, we need the ability to plan, delegate, organize, direct and control every aspect of our lives just to find 30 minutes a day that is devoted to something productive that is just for us.

In order for your time management process to work, it is very important to know what aspects of our personal management need to be improved. Otherwise what is the point in trying?

To read more on  some of the most frequent reasons for reducing effectiveness in and around our lives, and how being aware of this can help you with goal setting, click on Setting And Achieving Goals

For learn more on time management, goal setting, and other life skills, go to Personal Growth and Development

Alan Thomas

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At first glance, managing stress may not seem like a very important of goal setting. However, very often it can be the difference between hitting your goals and falling well short.

Stress in our lives can be divided into two types, positive stress and negative stress.  We thrive under a certain amount of stress, and it adds excitement and anticipation to our lives. Competitions, deadlines and even some disputes can give us more energy, and push us on to greater things.

We are not looking to eliminate stress from our lives, as the only people with no stress are those in the graveyard. In fact, lack of a certain amount of stress can act as a depressant, and lead to boredom. On the other hand, excess stress can lead to confusion and a sense of helplessness.

So controling the level of stress in our lives is one of the goal setting basics we need to consider.

To Read more of this post go to Managing Stress For Goal Achievement

Alan Thomas

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After you have made the decision to set your own goals, it becomes important to go about setting your goals effectively. After all, if you are taking the time out of your life to set goals, you might as well get the maximum benefit from your effort.

 By setting goals effectively, you greatly increase the chances of seeing a positive outcome. If you see good results, you are much more likely to set new goals, and reach them in time as well. So by starting off in the right manner, your long-term success is dramatically increased.

 The first guideline sounds simple, but it is the most important of them all.

State each goal as a positive statement

Express your goals in a positive way. That is a key component to setting goals that you can attain.

 How often have you been excited to accomplish a goal that didn’t even sound good when you brought it up? If you are not comfortable or happy with the goals that you have set, the likelihood of you succeeding is pretty low.

If you want to express your goals in a positive way, you simply have to first think of a goal that puts a smile on your face when you imagine it completed. Why would you want to set a goal that made you frown, cringe or cry?

To Read more on this subject go to Setting Effective Goals

Alan Thomas

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Probably the most important part of setting goals is the initial step of motivating yourself to start thinking about where you are going.

 Getting started is half the task in many things, and when going back to goal setting basics, the initial step is what prevents most people from even begining the process.

 Once you have the initial motivation, then it is obviously vital to keep that motivation up as you go along. That is not as hard as it might seem, but it does take discipline.

First, what is motivation?

Motivation is not a product of outside influence; it is a natural product of your desire to achieve something and your belief that you are capable of doing it…

To Read more on this post go to Achieve Your Goals

 Alan Thomas

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