How to Succeed In Your Home-Based Business

young entrepreneur analyzing competition and business marketing ideas
There are many ways for anyone with good knowledge to succeed in a home business. However, let’s get to basic first and set our priorities.

Too often people make money their god. The bible tells us to keep our priorities in mind: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Put your attention on the source, from which comes the true prosperity.

If you don’t believe you deserve to be successful, you probably won’t be. You have to think rich before you can expect to be rich.

You can’t expect to succeed unless you set goals and willing to work hard and smart enough to achieve it. Goals are your road map that will take you from where you are now to where you want to be. Start setting both short-term and long-term goals.

You have to be in business for yourself in order to create and accumulate wealth. Very few people will accumulate large amounts of capital working for someone else.

Here are good tips to succeed in your home-based business:

Take action. Unless you take action, your goals are not going to happen. Failure is only an outcome and shouldn’t stop you from pursuing your dreams. Many of the successful entrepreneurs have gone through those trials and tribulations and the chance to experience all of that roller-coaster.

You must be willing to do whatever is necessary to succeed. If you’re spending most of your time in front of the TV, you’re not going to become successful in your business.

Accept responsibility for whatever you do. It adds to your self-confidence and self-esteem when you take responsibility. Those who are looking for excuses in their lives and are quick to blame others do not reach their full potential.

You must believe in whatever you do in order to succeed. You must believe fully in what you do and have the conviction from your heart.

To be successful, you must be moving in the right direction. You must stay committed, motivated and focused. When you are focused, you become aware of hundreds of highly profitable projects you can start and roll out within just few weeks.

Never give up disregard of past failures. Stay persistent and optimistic until you reach your goal.

Most people start a new business backward. They take enormous amount of time and expense to develop a product. They start buying equipment and hiring employees before they even know their market and whether their product will sell. Is that any wonder why many new businesses fail?

You must first find out whether there is a demand for the product or idea you have in mind. Next, you must develop the product for your defined market. And then you must use the right marketing technique to reach the highest number of your market with the least amount of expense.

To stay in business you must continue to offer the right products to the right people. And you must expand your business by seeking and testing new products, and offering it to your existing and new customers.

beautiful lakefront home business with wooden steps to access a boat

While there is no guarantee of success in any kind of business, there are some basic rules you should follow in order to bring you some steps closer to success:

Know your potential customers and decide on choosing them first before creating or selecting a product to offer them. Research and define your market first in order to create and market the exact product that your market is hungry for. Find out if there is a demand before spending time and money to come up with a product or service. Never fall in love with a product.
Your main purpose for being in business is to make a sale that must be your first priority while staying within the law that governs your business.
Choose the right product for the right market.
Before choosing a product or writing a book, find out what your potential customers has recently purchased, and why he or she should decide on buying your product. Try to find out about the exact product your market is looking for. Your next step is to come up with that product, armed with the proper copy describing the many benefits and marketing technique; you can’t go wrong but prosper.
Choose customers who have shown interests in products similar to yours. The customers you choose must have demonstrated history of buying products from direct response offer.
Seek good accounting advice. Avoid promoting outlawed products or services. Be aware of FTC requirements and postal regulations.
Pick products or services that are in demand and are currently selling for others. You can always try new ideas or new products when your business is established and profitable, but at the start sell items that are making millions for others. Just be sure to improve the item and try the correct marketing techniques by educating yourself. Then you shouldn’t miss making money yourself.
Spend your time wisely. Every hour you spend developing and promoting a product will count toward your success.
Printing can be a big expense for a beginner in direct marketing. Try using Internet. If you plan to use direct mail, a newspaper-size ads printed on newsprint can be the cheapest to circulate your offer to potential customers, while it can be very effective.
If you find a profitable list, try mailing to it again with the same offer, generally you get the same response the second and third mailings.
Be sure to review the product and sales letter often. This gives you a chance to update the sales letter and increase product quality.
Always test to find out the good and bad points of your offer. It always helps to create a more responsive sales letter.
Don’t be afraid of losing small amount of money in some of your marketing efforts. You have to test the water first before you dive in. The same applies to developing and marketing a product. Not every test is a success. You must continue testing until you find the best combination of product package, price, advertising copy, and the most effective mediums for your target market. When you reach to that level, a few losses will help you get to that point and it will more than pay for the amount of profits in the long run.
Use bonus items and free gifts in all your offers to increase sales.
Set annual goals for your business in terms of sales you’ll achieve. Plan on your marketing in advance, and then take the steps to reach your goals.
Make it easy for your customers to order. Plan on having merchant account at the start of your business.
Always offer full satisfaction money back guarantee. Show confidence before expecting others to have faith in your product or service. If a customer requests a refund, provide it in a timely manner.
Set up a good database of inquiries and customers. The best customers for your next product will be people who already purchased from you.
Deliver your product or service as quickly as possible. Ship orders within 24 hours of the time you take the order.
Don’t process order payments until you ship the product. Doing so is morally wrong and illegal.
Sell a customer while he or she is ready to buy by including a catalog or additional sales material with every item you ship.
Concentrate on making maximum sales to all customers. Go back again and again to existing customers to sell them more.
Always treat your customers with respect.
Never lie or attempt to deceive your customers. Don’t show any sign of deceit in dealing with your potential or existing customers. Always be honest if you want large number of loyal customers.
Always ask for customer feedback. Find out what they like or dislike about the product. Use these feedbacks and make sure to reflect it when you upgrade your product or sales letter.
Always ask for testimonials from satisfied customers and use it on all your offers.
When answering inquiries in writing, always include a cover letter thanking the customer for their response. Include a “back-end” offer related to the main offer when you ship the product.
Put successful projects on autopilot. Once a project is proven to be successful, set up a system to continually email or mail out the letters and respond to the orders.
When products are returned, find out why. In most cases, the problem can be solved if you know what the problem is.
Most products are returned because they don’t meet the expectations the sales letter offered. You can fix it by making sure the customer gets more than they anticipated.
If product returns are greater than 5%, stop promoting and revise the sales letter until the problem is fixed. Otherwise, you could find yourself paying more in refunds than the profits coming in from sales.

Don’t give up. If your test mailing or emailing didn’t work, find out why, and fix it. In most cases the projects fails because of the following:

1. Wrong price
2. Wrong audience
3. Wrong product
4. Weak sales letter

Find out in which area your weaknesses are, and try to fix it.

For additional articles written by Paul Ziglar, see
alliedpublishing.com/home-based-business. John Wright is the author of How to Start and Operate Your Own Profitable Business At Home.

Share this on