Work At Home Business Opportunities Weblog
New York City is constantly whining about the traffic congestion downtown. They could instantly reduce congestion by up to 5,000 cars per day, but New York State Income Tax law keeps them driving in. Why? It’s not worth their while to telecommute because New York State’s greed taxes them for the income they’d earn in neighboring Connecticut anyway. While you may think it’s not your concern, New Your City is trying to get your federal tax dollar to subsidize their roads when a simple change in state income tax law could encourage telecommuting and reduce the congestion.
Read more at the New York Times
There’s a new play in the work at home field. If you reside in Ohio and want to work at home, it’s definitely worth checking out. Their work at home staff receives the same pay and benefits as the “in house” employees. And it’s employees rate it as a great place to work.
From CRMBuyer.com
The newest player to the home agent model is Akron, Ohio-based InfoCision Management, which has been around for two decades and has been named among the top 10 best places to work in Ohio by the state chamber of commerce. The company has about 150 people currently on staff at home, and it’s looking to expand that number.
InfoCision is having no problems recruiting highly qualified home agents. The company works closely with state and local agencies to identify qualified candidates for the work-at-home program.
Its recruitment literature informs potential workers that, “If you have mobility issues that make it difficult for you to work outside the home or are a stay-at-home parent, or if you simply want to work from home, InfoCision’s work-at-home program is what you’ve been looking for. No telemarketing experience is necessary — we provide extensive training and coaching via the Internet.”
As for how InfoCision’s home agent program stands out against others, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs Steve Brubaker said it’s in the way the company treats its home employees.
“The difference in our model is that our work-at-home employees have the same pay, benefits and status as those employees who work for us in our bricks-and-mortar locations,” said Brubaker. “We do not use the approach of independent contractors as many others in the industry.”
Indeed, InfoCision’s home agents receive full company benefits. Requirements to be a home agent include only high-speed Internet access, a decent computer, up-to-date Windows and Internet Explorer and antivirus and antispyware software.
I have to admit some envy when I read this… I’d love to be in Hawaii right now!
From the Star Bulletin
With laptops, cell phones and blackberries in hand, an increasing number of employees are working outside of the office rather than in it, and some have given up the bricks-and-mortar office altogether.
Among them are: A photographer, a foreign exchange stock trader, and a marketing and public relations professional, all of whom work for themselves.
Between 2004 and 2006, the number of employers allowing people to telecommute at least once per month grew 63 percent, according to the nonprofit association of human resource professionals, World at Work in Scottsdale, Ariz. The term “telecommuting” is actually outdated, according to some work experts, as is the concept of the “homeworker,” which has been replaced with “Web worker” or “mobile worker,” even “agile worker” as Techworld coined it.
If Christmas sales aren’t where they should be — or even if they are — Calgary work at home mom Denise Willms says online business owners can still skyrocket their online sales, despite there being only two weeks left until the big day.
“It’s all about the content on your website,” Willms says. “At this time of year, Internet users are searching for Christmas gifts and ideas. If your content is relevant to what they’re looking for, it’s a pretty good bet you’ll have more traffic, which should lead to more sales.”
Willms is the owner of www.WAHM-Articles.com, a directory of free reprint articles written by work at home moms, for work at home moms to use in their websites, newsletters and blogs. She also works with clients to create content and articles that attract targeted visitors to their websites.
Here are some of Willms’ suggestions to help online business owners make the most of the remaining holiday shopping season.
AdSense Sites- Sites that make their revenue from Google AdSense ads may have seen profits drop over the past few weeks, depending on their niche. To regain some of those lost dollars, Willms recommends adding some Christmas content to AdSense websites and blogs. When AdSense crawls new content it will add Christmas-related ads that visitors are more likely to click on at this time of year.
Website owners don’t need to spend hours creating the Christmas content. Instead, they can look for quality Private Label Rights articles or simply use free reprint Christmas articles from an article directory.
Affiliate Sites – Online businesses that make money through affiliate marketing can post reviews of the products people are looking for this Christmas. They can either write their own or find free reprint product reviews in article directories. Willms recommends finding reviews on products that can be purchased at Amazon and posting an affiliate link to the product along with the review.
Selling a Product – For business owners who create and sell a product, an easy way to increase sales this Christmas is by writing and submitting articles about the product and submitting it to reputable article directories. By submitting an article to an online directory instead of only publishing it on the author’s own site, search engines and human shoppers will find it more quickly. An active link to the website where readers can purchase the product should be included In the resource box of the article.
“You shouldn’t openly promote your products in the articles you write,” Willms says, “but you should use the article to presell your product. For example, if you make tie dyed scarves, you could write about how to choose the right scarf for a Christmas gift, or about how to accessorize with a tie dyed scarf. Win your readers’ trust first by giving them the information they need; when they click through to your website, then you can sell them.”
For business owners who don’t have time to create more of their product for last minute Christmas sales, Willms says they shouldn’t let that stop them from trying to fit in more holiday sales. “Your customer just needs something to put under the tree Christmas morning. If you don’t have time to get the product to them, send them a certificate or something saying your product is on its way.”
Visit http://www.wahm-articles.com for more creative ideas on how to sell products online, and to find free reprint articles for your website or blog.
It is easy to get overwhelmed with all of the rapidly changing marketing strategies and online advertising schemes that seem to bounce around the Internet news sites these days and are also found in every $40 Internet business book at Borders. The typical online entrepreneur, such as an e-book author, small business owner, independent artist, or website creator/operator, finds themselves struggling with implementing many of these seemingly foolproof techniques. I know, because I found myself in that same position several years ago after launching my website about my personal passion, open source website design. You see, I am a computer engineer and an independent author, not a marketing expert, and I had to develop a way to get web traffic to my sites. I want to share the insights I have found that started moving my projects into positive sales territory.
Let’s start by taking a look at some of the reasons why the “systems” you read about in those expensive books do not work well for many of us. First, many of these guides or strategies are written by people who do not have direct experience with a REAL online business. Things are different in the actual Internet trenches, as you can probably already attest to. I am sick of reading claims that sound too good to be true, because it wastes my time and money. I am not knocking people who write good books, but no matter how well written a strategy is the only thing that counts online is (traffic & sales) per (cost & time of doing it). Second, most online marketing strategies are geared for the “big guys”, websites and online businesses with the deep pockets and specialized personnel needed to implement effective, large scale marketing and sales campaigns.
The reality is that most of us starting online products and websites have real strengths and passions that we follow, and that is what drives us forward. We also are often trying to bootstrap an operation on very limited funds, alone or with a small team, with a laser-like focus on getting the online product, e-book, website, or other “tangible” finished. If you are like me, you may have “finished” your website only to find that you are getting just a dribble of people finding it – this is very demoralizing. That kind of web traffic is not going to generate enough product sales or Google Adsense advertising revenue to even breakeven on your hosting service costs, let alone bring in the riches all the books seem to describe.
How is the small business team or independent webmaster/entrepreneur to get customers to the typical specialized website? I found that what I needed was a way to convert my sweat equity (writing about what I am passionate about) into a marketing strategy that reached real people interested in the lessons and materials I was providing on my websites. I found that the best vehicle was craigslist.org, which for years has been one of the fastest growing websites on the Internet, and which provides almost the ideal environment for viral marketing. I say almost because there are some “limitations” (these turn out to be critically important strengths) which have to be understood before you wade into this vast sea of potential website visitors/customers.
Craigslist.org is not a single, unified national or international website. It is intrinsically a local resource only. It is designed to do one thing and that is to provide each craigslist market city or town or region with a local classified ad system. In fact, if you spend any time reading about craigslist.org or about its creator Craig Newmark, you will see that it actually limits you to posting “local” ads only. You can’t go to tampa.craigsist.org for instance and find a way to post your information to all 289+ cities across the US or world with one click. I will advise you right now NOT to waste your time and money on the automated posting software that is available out there. It blatantly violates the craigslist.org terms-of-use, and will ultimately get your posts banned. People like you and I that use craigslist.org sites to buy things or find out information are in general extremely savvy about ignoring anything that looks spam-like, and they will quickly flag spam-like postings for deletion, ultimately wasting your time and effort. So the first thing you have to do is to understand these 289 “local” markets – where are they located, how many people use them, how do you reach the most people with the demographic “profile” you want to reach out to, with the least effort?
I happen to have over 15 years of experience using Geographic Information System (GIS) to analyze things like population changes, so I used that knowledge geolocate each website and to mine for data I could link to each of them. It turned out to be a tough project, but I ended up with a unique series of maps, reports, and data files profiling each of the 289 US craigslist.org market areas. I began using these materials to focus my own posting efforts to reach the most potential customers for my open source website, and it worked. Slow but sure is how I would characterize my campaign, always being respectful of other craigslist users and the system that runs it. I learned how to use the built-in craigslist.org account to manage my posts, and honed some simple techniques to make professional, but not over-the-top posts. I started sharing my materials with my friends, and then decided to offer this all as its own e-book. You can learn more about these on my website http://www.aMillionPlaces.com .
There is one important indirect benefit for using craigslist.org as a primary marketing tool – increasing traffic from Google searches. Now a lot of material is out there on Search Engine Optimization or SEO, and you should follow every recommendation you reasonably can to make your product pages and websites look enticing to all the search engines; however, that in itself can be an overwhelming project for the average webmaster. I do not know if my craigslist.org posts, which are essentially links back to my website, directly boost my page rankings, but I do see those posts appear as first page search page results in many cases. It is amazing how fast Google and the other engines pick up on new posts. I have experienced that using craigslist.org in this way has been more effective for me than paying for Google’s Adwords system. Using Google Analytics, I can see the traffic coming from my various posts. I can’t guarantee that you or anyone else will have the same experiences as I have, but the fact that my original websites are still generating visitors and revenue means that I am still out there, like you, fighting for my piece of the Internet’s exciting and enticing web traffic. My final advice is to never give up, but be very flexible and keep trying new techniques and ideas. Some of the best things in life are still free, including posting on craigslist.org. Good luck with your project.
Jamie Robe is the author of the e-book “Craigslist for Entrepreneurs”, available from his website http://www.aMillionPlaces.com. You can also visit his website http://www.InSmallSteps.com to find about his real passion as a computer engineer, website development using free, open source software.
In the online world, many people start out building a website and then slapping up some Adsense Ads to make money.
They they really wish that more people would actually “Click” the ads. Lots of traffic – especially social marketing traffic I’ve found – will visit but won’t click.
What if you could get paid for every visitor – even if they never click an ad?
What is someone could come to your web page, hear a short audio clip (just a few seconds) and you get paid?
What it you could refer all your friends and get a piece of their traffic?
Would you consider at least testing the system?
Well if so, here’s how that can happen, it’s called Pay Per Play ads!
Here’s what they have to say for themselves:
PPP is a way for advertisers (Like Harley Davidson or Taco Bell) to serve a 5 second audio advertisement to website visitors. It is a way for advertisers to target their 5 second audio ad to specific interests, demographics and geographic locations.
Big TV’s ad revenue is dwindling because PPP offers advertisers a more cost effective advertising solution that has been providing positive Return on Investment (ROI) for over 2 years. PPP offers advertisers a way to reach their target audience and is the only form of media whose impressions and ad placements are verified by an independent 3rd party.
PPP is not new, it has been running for 2 ½ years, has over 66,000 advertisers and over 550,000 websites that serve PPP ads to their visitors.
The 550,000+ websites that currently serve these ads are responsible for 43 million streams (impressions) of advertisers’ 5 second audio ads on a monthly basis.
This system is taking new publishers right now and will launch next February.
Interested? Check out Pay Per Play!
Have you ever seen an “Honor System” Snack Route? Building one may be the kind of home based business you’d like to try.
Here’s a report on the subject you may be interested in.
One of the hottest issues in the workplace is how to accommodate the 4 generations who co-exist in the workplace and who share values that are often at odds with one another.
The newest generation – the “Y”’s love Google, Telecommuting, IM’s and text messaging. They aren’t willing to sit locked in a cubicle all day, day after day.
But obviously they are needed in the workplace or business and government will literally die out.
As the business and government adapt to accommodate them, things will change for EVERYONE and quite likely make working at home – business or telecommuting – even more popular. In other words Generation Y’s preferences will have a cascading effect making working at home even more popular than Ron Paul at a libertarian convention these days.
Most iGoogle gadgets seem to be silly distractions.
I have to admit I’ve never really optimized iGoogle for anywhere nearly like the productivity these tools provide. But after reading this article, I may have to try to clean up my iGoogle page and put it to better use. Frankly I just avoid mine right now.
But here are 15 iGoogle gadgets that offer real productivity potential.
While I’m at a conference I wanted to let you know about these Word Press Plug Ins that help you get more readers.
Most are tools to make it easier for people to subscribe to your feed or find you through the maze of social bookmarking sites… one handles up to 61 such sites!
I guess if you have them automated and it’s just a button click, it’s worth it. Frankly the number of social bookmarking sites is growing so fast it boggles the mind!
