Earn From Home - Internet Marketing

How to Make Money From Home

Many people have contemplated what it would take for them to make money from home.  This is especially true for those homebound people with disabilities or children to take care of, as well as for those with long or unpleasant commutes to their current place of employment.

Others who want to make money from home might prefer the relative informality and lack of politics involved in being able to work in the more casual home environment of their choosing. Still others who are currently unemployed might need to generate some income by working from home to pay their bills before a new steady job comes along.

Whatever your motivation for wanting to make money from home may be, the opportunity to do so has increased exponentially thanks to the Internet. Nevertheless, more traditional work at home methods such as crafting and telephone sales can be available to those with the required skills and motivation.

The following sections briefly introduce some of the more popular ways to make money from home.

Freelancing

The chance to freelance from your own home or wherever you can find an Internet connection has expanded rapidly in recent years.

To facilitate this process, a number of well-established and reputable freelance websites provide a list of projects that you can bid on. They also typically offer an escrow service to make sure that you get paid in a timely manner for satisfactory work completed and delivered.

Perhaps you are an accomplished writer, a professional translator or a business consultant with qualifications and expertise that can help others with their freelance projects.   If so, then you can probably find some work online that would suit you and which you can perform at home, often according to your preferred schedule.

Making Art, Crafts and Clothes

One of the oldest ways to make money from home involves creating works of art or making crafts to sell at arts and crafts fairs and in local stores. You can also now offer your creative efforts in online forums or at your own website.

In addition to more traditional forms of art that might require education, talent and specific materials or equipment like paintings, sculpture or ceramics, you can also make crafts at home like beaded jewelry, embroidery, quilts, bird houses, stained glass, and other interesting household items.

Talented musicians and other artists can also often find occasional work by obtaining commissions for new pieces that they can produce at home.  Those who are expert tailors or dye artists can also work from home making custom pieces for others or clothes to sell at fairs and stores.

Tutoring Students

If you have been well educated in a particular subject area and wish to pass on your expertise to others, then perhaps tutoring students is something that you can do to make money from home.

This will typically require patience, in addition to some advance preparation unless your student prefers to direct the course of your tutoring sessions.

Also, accomplished musicians and artists can advertise lessons in their particular specialty if they have the patience and space to teach from home.

Call Centers

Many businesses prefer to hire independent sales or customer service representatives who work at home through a call center hub since it can save them money.

If you have a good telephone voice and enjoy speaking on the phone, then this opportunity may be something for you to consider.

Taking Online Surveys

If you lack the specific expertise to take advantage of any of the above work at home opportunities and do not have the means to obtain such experience, then you might be able to make some money at home by taking online surveys.

As with any other online work at home opportunity, you will want to make sure that the survey is not a scam and that you will actually be paid for your efforts before committing your time.

Once you have determined that a survey company is legitimate, you can probably get a considerable amount of on demand work by taking the surveys they offer.

Tips for Starting a Successful Business Website

In this day and age, a business website is a prerequisite for even the most basic of services. It also serves as a valuable first impression to potential customers – sloppy website designs lead to negative assumptions about the professionalism of your business. Overly designed, memory-intensive flash websites filled with background music and tiny text frustrate visitors with haughty pompousness. 

How can you decide which approach is the best for your company? What are the steps necessary to establish a coherent, appropriate website?

Getting Started

In the late 1990s, most website design only required a simple knowledge of HTML and Javascript. Since then, websites have evolved greatly, and a working knowledge of Flash and HTML 5.0 are required for the most professional of websites. Most website designers use publishing software such as Adobe Dreamweaver to simplify tasks considerably. Fortunately, most publishing suites have simple templates for a basic site and may prove enough for most small businesses seeking a simple web presence. 

At the bare minimum, your website should consist of the following:

Contact information – your phone number, e-mail and address clearly visible on the first page.

For eCommerce sites:

A clearly designed product catalog, with your most current, news-worthy products on the first page. Promotions should also be clearly visible on the first page.

An online shopping cart system.

If pertinent to your products, you should add downloadable content – such as software or PDF manuals.

For corporate or events sites, a clear company calendar with upcoming events, which can also be synced to the iCal standard or Google Calendar.

There are also some common pitfalls to avoid.

Garish or common clip art – these make your website appear unprofessional and outdated. Use made from scratch graphic designs, if possible.

Tiny text in an attempt to create a minimalistic look. This can often be unreadable on some smaller displays.

Overly extravagant Flash introductions with background music. These often slow down older computers and frustrate customers who are only seeking basic information about the company. Create launch pages which give the user the option of selecting a HTML or Flash version of the site.

Poor frequency of updates. When a visitor to your site sees the last update occurring half a year ago, what does that say about your response time to customer issues?

Upgrading a Basic Website for the New Web

Now, with a basic foundation, your website should be spruced up further. Visitors these days expect a certain degree of interaction with the website. These are some things you can add to your website to enhance the user’s experience.

Social networking integration via Facebook, Twitter, youtube & Google Plus etc. These allow your company to bring your customers closer without the use of old-time mailing lists.

A wise use of multimedia. For example, Apple’s website uses Quicktime VR to allow the user to grab and rotate the product in any way they desire to mimic a physical shopping experience.

RSS feeds, to allow users to subscribe to your company’s posts or updates.

Tweaking Your Design Sensibilities

Bear in mind that websites should be designed to reflect their businesses. Hotels and restaurants should not look like electronics websites, and vice versa. If your staff lacks the artistic eye for cohesion, it may be wise to hire a contract web designer in order to achieve this. However, here are some simple tips to maintain a clean design.

Fonts – many websites are created with the simple Times New Roman font in garish colors over clip art backgrounds. These are ugly and discourage customers from purchasing your products. Professionally made banners and cleaner fonts such as Lucida Grande or Arial reflect well on your business.

Use CSS or AJAX in order to keep your site looking lean and modern; without these your website will appear clunky, loading like a 1990s website being viewed on Netscape.

Use cross-browser compatible standards which can be viewed on the widest assortment of browsers and operating systems. Many designers make the mistake of making fancy websites without the consideration that many customers may be using outdated browsers without Flash.

Finishing Touches

The important thing to remember about starting a business website is that design should be clear, to the point and informative. Cross-compatibility is much more important than aesthetic beauty. Each customer who can’t load your site or find the pertinent contact information is a lost customer. Here are some final things to consider.

Does your website have a mobile version? With the increasing adoption of smartphones, mobile-optimized websites can help widen your company’s exposure and promote a forward-thinking image.

Has your company launched mobile applications, as many companies have done, to allow easier, one-click access to your website and services?

Is your website search engine optimized? There are many articles instructing web designers in the proper way to phrase search terms to increase hits from major search engines.

Will your website use advertising as a means to gain revenue? If so, you can consider using Google AdSense as a free way to gain extra funds from page views and click-thrus.

These are some ideas to help you get started. In business web design, your first impression upon the customer can often be your last if your website is poorly designed, so be sensible with your approach. 

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