While I write this article, my kids are watching a Jetsons movie. Do you remember George Jetson and his boss, Spacely? Spacely is always yelling at George and threatening to fire him. While your boss may not be yelling at you all the time, the anxiety we feel going to work each day with the economy in the dumps can be just as bad. Never knowing if or when you might be fired from day-to-day is gut-wrenching. This is why so many are now looking into the top home based businesses to determine what business they can run from home.If you own a computer and have a connection to the internet, as most of us do, then you can start a home based business working from home part-time leveraging the internet. This is ideal since you’ll want to keep your current job while working on your home business until it starts to generate significant income. One of benefits of having an online business where you are selling something, or are an affiliate for some product is that your business can run 24 hours a day, every day, all over the world.Some top home based businesses for selling online include items you make from home like jewelry, crafts, art, clothing or digital media like how-to books, digital art and music.If you choose to create something yourself to sell on over the internet, be sure it’s something you enjoy creating. Research your products to make sure there is a market for it and exactly who that market is. Expect to start out small and grow your business gently. This way, you avoid spending too much on materials and going broke before the business is off the ground.Affiliate opportunities are also among the top home based businesses where you market another companies products from your web site or blog. The advantage here is that you don’t have to create anything yourself, but instead are paid a portion of the profits when someone purchases the product through your web site. Keep in mind however, that as an affiliate you are not selling the products, but rather providing information that helps others find these items. The merchants actually sell the products. Affiliate programs are among the top home based businesses to start since they require no previous experience and are easily set up. Sites such as clickpoint.com have a huge number of items one can become an affiliate for, and, you can also be a vendor of your own digital media there as well.Whether selling something you created or becoming an affiliate for someone elses product, you’ll likely need a website that establishes your internet presence. Some affiliate programs provide such a website when you join their program, or you could purchase web space from hosting sites such as 1and1.com. Having your own space from a hosting company gives you the most flexibility in terms of what you put on your web site, but it costs a little more.

The benefits of home based businesses are vast. According to Forbes work from home businesses are the fastest growing segment of start-up companies in the U.S. With the economy beginning to recover many people are opting to start their own business for the benefits it provides.In addition many people are willing to take a chance of making it on their own rather than getting back into the rat race and facing an employment sector where job security has become a myth.7 Benefits of Home Based BusinessCommute
Dress Code
Earning Potential
Flexible Hours
Less Risk
Overhead Cost
Tax AdvantagesCommute: Gone are the days of the pleasurable morning commute. The Millennial generation has sparked a change from the traditional 9 to 5 work week and looking for options such as, flex-time, 4-day work weeks, and telecommuting. Well, home business entrepreneurs are able to work from home while saving on the rising cost of gas.Dress Code: Most companies have dress codes that require workers to adhere to. Working from home allows a person to dress how they choose without losing productivity. Home business individuals can have teleconferences from home in their birthday suit or video conference meetings with a dress shirt on and pajama bottoms.Earning Potential: How many times have you felt you were passed up for a promotion or not given a raise because of a bad performance review? Working from home gives individuals the potential to proportionately make what they are worth. In other words the harder you work improves your chances of making more money. No need to ask for a raise or wait for the next promotion.Flexible Hours: If you are working in a normal business setting your hours of work would most likely be 9 to 5. In a work from home business your office hours are what you make them. Depending on your personality you can schedule your work to take place when you are most productive, whether that is in the morning, noon, or night. This is turn allows you to plan your work around your family duties (for work at home moms or dads) and gives you better control of a work-life balance.Less Risk: There is inherent risk with any business opportunity, but home based businesses offer less risk than the traditional brick-n-mortar business or buying a franchise. In addition, once your business is up and running your overhead cost are lower and the maintenance is easier.Overhead Cost: In comparison to a traditional business overhead cost can be one of the major expenses in a building. From paying rent, a lease or mortgage on a building to the utilities, these expenses can be a major drain on profits. In work from home businesses, overhead cost can be kept to a minimum and many of the expenses are tax deductible.Tax Advantages: This can be one of the greatest benefits of having a work from home business. Business lunches, business travel, a home office, and a portion of your home utilities are all examples of tax-deductions. Consult a tax professional when filing your tax returns, but many of the expenses related to your home based business are legitimate deductions that can lower your tax burden and in turn allow you to keep more of the money you make.Though this article covered the benefits of operating a home based business there are negatives as well, but getting into any business opportunity has positives and negatives, ultimately you have to do what is right for you. But beginning a home based business can be a chance for you to follow your passions and build an income producing vehicle that unleashes your creative abilities.Here’s to thinking like an entrepreneur and achieving your dreams.

You’re going to get your hands dirty
A good farmer scoops up the soil in their hand and smells the earth, perhaps even taste the earth. The thing is that as a farmer you will be getting intimate with your market.

If the crop you plan to raise is made up of web users then your web page is the soil that they will grow strong on. The nutrients you add to your web page have a fragrance, maybe even a certain taste. And the richest addition you can add to your web page is your own personality.

Now, don’t get fearful
Perhaps professional marketers have told you not to get personal with your marketing, but that type of aggressive marketing is not what we are talking about here. To cultivate your market you need to talk to them in ways that nurture, and this means that you care enough to be yourself.

If you wanted to get to know someone based on a feeling of attraction would you analyze how to do this? If you overheard a conversation and the opinions expressed attracted you would you choose to get demographics and contact information before you introduce yourself?

The whole purpose of cultivating a market lends itself to casual and intimate conversations. And ‘intimate’ does not mean private and secretive, it means:

Marked by close acquaintance, association, or familiarity
Relating to or indicative of one’s deepest nature
Most web marketing is done at arm’s length because the marketing people are not clear on the market being targeted. And the word ‘targeted’ is rather cold and disconnected emotionally. Targeting is an odd way to build relationships, but building relationships is exactly what we want to do.

Cultivating the market
The bigger portion of our market that we wish to cultivate is at earlier stages of the buying cycle and we are able to help them and build a relationship in the process. In this way we cultivate a much bigger market than trying to capture the smaller numbers that are ready to purchase.

Those members of our market that are ready to purchase have already been influenced. We cannot reach many of them now. On the other hand, the greater numbers that are early in their search can be cultivated, influenced and helped to make a smart choice and buy from us.

We need to design a web site that will allow us to be helpful and generous in sharing our information. Far too many small business web owners do not know what to share with their market. We are going to be different.

What do we feed our market?
We want our undecided market to choose our solution as their purchase. To do that we need to help them along, and this is where our web design comes into play.

Our page is jammed full of really good information but it doesn’t show everything at once. And then there are other pages doing the same thing. We are using HTML which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the hyper text that allows us to provide a selection and then deliver a choice.

We are no longer using limited space on paper, nor are we using limited time on TV. Web marketing needs to use HTML in its marketing to get the most out of the medium and yet the HTML in contemporary business designs is relegated to basic navigation and placeholders for content. Instead, we need to put HTML into our marketing methods and provide choices for all members of our market.

Talking all the way through
We will spend time talking to that portion of our market that doesn’t even recognize yet that they have a problem. We are going to help educate them so that they do recognize that their life could be better with our solutions.

We will spend time talking with those that are researching possible solutions and we will help them see all of their possibilities from all sides. We’ll look at the upside and the downside of various features. We’ll bring these people along our path of understanding so that they are ready to look at comparisons.

We will not be afraid to compare our solution with others available on the market. We want to nurture this stage of the buying cycle fearlessly and give them all of the choices available while building a relationship they can trust. We want to keep this stage engaged or they will leave our site looking for comparable products and solutions.

If we don’t feed them right now and right here their next stage of development is to make a decision to purchase and we could lose them at a crucial moment in the cycle.

Farmer or hunter
A hunter fears that the prey will get away. They target and shoot early when they can and short term goals are everything to a hunter. On the other hand a farmer has long term goals and works with the seasons. Six months can go by from planting to harvesting and a farmer knows that nurturing cannot be superficial or provided with impatience.

Our harvest will arrive and it will be our own if we provide the helpful nutrients. Spending time to create the best content is essential and the easiest way for our market to find the right content on our site is also essential. But it can all be for naught if we choke up at the end and impatiently push for the sale.

We need to honor our market and validate their choice even when the choice goes to our competitor. Most choices will come our way because we nurtured that market along and we have build up a relationship. All the rest will take care of itself. It does so because everything about the marketing process is as natural as sunlight and rain.

Pull Marketing
And when we market naturally we are attracting the best interest from search engines. We are providing volumes of our unique and original information that search engines and our market are attracted to. We are sharing information that creates growth while building relationships with our market. We are cultivating our market by solving problems and providing insight for our market. And the bulk of our information is work that does not have to be repeated over and over.

Our web pages may need some tweaking from time to time but our main effort is going to last for a long time to come. And perhaps one of the most valuable assets we develop with pull marketing is that nothing we ever do is lost. All of our marketing stays in place for years and as we build we grow stronger and stronger.

Unlike push marketing that requires constant feeding of cash for advertising, our pull marketing is more like putting money in the bank and building our reserves instead of spending them.

Farming our web market is a very different concept from that of an opportunist feeding off of the market. By farming we control our own market and build a richer relationship rather than rely on just the good seasons or good years to get us through.

The multitude of advertising vehicles available these days has made it difficult for many advertisers to distribute their advertising budgets. From traditional newspaper advertising to interactive web-based advertising, the opportunities for advertisers are endless. A healthy combination of these and other advertising media is ultimately the best approach to a successful campaign. However, lately the nay-sayers of newspaper advertising have started to garner attention. Allow me to refresh your memory on the continued benefits of newspaper advertising.

Newspapers have been gracing the doorsteps of American homes since the early 1700s. That is over 300 years of budding romance between American consumers and their beloved newspapers. Lee Clow, the Chairman & Global Director of TBWA\Worldwide explains that the, “Newspaper is a special medium. It’s not urgent, not yesterday or tomorrow but today. Sitting with a newspaper and a cup of coffee in the morning will always be one of the most intimate media experiences there is.” The title of this article is “Newspaper Advertising…Benefits Revealed” so… when will the benefits be revealed? I am getting to that! The newspaper has built its reputation as a trusted source of information; this goes for not only its articles but for the advertisements it features as well. Each individual newspaper has guidelines and restrictions that must be met by each advertiser. This is not always the case with the truckload of advertisers that place ads on the web. Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous people and companies that are able to post ads on various websites without undergoing any sort of screening. Consumers can continue to feel secure knowing that advertisements that make it to print have been checked out and approved for their benefit.

Another advantage to newspaper advertising is the portable/permanent aspect of a newspaper. A newspaper is very easily toted from home to work, to lunch, back to work and back to home. This allows readers to pick up the paper when it is convenient for them. As far as the permanent feature of the newspaper… let us look at an example. Over a cup of coffee you are perusing the pages of your local paper. You come across an ad for a new product that strikes your fancy. You set the paper aside until later when you have some free time and can research the product. Later that week, you pick up the ad and make a phone call to the company advertising the product. The same product is advertised while you are surfing the web. You bookmark the site in order to return to the site later. However, later that week the ad is seemingly gone from the site. Is it on a rotation? Was the ad pulled? You may never know. This example may be a bit dramatic, however it illustrates the benefit of a tangible ad that someone can revisit and review.

Perhaps the best argument for making the case for newspaper advertising is the “opt-in” feature. The world is full of annoying advertisements (not to say they don’t work), TV commercials, pop-up internet ads, spam emails, etc. etc. etc. Newspaper advertisements continue to be an opt-in advertising method. People can decide whether or not they are going to read your newspaper ads. They know the ads are there, alongside the articles they read everyday, and they have the choice. And as it turns out many adults are making the choice to read those ads, because they find them useful. In a 2007 study done by Mediamark, 51% of the adults they interviewed said that they found newspaper advertising “somewhat/very useful.” This day and age, people do not want to be bothered. Case and point? DVRs are becoming increasingly popular and allowing people to completely skip over commercials. People are finding a way around commercials, anti-spam filters are finding ways to weed out spam emails, pop-up blockers are eliminating pop-up ads. The list goes on. However, newspaper ads have not become an annoyance, they continue to be a source of useful information for readers of the newspaper.

Advertisers have a difficult decision in distributing their advertising budgets. There is no “right answer” for how or where to spend your money. No advertising plan is going to be right for all advertisers. Each advertiser must test different ads in different mediums in order to find out what will produce results. Newspapers have long been a valued method of advertising to companies and individuals around the world. They offer benefits to advertisers that web based advertising cannot. Newspaper advertising is still working for advertisers that continue to recognize its value. When you are divvying your advertising budget this year; do your research, weigh your options, but don’t overlook the value that newspapers have always offered advertisers.