Establishing A Professional Image When You Work At Home

InterHomeBusinessReport
present's you from BB Lee

Establishing A Professional Image When You Work At Home

Establishing A Professional Image When You Work At Home
by BB Lee (C)2002

(542 Words)

It is often difficult to appear professional if you are working
out of the home, among noisy children, barking dogs, hungry
spouses waiting for dinner. And certainly many potential
clients express open disdain if they call your home and hear
screaming children in the background while you try to converse
professionally.

It's unfortunate, but many ill informed clients assume that
home based business owners are not as serious about their business
or that their work is not as good as a large company. If the
home based business owner wants to survive in this highly
competitive world he must demand respect and project the image
of a professional business person who is capable of handling
any job, large or small.

Let's tackle a few ways you can appear professional, even if
your office is a small space in the corner of your bedroom. I
am assuming you have a complete computer set-up already. This
would include your computer, printer, scanner, fax.

Purchase an answering machine and use it on a separate telephone
line employed only for business calls. This will establish a
professional image, especially if a client calls and you are
unavailable. Plus, your telephone line will not be tied up with
personal calls for the family.

Or if you prefer, you could opt for voice mail. You can easily
purchase this through your local telephone company. For a modest
fee per month, through your existing telephone number, you can
set up several mailboxes to take messages when you are unavailable.

Another way to project a very professional image is to purchase,
or print up on your home computer, business cards. The information
on your cards should include your name, business name, your title,
address, telephone, fax, email address, URL address, cellular
telephone number. Give these business cards out when ever possible.
These cards will help to remind potential clients of
your services and make it easy for them to contact you.

And of course you will need suitable business stationary to keep
in contact with your clients. If you are on a budget, print up
your own stationary on the best paper you can afford. There are
many inexpensive software programs you can use to handle this
project.

Purchase brochure paper at your local office supply store and
print up your own advertising material with all your contact
information included.

You might also want to establish a one page web-site on the
Internet to serve as an Online business card to potential
clients. Include all the information you've printed on your business
card, plus, a little background information about your company.
Remember to register the site in all the major search
engines.

You live in a residential area and receive a large quantity of
packages. In order to appear professional, plus cut down on the
neighborhood traffic congestion, set up an account at a local mail
drop center. Many of them will give you a professional sounding
address for all your business
Editor SmallBizBits Newsletter www.angelfire.com/zine/smallbiz

Provided by ArticleFeeder.com

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Admin Fritz
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Moving your Work at Home Business Online-what it takes

InterHomeBusinessReport
present's you from Aaron Wilmont

Moving your Work at Home Business Online-what it takes

After you have launched your home based business you will eventually have to decide if you are going to "make the jump" to the world wide web and conduct some or all of your business there. The benefits of doing so are potentially huge. There are millions of individuals on the web and the average user is generally well educated and has at least some disposable income.

Keep in mind that internet shopping has increased considerably in recent years and so has the relative popularity of online auction websites such as Ebay. The amount of potential prospects and customers online is indeed astonishing. To overlook the web would probably be a bad idea for any new home business. If you do decide to take your home based business to the web, when marketing your website remeber that there are many ways to promote it, not just a few as so many small business owners believe.

Many home business owners rely too much on the the search engines for the bulk of their traffic, for instance. While search engines will certainly send you the bulk of your hits eventually, they often take a lot of time to index and rank your website. In the meantime you will want to use other methods to promote your site such as forums, newsgroups, message boards, articles, signature lines, directories and classified ads. Some home based business ventures, like a network marketing business run from your own home for instance, are pretty well suited to being transferred to the web.

Many of the day to day activities that this type of business entails, like lead generation and prospecting for example, can be done on the web, and often for less money. Renting a newsletter list can be both inexpensive and targeted. You will still be working from the comfort of your own home naturally, yet you will be using various tools like web sites, autoresponders, forums and classified ads. In addition to the marketing advantages, there is also a huge quantity of tools which can assist you in researching your competitors. You might start out slow at first but you may eventually wonder how in the heck your home based enterprise even survived without it.

Another big advantage of conducting your business on the web is that it will be much easier to track and research what you are doing right or wrong than it would be in the offline world. You can easily see which ads or promotional efforts are working by how many visitors you get, how long they stay on your site and if they purchase or not. You will already be on the web so all the great research and informaional resources that exist in abundance there will be there at your fingertips. Very handy indeed. Regardless of how you decide to begin your exposure, via a free website or your own domain, just get going. You may begin with a budget domain package which includes your own domain for as little as seven dollars a month. There are a lot of competitive starter packages out there and you can later expand as your business grows in size and volume.

Aaron Wilmont is a Home Business owner and Home Business authoer. More information at http://www.home-business-match.com

InterHomeBusiness
Admin Fritz
NEW'S FROM HOMEBUSINESS

"Dotcomology" is The Science of Making Money Online! GET IT FREE!
Check out my blog: http://interhomebusinessnews.blogspot.com/
Not long ago, I didn't know ANYTHING about Internet marketing...
However, within just 2 weeks, I launched my own website AND learned how to profit from an opt-in list, pull in sales with ezines, make money with Google Adwords and set up my own BLOG! Click here to find out how!