You want a home business you can be proud of. You want to tell all those unbelievers to bite you. How do you do this? Marketing, people.

1. Figure out what you’re trying to do.

Business types call this management by objectives. Are you trying to get new customers or retain existing ones? Some methods of marketing (signs, ads, etc.) catch the eye of people who don’t know about you yet. Other methods (newsletters, blogs, e-mails, follow-up calls) keep the customers you already have from jumping ship to Joe’s FlyByNight. Once you know what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s a lot easier to focus your energies and get things done.

2. Figure out your resources.

Business owners these days have more marketing options than they can count. Or shake a stick at. Or some other bad cliché. Figure out what you can afford in money and time. Once you know what you can afford, you don’t even have to think about the things you can’t afford.

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 30, 2007 in Small Business Marketing
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Hello, readers of my blog and my favorite people in the world. Look! I’m all over the internet. Isn’t that cool? Please go to these nice people’s websites and look at the articles they let me put there. You should read them. They’re better than the crap I post here.

Behind door number one we have GetEntrepreneurial.com featuring Top Ways To Get a Fresh Business Idea Off The Ground courtesy of moi. In my completely unbiased opinion, it rocks.

Behind door number two we have Business Opportunities and Ideas, featuring Last Minute Marketing Tips To End The Fiscal Year On A High Note once again courtesy of yours truly.

Hopefully you will love these articles and show them to everyone you know. You can even show them to your Mom because I don’t say the F word once.

Go! Comment! Petition let me give more of my home business prowess!

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 30, 2007 in Home Business Blogging
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I’ll cut straight to the chase here. While there are a lot of things you need to know about marketing, there is one question you need to answer before you do anything else. It is, without doubt, the most important aspect of both your marketing plan and your home business plan. Drumroll please…

Are You Selling Love or Money? Those are your choices. Your only choices.

Selling Love

The Premise: You are selling something that gives your customer emotional value. It could be sex, it could be safety, it could be the envy of their neighbors. Whatever. It all boils down to love. The vast majority of business-to-consumer items fall into this category.

Soap? Love. You’re selling the feeling of cleanliness, sexiness, smelling good, soft skin, whatever.

Mushroom soup? Love. You’re selling the feeling that your customer is nourishing her family. (You should probably be selling the feeling that she’s nourishing her family better than her neighbor is, but that’s a whole ‘nother article.)

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 29, 2007 in Small Business Marketing
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Back in the day when I was first starting my home business blog and was terrified no-one would want to read it (yes, that day was about three weeks ago) a very nice man from Australia named Lindsay Polson wrote a highly complimentary post about my blog. I showed it to my mother, my mother-in-law, the nanny. I basically whored this post out so much it was demanding a raise. Things have been kind of crazy in IttyBiz world, what with all the How To Run A Business Without Killing Yourself posts and all, but I wanted to take some time to show you the absolute rockingness that is Lindsay.

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 27, 2007 in Home Based Business
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(Note: The photograph you see here is one of my favorite photographs of Jack, one I fully intend to show at every special occasion, nonspecial occasion, and basically every available opportunity. In the same set of photographs, I caught him peeing on the couch on film. You just KNOW that one’s going to show up at the wedding.) You are in no way obligated to read this post, as it is all about me. I’ve had a pretty fantastic week and I want to brag. That’s it, really.

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 27, 2007 in Home Business Blogging
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Let me guess. You can’t afford it.

You’d really love to [start a home business/spend time with your kids/give money to charity/adopt a child from China], you really would, but you just can’t afford it. If I hear that phrase one more time, I’m going to do something drastic.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re lying. You can afford it. You’re just choosing not to. In your case, that could be a wise choice or it could be a stupid choice, but it’s yours and you’re making it.

I could tell you about Christine who spent time hanging out in the upper echelons of homelessness. I could tell you about Harri in Finland, busting his ass and saving like crazy to work from home with his two little boys.

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 26, 2007 in Home Business Money
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Let’s talk about money, shall we? I mean, we’ve been doing that all week, but let’s get dirty about it. Money is not hard to understand. Earn more, spend less, you’re golden. It’s not exactly rocket science. The problem most people have, though, is that they spend all their time trying to do one of those things, while summarily ignoring the other. Half the world busts their ass to make more money and then promptly spends it all on crap. The other half drives halfway across town to save a nickel on a can of peas, but charges fifteen bucks an hour for their SEO services.

That’s really dumb.

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 25, 2007 in Home Business Money
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I like risk. Risk and I have spent a lot of time together, and we’ve become close friends. Risk has spent a lot of nights sleeping in my bed, nestled cozily between Jamie and me.

Jamie does not like my relationship with Risk. He thinks we’re too close. He thinks I don’t see Its flaws, the problems It could cause, the havoc It could wreak on our home business. The perfect entrepreneur would be halfway between Jamie and me – someone with a healthy balance. (Maybe we could just have Jack take care of it.)

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 24, 2007 in Home Business Money
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One of the best ways to avoid the whole living in the gutter thing we talked about yesterday is to create multiple streams of income for your home business. This is a very trendy topic right now and I figured I’d clear a few things up.

In order to succeed using this model, there are two main steps involved.

Step One: Diversify your income streams.

When you are starting out, your diversification involves getting lots of clients. If you run a small business or you are a freelancer and the vast majority of your income comes from one company or individual, you do not have a client. You have a boss.

Lots of clients means lots of checks. If one client flakes out, you’re okay because you have other clients. You make your mortgage payment on time, your wife doesn’t leave you, and everybody’s happy. For now.

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 23, 2007 in Home Business Money
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“Do you want to be homeless and live in the gutter?” Apparently, this is the biggest fear among would-be home business owners. It also seems to be the biggest fear of people who know and love would-be entrepreneurs. When I was about a week away from launching Itty Bitty Marketing, somebody very close to me (thankfully, not Jamie) asked me that exact question. Verbatim. What do you say to that? “Yes, actually, that’s exactly what I’d like. In fact, why don’t you just take my house and my car and I’ll do it right now?”

Many advice types suggest having something like seven gazillion months worth of savings before you make the leap, thus mitigating your risk of poverty and ridicule. While I’m sure that is a nice, safe plan for many people, in our case we would have shot ourselves had we waited that long. Instead, we decided to go with the Back-Up Plan method of small business management.

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 22, 2007 in Home Business Money
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