When you’re first starting out on your home business journey, you’re generally a.) excited, b.) scared shitless, or c.) both. The fear generally comes from the fact that you have no clients and no money and the possibility of sleeping in a cardboard box seems quite likely.

Home business growth traditionally comes verrrrrrrrrrry, verrrrrrrrrrry slowly and then at some tipping point explodes to the point of ridiculousness. (Just ask the charming gentlemen who hang out at Men With Pens.) If you’re in the beginning phases, though, it seems like the tipping point is either so far into the future that you can’t see it or completely impossible.

This growth explosion usually comes by word of mouth. Word of mouth is awesome, but you have to have a few mouths going before you can benefit from it. There are a bunch of ways you can do this, but today we’ll tackle barter.

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 30, 2008 in Home Based Business - 34 Comments
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So I’m in a sex shop today, because that’s the kind of thing I do on a Tuesday morning. (And they ask me why I run a home business.)

It’s fairly new, and it’s one of those women’s only deals that markets nice things, not sleazy things. Body balms, belly dancing costumes, very lovey dovey. It’s a good idea, and from what I can tell, business is going gangbusters. (Do things “go gangbusters” or do they “do gangbusters”? Is “gangbusters” really a word I should be using when discussing sex shops?)

So I go in and it’s all pink lighting and nice displays and there is a zero sleaze factor. There’s even a sign on the door that says, very politely, that they don’t sell novelty items so don’t even ask. Everything is going well. My could-be shopping experience is all good.

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 29, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 84 Comments
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IttyBiz has been awful busy lately, and I figured I’d give y’all an update on what’s going down at the home business HQ.

IttyBiz and Brazen Careerist Get Together To Make Sweet, Sweet Love

Brazen Careerist is:

“We’re an online career center aimed at Generation Y — young professionals who want to design and define their careers using the new rules for success.

“The Brazen Careerist network is made up of a vibrant, curious and ambitious group of career-minded bloggers, passionately covering a variety of fields: personal development, entrepreneurship, public relations, technology, marketing, and politics, each blog offers a unique, informed perspective to our ever-expanding audience.”

They’ve included me in that network of bloggers, which is damn nice of them, wouldn’t you say?

IttyBiz and Alltop Get Together To Make Equally Sweet, Sweet Love

Moving on to the lovely folks at Alltop:

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 24, 2008 in Home Business Blogging - 57 Comments
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This is a guest post from Mark Dykeman of Broadcasting Brain. It takes a brave man to tackle a Moral of the Story post. I told him I’d post this last Tuesday. You’ll notice I am a little late. This is because I am a deeply flawed human being. Thanks for your patience, Mark.

“You canna change the laws of physics, Captain!” I don’t know if Mr. Scott actually said that classic phrase in a Star Trek movie or episode, but I learned that lesson very well during one of my summer jobs. It was a messy, embarrassing, humbling experience. Since this is IttyBiz, and Naomi slipped away for a few minutes, I’m going to share this story with you. Because that’s what IttyBiz is about — embarrassingly personal stories that (should) teach someone a lesson!

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 24, 2008 in Moral of the Story - 8 Comments
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“So what do you actually do for a living?”

This question came to me in an email from somebody I know. I clicked ‘reply’ and was all set to type out an answer when something very disturbing occurred to me. This person reads my blog.

Not just casual reading. Not just you-say-you-read-it-but-I-call-bullshit. The person who wrote this email has commented frequently and we’ve shared emails back and forth on several occasions. I would have thought they would have known.

I took a moment to get all up in arms about how they haven’t been paying attention. Then I got over it. If they don’t know what I do for a living, it’s not exactly their fault, is it?

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 22, 2008 in Home Based Business - 66 Comments
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Those of you who have been following along on Twitter will know that I got it into my head that with my newfound riches I should get myself an office. Like, the kind that isn’t in my house.

I’m not altogether sure what possessed me to do this — OK, I’m totally sure, I was just trying to get away from my toddler but didn’t want to admit that to several thousand strangers. Whoops! — but I’m doing it and my home business is collapsing around my stubbly ankles.

I kind of thought it would be like picking up my laptop and getting on the bus and buying a soy latte and plugging in my laptop in a separate location and WHAMMO! I’m an office dweller. Well, not so much.

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 22, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 8 Comments
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OK, you have to stay with me on this one. I will get around to relating this to home business, I promise, but it’s going to take me a while. So go grab yourself a coffee or a Crown & Coke or whatever because here we go.

The other day I was talking to a very good friend and she said something to me that really got under my skin. She and her boyfriend are looking to buy their first house, and a couple of weeks ago they found perfection — love at first sight. They put in an offer and held their breath. This weekend they just found out that their offer was refused and the owner had sold the house to another couple.

By Jamie Dunford - Apr 17, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 33 Comments
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When I first started blogging — she says, like it was OH SO long ago — I encountered a young man in a niche similar to mine. He expressed an interest in networking with me but frankly, I had bigger fish to fry. I mean, the guy wasn’t even self-hosting, for God’s sake. (OK, let’s be honest. I was very busy trying to become Darren Rowse’s best friend. There. I said it. Can we move on?)

So I sent a cursory email back every time he shot one my way and left it at that. At some point, I ended up subscribed to his newsletter. When this happened, I thought he had put me on the list, although in hindsight I was drinking a lot back then and would’ve put myself on a Porno for Chemical Engineers mailing list and not remembered it in the morning.

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 16, 2008 in Moral of the Story - 31 Comments
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So I’m on Twitter today (are you following me on Twitter yet? Areyouareyouareyou?) and I get an email notifying me of a new follower. In many cases I just follow back, but I wouldn’t know this guy if I woke up in bed beside him, so I went to investigate.

He doesn’t know me, he just lives in my city and found me on one of the local apps. Anyway, his most recent tweet goes like this:

“Twitter isn’t a chat client. I don’t follow people with too many @ symbols. They don’t know what Twitter is really for.”

True enough. I had to unfollow one very prominent SEO chick for filling my entire page with chats smack in the middle of primetime. Not cool. OK, so I check him out a little further. (I am not, after all, a complete Twitter whore. I will follow a lot of people, but a gal’s gotta draw the line somewhere.)

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 15, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 47 Comments
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Today’s post is a guest post from Erin Atherton of DurtBagz. (You know it’s a guest post because she uses semicolons and we all know how I feel about semicolons.) Go check out her site. As you’re about to find out, it won’t be around for long.

***

Five months ago, I launched my first home business; an online bag company called Durtbagz.com. Today, I’ve hardly sold 30 bagz, my web traffic is atrocious, and my website is about to be shut down due to breach of contract by the web designer.

Want to know how you can avoid this situation?

Yeah, I thought so.

On paper, I should never have been put in this position. I’m smart, I have experience locking down vendors, I have a mentor who was in business for himself for 25 years, and I have more financial backing than the typical first-time entrepreneur. So, with all this going for me, how can I be struggling like this?

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 14, 2008 in Guest Post - 29 Comments
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