Home based business advantages include personal freedom, being your own boss, no more commuting, keeping your own rewards and picking the times for working.This is just the tip of the iceberg of the many home based business advantages but if you are looking for personal freedom then a business based at home offers you the ideal solution. If you are running a enterprise from home you can pick and choose exactly when and where you want to work. You no longer have to worry about picking up the little ones from and kindergarten as you can stop working whenever you choose.Being your own boss would again throw up another long list of advantages, but when you’re your own boss you decide how much effort and time you are going to put into your business. Nobody’s looking over your shoulder or pushing you in this direction or that.No more commuting is a terrific advantage. The average worker would gain over 2 hours per day. How would use those 2 hours?. Having you own home based business gives you a terrific advantage. Just think no more stuck in a traffic jam or sitting in on a train for those 2 hours per day. You could be using that time constructively in your home base business.How would you like to keep all the rewards of the work that you put into your home enterprise. What a terrific advantage this is. The rewards you gain are equal to the effort you put in. No more breaking your back for your boss only to be rewarded with a pittance at the end of the month.The number one home base business advantages, especially for the stay at home mum is to be able to pick the times your work. No longer feeling guilty about having to leave your children with a child minder as you pick and choose exactly when you want to work.
Property Managment Vs Asset Management
One of the biggest mistakes I see apartment and commercial real estate investors make is leaving their investment property in complete control of their property manager. Even the best property management companies will not look at things like the owner.
I have seen this literally cost investors thousands of dollars in lost cash flow and property value, so it is definitely a mistake you want to avoid.
In this article I want to discuss the importance of being an Asset Manager, rather than a Property Manager. First, let’s define these two terms:
Asset Manager
Focus is on maximizing return and property value for the investor(s).
Property Manager
Focus is on day-to-day management activities for a property.
“Think Like a CEO…”
If you want to maximize your returns as an investor, you must think like a CEO, and not a property manager. Your focus should be continually on how to maximize the return from a property and increase value.
I see a lot of investors that lose track of this, and leave things up to their property manager, thinking that is their job. It is not.
Here are the things you should be focused on as an Asset Manager:
1) Increasing Income
2) Reducing Expenses
3) Improving Property Value
4) In short, maximizing returns and property value.
Continually ask yourself questions, such as:
- How can we increase rents? Are all of our rents at market levels? Can we charge higher rent for preferred units, such as near a pool?
- Can we reduce our property taxes by protesting the assessed value? Can we reduce our insurance expense by changing companies? How can we reduce every single line item expense – even by a small percentage?
- How can we increase the value of the property? What improvements would maximize value?
None of these activities should be done at the cost of deferring maintenance or reducing the property value over time. As the CEO of your investment you need to see the big picture – whether it is a duplex or several hundred units.
Your property manager, on the other hand should focus on the day-to-day property operations to keep things running smoothly, such as:
1) Property Maintenance
2) Marketing and Rental of Units
3) Collecting Rents and Paying Bills
4) Enforcing Property Rules and Procedures
Good property managers will also perform activities that could be considered asset management, such as performing regular checks to verify market rents are maximized, testing marketing results, and finding ways to reduce expenses.
However, I would caution against leaving everything up to your property manager, because ultimately, it is your responsibility to increase your returns and property value.
A Guide on Successful Product Creation and Internet Marketing
Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.
The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.
It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!
With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.
With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.