When I Was looking to start-up my business I was looking around at many opportunity’s to see what suited me best so I did my research into different franchises and business opportunity’s to suit my budget. What I found in my research shocked me and I wanted to share my experience with you.I knew I had to invest money and time and I was prepared for that so after a lot of thinking I thought to myself I could maybe get into the Subway Franchise, Well there are loads of them around so they are popular and successful and we didn’t have one in our town of Cobham, Surrey so let me share with you my findings.Subway FranchiseI spoke to a few people and they sent me the breakdown of the cost on how much it will cost to set a Subway and when I looked at it I nearly choked on my sandwich ( no it wasn’t a subway sandwich ha) I had some savings that I was willing to invest but I wasn’t ready to see what I saw so let me share with you how much I needed to get started.I needed at least £70,900 to get started and I’m telling you now I did not have that and not even close to it I was thinking to myself how am I going to do this and I knew it would take around three years to see any profit and I wasn’t prepared to get a massive loan out. So my search continued……What was a passion of mine and it was Fitness as being a personal trainer so I thought let’s get into a gym franchise so again began my research.So after a bit of research and meetings about starting up a energy fitness club the finance part came up and I was dreading how much it would all be and was hoping it was not as much as the Subway Franchise but again how wrong was I the minimum investment to get started was£95,000There was no way I could afford that again so this idea was out the window.Then a lightbulb moment happened for me and I sat down and went through what I wanted out of life and that was…
A good Income
Time Freedom to see friends and family
No Boss
So these franchises was not going to give me that first of all the investment was well out of my range, I would have to work my butt off giving me no time freedom at all to see friends and family and I would have more stress then it was worth and wouldn’t see profit for at least 3 years it just didn’t match my goals in life so I knew there was only one opportunity for me and that was Start my own home based business.Home based business opportunityBut where would I start as there was so much hype and BS on the Internet we all know that but there is also some quality opportunity’s. I was sitting down and talking to a friend who started his own Video Production company and I was telling him about my ideas and he gave me one piece of advice that I will never forget and that was ” Find someone who has done it and been successful and work closely with them”That’s exactly what I did I met up with 2 awesome guys who have been very successful within the industry and starting working with them closely,They helped me get set up and then having ongoing support which is vital and the rest is history.OK but how much does this cost well I’m telling you now it is no where near £75,000 so I am going to break it down for you in a very simple wayThis is an industry that you need to learn so time and investment is needed.Serious entrepreneur- £1000-£3,000On a budget- £80 per monthThe great thing about the home based business industry is that it can suit people on all different kind of budgets that is why so many people are turning to the Internet. If you are really serious about building a home based business and going on to your way to a six figure income then I am going to be very HONEST I would say you would need to invest between the £1,000 to £3,000 mark this will get you all the training and support you need and more of a fast track way to get your business up and running ( I’m not saying it will happen overnight)BUT DO NOT FEAR…If you can not afford that it does not matter as you can start on a budget of just £80 per month to get up and running this will require more work and will take a bit longer to get it all running but people do it this way and go on and make a six figure income and we teach you how to advertise for FREE so you do not need to worry about that. If you are sitting there thinking I cant afford or don’t want to spend £80 per month then I am going to be very honest and would say starting a home based business may not be for you now.As you can see a home based business is more affordable than a franchise opportunity that’s why so many people are starting them because you can see results within months not years and again it gives you.
Time freedom to do the things you want to
your the boss you decide when you want to work
you decide how much you want to earn the more work you put in the more you will earn.
I wanted to give you an honest view on the franchise side of things and the home based business industry and I have been completely honest I could sit here and say earn £30,000 in your first 30 days and by the way I’m not saying you can not earn £30,000 within a month you sure can but it wont happen in the first month I just don’t want to give you any BS that you see on many websites I want to give you the truth so you know what it takes to run a home based business.
Home Based Business Vs Franchise Opportunity
7 Simple Steps to Start a Home Based Business
Beginners often have a difficult time knowing where to start a home based business. In this article, we are going to go over 7 simple steps to launch a business online.1. Create a business/site that offers valuable information to people and in order to generate income by supplying information, it has to be something that people want, need and ready to pay for. Surveys have reveals several times that people are willing to pay for information that they really need than for information that they only want.2. 43things dot com is a site where people go to list their goals, objectives as well as desires. At the same time, it’s also a good site for discovering what members of the site need or want. There are several other sites like this one that render similar thing.3. Create a list of potential business ideas which you could build your first business on.4. It is very vital to do some research to find out if people are searching for information to justify building your site. Wordtracker at Freekeywords.wordtracker is a good place to begin.5. You need to find a suitable product that is related to what you base your site on. ClickBank.com should be your first bus top.6. Create your website, if you don’t have the skills you might want to hire a professional to do the job for you or join a business program that provides you with a complete money making site.7. Now you need traffic (customers) to start profiting from your website. Because your site is new, no body knows about it, you are going to do a lot of marketing to get the word out about your business. Below are some few ways to promote a site online.- Go to Squidoo and Hubpages and sign up for an account. Those two site are very simple,modular site building program that is a big favorite of Google which means a great opportunity for people to see your site.- You either write articles yourself or take articles from article directories like EzineArticles, Articlesbase e.t.c and use it on your Squidoo lens and Hubpages, if the article is not yours ensure you include a link of the author otherwise it won’t be approve.- Write a reviews about the product.- Create a blog and post quality content on a frequent basis.- Participate in forums and build status and reputation. You can find a lot of different forums at big-boards.com. Do not forget to include a link to your site in your signature area.- Use social bookmarking to target a huge number of prospects. Onlywire.com allows you to have your post bookmark to multiple sites in less than 5mins.There are many other ways to promote a site on the internet. As time goes on, you will get to know them.I hope you find this article on how to start a home based business in 7 steps informative.To Your Success,John Benjamin
Small Business Accounting Software – How to Buy
Small business accounting software / Small business bookkeeping software — How to buy.There are lot of small business accounting / bookkeeping softwares out there. If you are a small business owner looking for a good software, you are bound to get overwhelmed by the endless list pretty quickly. Which one to buy? What features do they come with? Should I get all the features or just the ones I need? The questions go on and on without answer. If this is what is happening to you, don’t despair. There is hope. Read on. By the time you are done reading this short post you will be armed with all the knowledge you need to make an informed buying decision. First some questions about you.
How big is your business?
Small business as defined by Small Business Administration is any business that is privately owned and employs less than 100 employees. Good enough. If we analyze this definition a bit closely we will quickly see that 100 employees is a big number. Assuming that you are paying $3000/month to each employee you are paying out $300,000/month as salary. If you own a business this big chances are you will not be looking for an accounting / bookkeeping software via internet. Sales agents from software companies will be waiting at your door to sell their software to you. Going by the fact that you are searching for a small business software on the internet you probably own a much smaller business. How much smaller? I think you own a business that has less than 5 employees. Most probably even less. Just one employee. Yourself.
What are you selling?
Are you selling a material product? or just services? Do you make the product or just buy it pre-made? Do you have a real store or you are selling via your web site? How do you find your customers?
How much is your data volume?
If you have a thriving business then you will have good data volume. How much it it? How many orders per month? How many new customers per month? How do store the data? How much data? What is expected growth rate of the data
Do you have a web site?
Nearly all businesses, big or small have web sites these days. Do you have one? If not your should get one. Would you like your software to integrate seamlessly with your web site? Would you like to be able to access your small business accounting / bookkeeping software via the internet?
Your choice of small business accounting / bookkeeping software will depend upon the answers to above questions. Assuming that you have one person company you want something that is easy to use, some that can be accessed remotely form anywhere and it can grow with your company. Right? … Right!OK, one more thing that we did not discuss. Underlying technology. Even though it may not be visible, it is very important to know what kind of technology your small business software is using. After all it is the bed rock on which the software is built. Things may get a little complicated here but I will try to make them as simple as I can.Every small business accounting / bookkeeping software essentially does one thing. It store data. Data is information about your business. Customer names, addresses, products, orders, invoices … all are examples of data. So for a small business software to work efficiently it should be able to store data efficiently. Not only that, it should also be able to modify and retrieve data efficiently when you need it. After all what is the use of a black box software that cannot provide you the data when you need it. You still with me? Good.There are two ways to store data.
Flat file
Relational
Flat file method uses flat text files, much like notepad files, to store data. It is old and archaic.The reason: it cannot hold any relationships among data entities. e.g. you want to store customers name and their invoices. You know that one customer can have many invoices. So to store customers and their invoices you will have to repeat customer name each time you store an invoice. Just like below.customer1 — invoice1customer1 — invoice2Problem with this approach is that you have to repeat the customer name every time you want to store an invoice. This is not efficient.Relational method uses relationships to store data. It is more efficient. Look at the same example that uses relational method. It uses customer name only once.customer1– invoice1– invoice2Elegant isn’t it? You bet. It is much cleaner, more efficient and easier to read. If you are still with me we are almost done. The whole point of the above song and dance was to show you that relational storage method is superior to flat file storage method. It should be an important factor to consider when you buy your small business computer software. Now, there are five major small business accounting / bookkeeping software.Quickbooks from Intuit , Simply Accounting, Peachtree (again from Intuit), Sage and Microsoft Small Business Accounting Software. Agreed?Now the bombshell. None of these small business software use relational storage method! Can you imagine? Wait there is more. All these are propriety software written by the big companies who use large scale ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software that runs on unix (not windows or mac) and uses relational database (relational storage method) to run their own businesses. Did you get what I just said. Let me rephrase. All these so called best small business software companies DO NOT USE THEIR OWN SOFTWARE. They use relational storage software, but they sell you non relational storage software in the name of small business software. The reason? Relation storage method is very expensive. Well not any more!