Home Wealth Project

“Make thousands stuffing envelopes! Unique work at home business opportunity!”

stuffing envelopes

It’s statements like these which often lead to bogus business opportunities that have spurred the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into taking action to protect people who think they’re buying a legitimate business. Called the Business Opportunity Rule, this new requirement states that any individual who sells a business opportunity to another is required to disclose more information than in the past.

A business opportunity is simply a comprehensive business investment that lets the buyer start a business immediately. It’s “out of the box,” so to speak. It’s different from a franchise. A franchise is a business opportunity, but not all business opportunities are franchises, says Joel Libava, author of Become a Franchise Owner.

“Sometimes, people confuse a franchise business opportunity with a business opportunity, or bizopp. The major differences include upfront costs, (which are almost always significantly lower with a bizopp) support, and the rules. In a business opportunity, there aren’t that many rules to follow as an owner. Business opportunities are generally looser in nature; you buy the opportunity, learn how to run the business, and then you’re pretty much free to market it and run it as you wish.”

What’s Required if You SELL Business Opportunities to Others

Anyone selling a business opportunity or bizopp must now provide information on a one-page disclosure document (PDF file) at least seven days before the buyer pays money or signs a document. The seller must state the following:

Whether legal action has ever been taken against the seller
Whether there is a cancellation or refund policy for the business transaction
Any earnings claims that the buyer will earn a specific amount of money through the bizopp
References for the seller

Because of the rising number of business opportunity scams over the past few years, the FTC wanted to step up the measures taken to ensure the safety of buyers.

If you’re selling a business opportunity, understand that this new rule is meant to help you and the buyer perform a smooth transaction. Here are some tips to minimize the stress on your end:

Never make unsubstantiated claims. Be prepared to back up any income potential your business opportunity can provide.
Offer a refund or cancellation policy. It’s good business. Outline what the stipulations are for the buyer to be able to cancel.
Stay in contact with your buyers so you can use them for references down the road. Even if you don’t promise support in your contract, it’s good customer service to be available should your buyer have questions.

What You Need to Know if You Are BUYING a Business Opportunity

If you are buying or considering buying a business opportunity, then know that the Business Opportunity Rule is to designed to help protect you from potentially bogus deals. Armed with the information the seller is required to give you, you should be able to get a better sense of whether a deal is legitimate. If it’s not, you now have ammunition for legal proceedings.

Pay attention to the earnings claims. In the past, companies have claimed that you could retire off of what you make stuffing envelopes, or make thousands of dollars off a work from home opp. These claims must now be substantiated in writing, and the buyer must list how much other buyers have made, and where they were located (since results may vary depending on many factors).

“The revised Business Opportunity Rule is long overdue,” says Libava, “The most positive change has to do with research. Business opportunity buyers will now have access to a list provided by the business opportunity seller of at least 10 people who have bought their business opportunity. And, if fewer than 10 people have bought the business opportunity, every person that’s bought it must be listed.”

Libava says that buyers should know that they will have to sign a document stating that the buyer can share their personal contact information with future buyers.

Here are more tips to ensure you find a trustworthy business opportunity from the Business Opportunity blog:

Ensure that the seller has filled out the disclosure document thoroughly, and has provided supporting documents.
Contact the references the seller lists and ask questions about their experiences with the business opportunity.
Look for bizopps that illustrate how you’ll make the money, rather than drawing you in with promises of big financial rewards.

You can read the complete Business Opportunity Rule document on the FTC website. The Rule will go into effect March 1, 2012.

Envelopes Photo via Shutterstock

The FTC’s New Business Opportunity Rule: What It Means for You

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

business, FTC’s, Means, Opportunity, rule

The simple first rule of branding and marketing anything (even yourself)

Dec 17th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Marketing Tips

Not a secret, often overlooked:

“Keep your promises.”

If you say you’ll show up every day at 8 am, do so. Every day.

If you say your service is excellent, make it so.

If circumstances or priorities change, well then, invest to change them back. Or tell the truth, and mean it.

If traffic might be bad, plan for it.

Is there actually unusually heavy call volume? Really?

Want a bigger brand? Make bigger promises. And keep them.

View full post on Seth’s Blog

anything, Branding, Even, First, Marketing, rule, Simple, Yourself

The 10 Percent Rule for Backing Up Your Data

Sep 22nd

2 comments

Everyone wants their data to be protected, but not everyone puts in the legwork required to ensure their data is safe. Most people take the “set it and forget it” approach when really they should be following the 10 percent rule.

Set It and Forget It
There are three common mistakes that businesses make when backing up their data:

1. No testing: When businesses back up their data, many assume their data is there, faithfully waiting for them in the same condition in which it was left. The truth is backup is not a flawless process. Glitches occur and hardware fails. The only way to make sure that data is intact and that all systems are go is to routinely test the data you’re backing up. When you test your data, not only do you have peace of mind, but you also have the opportunity to catch a problem before it becomes a disaster.

2. No planning: No one thinks that a disaster is going to happen to them, but the reality is that unforeseen events do take place. A lot of businesses back their data up, but they spend little time thinking about the recovery process. The first step is to think about the recovery and work backwards from there.

3. Backing everything up: Not all data is created equal. If your house were on fire, would you run in to save a ballpoint pen? No, you would run in to make sure no one was in the house. It’s the same thing with data. If disaster strikes, you want to make sure you can access the most critical data immediately.

OK, so now you know what to avoid when protecting your data. What can and should you be doing? First, you must understand the 10 percent rule.

What is the 10 percent rule?
Only 10 percent of your data is critical.

That’s right. That means that 90 percent of your company data is mostly static. Does that mean that you don’t need to protect that 90 percent? Not at all. It means that you should prioritize. As noted above, not all data is created equal. If your systems encounter a widespread failure, you want to have a plan in place that recovers the most essential information right away. That way, business downtime is reduced. If you don’t prioritize your data, you’ll waste your time recovering non-critical data and your downtime could be much, much longer.

So what exactly does critical mean?
Critical varies from organization to organization, but if a file does not change within a certain amount of time, it should be moved into a retention vault. Only changing data should be considered critical.

While all data is arguably important, organizations need a structured or tiered approach to ensure critical applications and systems are operational first. Once these systems are running and accessible, the static, non-critical files can be restored.

The 10 Percent Rule for Backing Up Your Data

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

backing, Data, percent, rule

Affiliate Rule

May 26th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Outsourcing

A 52-week step-by-step guide to making automated income online with no products, no copywriting, no website, no customer service.
Affiliate Rule

Affiliate, rule

Small Business News: SEO Tools That Rule!

Apr 12th

7 comments

Search Engine Optimization or SEO, the process of improving your site in order to get more traffic via search engines like Google and Bing, is an important part of doing small business online these days. In fact, efforts to create sites and content that will be properly optimized for search engines and thus draw a wide audience have been undiminished by the so-called social media revolution with its emphasis on use of social sites like Facebook, Twitter and others to market content and drive traffic.

Happily, a wide variety of tools exist to help even the novice navigate the deep and sometimes stormy waters of SEO. Here are tools that can help you out in your efforts to develop a site that draws visitors and hopefully the customers you need for your small business online.

Resources

Search engine optimization tools. Aaron Wall’s toolkit is the gold standard. It has tools for do-it-yourselfers and SEO professionals alike. We call so many our favorites, it’s hard to know where to begin pointing them out. Try the “Keyword Suggestion Tool” — start with one keyword and it will help by suggesting others. The SEO Toolbar for Firefox is also outstanding — it gives you immediate access to details about any site you visit (including your own site or blog!). Quite a number of valuable tools are free. The “Premium” tools require a paid membership which also gives you access to training materials and the exclusive SEOBook Community where Aaron answers questions. SEOBook.com

SEO dashboard. With Raven Tools you get an impressive online dashboard to help you manage your Web sites, blogs and social media presence. Raven is set up as an online software service. You log in to perform SEO research, monitor your progress and get access to reports. You can even manage Twitter, Facebook and WordPress blogs all in one place from inside the Raven control panel, saving time. Our favorite features: it helps you track and analyze traffic from social sites such as Twitter and Facebook. We also like the Design Analyzer and Quality Analyzer tools that instantly analyze key elements of a website, including the impact of your design on SEO. Raven Tools

SEOmoz tools. SEOmoz also provides a variety of tools to improve your SEO. Our favorites include Open Site Explorer, which lets you check a domain to see up to 10,000 links to it — you can see where you’re getting visibility and compare with competitors. It also offers something called “mozRank” which shows how popular (in terms of links) a webpage is. (MozRank is also included in Raven Tools subscriptions.) Some tools are paid and some are free. SeoMoz

For Webmasters

Webmaster tools for running a website better. Liam Delahunty recently launched his webmaster tools. It includes time-savers, shortcuts and idea-generators for those managing blogs and websites. Our favorites: a bookmarklet that you add to your browser bar that allows you to do a one-click search of any blog you’re on to see if they accept guest posts. Need a good headline for an article? The Topical Brainstorming app generates ideas for blog post titles in seconds, just by plugging in a keyword. If you’re looking for simplicity and productivity tools to save time, you’ll find 50 tools here. Topical Brainstorming is currently free. Others require a subscription. Online Sales

Get listed for local search. Go ahead…see how your business is listed at Google, Yahoo, Bing and other local search engines. Simply plug in your business name and zip code, and this tool checks your listing status in under one minute. Ideal for businesses with local offices or stores. Also has educational resources to help you understand what to do to improve your presence among those searching for local businesses. Basic service is free, but also offers ancillary services you can purchase. GetListed.org

Grade your website or blog. HubSpot puts out some valuable tools that enable you to test and benchmark how you are doing online. Called “Grader” tools, there are grader tools for websites, blogs, press releases, and even book marketing for authors. You can also grade your social presence on Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. All are free. Outstanding tools for newbies. Grader.com

DIY

Do-it-yourself SEO. DIYSEO consists of tools designed for small businesses. Aimed at the do-it-yourself market, it is best for those who are still learning about SEO, who need step by step guidance. You get a dashboard suggesting activities. There’s a free report card for your website that uses smiley faces and grumpy faces to help you understand where you’re doing well and where you need improvement. DIYSEO.com

SEO checklists and activities guide. Another tool designed for do-it-yourselfers is Lotus Jump. It contains an online dashboard and checklists of activities to help you build backlinks and attract traffic. The focus here is on activities such as creating social profiles, answering questions on Q&A sites, using bookmarking sites, blog commenting to develop buzz, adding content at relevant sites, and submitting to key directories. Check out our review of this service. LotusJump.com

More Tools

Pay Per Click tools. If you do any pay-per-click advertising, such as with Google AdWords, you know how easy it is to waste money. These tools help you make the most of your advertising dollars. Among the tools are a calculator for ROI (return on investment) for your PPC ads. There’s also one for calculating whether CPM (banner ad) campaigns are profitable — and numerous others. Designed for marketers and online entrepreneurs who purchase search ads. PPC Blog

Majestic SEO. We’ve never used Majestic SEO, although we’ve heard of it, because it always seemed like a tool set for advanced SEO users, not small business owners. Luckily, there’s a recent review of one feature, the Majestic SEO Site Explorer. You’ll also find discount coupons contained in that review. If you’re a professional SEO or consider yourself advanced, check it out. Majestic SEO

Small Business News: SEO Tools That Rule!

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

business, News, rule, Small, Tools

The first rule of doing work that matters

Dec 21st

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Marketing Tips

Go to work on a regular basis.

Art is hard. Selling is hard. Writing is hard. Making a difference is hard.

When you’re doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out–this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it’s time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break.

Zig taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “hey, maybe I should check my email for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” If you do that, the lizard brain is quickly trained to use that escape hatch again and again.

Isaac Asimov wrote and published 400 (!) books using this technique.

The first five years of my solo business, when the struggle seemed neverending, I never missed a day, never took a nap. (I also committed to ending the day at a certain time and not working on the weekends. It cuts both ways.)

In short: show up.

View full post on Seth’s Blog

Doing, First, Matters, rule, work

Interview: The Davids of the Business World Rule the Goliaths

Dec 9th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in 2478

David Siteman Garland is a multimedia maven. He educates and inspires fellow entrepreneurs through RISE, his biweekly, entrepreneur-focused television show. Three times a week, David publishes articles and videos geared at helping you build your business. He hosts regular events and workshops. Most recently, he has published a book called Smarter Faster Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business.

Note that David, who seems to be blessed with insatiable energy, built this all from scratch not too long ago. His new book lives up to its name by indeed being fluff-free and non-boring, not to mention practical. I caught up with the ever-enthusiastic David to talk more about his book, as well as glean some tips on being smart, faster, and cheaper–and just plain better–at marketing.

What are three of the main ways anyone can market smarter, faster and cheaper?

#1: Become a media source: The secret sauce is to promote educational, entertaining and inspiring media that you create as opposed to product pushing. It might be a fascinating blog or unique web show centered around a topic you are passionate about. Because content is what spreads. Product and marketing messages don’t.

#2: Focus on building a community: A mistake folks often make is they get the whole idea of creating content, but then spend all their time creating. The key is what you do after you create the content to build a following. It means getting into the social media trenches, meeting people one-on-one, forming relationships with other content creators in your niche (bloggers, etc.). I use the 20/80 rule. 20% of time allotted to create great content. 80% spent marketing, promoting and relationship building.

#3: Taking it offline. The smarter, faster, cheaper approach is all about becoming a resource on a particular subject. A go-to person. That subject might be dogs, mom’s in Missouri or boxing. Often overlooked is building your brand offline. This might be positioning yourself as a speaker or bringing like-minded people together in the “real world” for dinner or drinks. The best online networking happens offline.

What’s the hardest part about creating a successful (smarter/faster/cheaper) campaign? The easiest part?

The hardest point, somewhat ironically, is patience. Things can definitely be done faster. The ability to create content and publish it to the world is super quick. Word of mouth is at lighting speed. But, it takes time to build a following of people who know, like and trust you. Sort of like a weight loss program, you don’t see results right away. But consistent effort, over time, wins.

The easiest part to deal with is cost. Nothing mentioned in the book costs an arm and a leg or just an arm. The cost is time and effort as opposed to big marketing dollars.

You mention old, stuffy marketing/PR methods as being outdated. What’s one method that still works?

Getting into traditional media sources as a quoted expert is still valuable. However, I think the true value comes from once those blurbs or clips are posted online. If you tell folks, “Tune in to the Sunday morning news. I’ll be on talking about kittens!” many folks will probably miss it. But once that links up online, it lives forever and people can tune in later. Traditional media isn’t bad by any respects and you use those shiny “as seen on” logos on your website.

Last year, you made 10 big marketing predictions for 2010. Did they come true?

Great question. I’d say most are definitely coming true as we speak. I should have maybe titled it “10 Big Marketing Predictions For The Next 10 Years” as things sometimes move a bit slowly. But, I was going through that post the other day and could come up with tons of examples that happened over the past year that fits in with many of them. One key trend we are going to see way into the future is the humanization of business. In little and big ways. The story hasn’t changed: We do business with people we know, like and trust…not faceless logos.

Sounds like you’ve been working on this book for about 3 years. What was the hardest part of writing this book?

It has DEFINITELY been a fun work in progress. Over the past three years I’ve spent my time interviewing over 200 of the world’s most creative entrepreneurs and also building my brand using the principles in the book which has taken my web show RISE from 0 to over 100,000 a month in less than two years. The hardest part of writing the book was selecting among all the great stories over the past few years. I wanted the book to not be filled with any fluffy theory, but instead focus on learning and takeaways from people actually walking the walk.

What is the most important thing you want readers to take away from your book?

The key concept I want people to take away is that now the Davids of the business world (no pun intended) have the advantage over the goliaths. You can become a trusted resource and leader as opposed to a sketchy product pusher. The Internet has caused a massive shift in marketing and promoting. Those that jump on it now are going to be VERY happy in the upcoming years and decades.

Official bio: Entrepreneur, mediapreneur, marketer, speaker and author David Siteman Garland is the Founder of The Rise To The Top, The #1 Non-Boring Resource For Building Your Business Smarter, Faster, Cheaper and author of Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business (Wiley Publishing). He writes/hosts RISE, a web show for entrepreneurs, forward-thinkers, business owners and marketers, as well as The Rise To The Top TV show on ABC. In less than two years, David has attracted a loyal community of 100,000+ through the power of relationships and without spending a cent on traditional advertising.

View full post on Business Pundit

business, Davids, Goliaths, interview, rule, world

Women Owned Small Business Rule: Finally Official

Oct 13th

1 comment

It’s been a long time coming, but the SBA has announced the finalization of its Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) rule to expand federal contracting opportunities for women.

In a previous article written in March titled, “SBA Proposes New Rule to Expand Federal Contracting Opportunities for Women“ I wrote about the WOSB rule, proposed in February 2010, but this final rule has been far, far longer in coming. Congress first authorized creation of a rule to increase federal contracting opportunities for WOSBs in 2000. Since then, the SBA has been analyzing the market and proposing various draft rules. During the Bush Administration, women’s business advocates were up in arms over a draft that identified only four industries where WOSBs were underrepresented in federal contracting. To get over some of the controversy, the Obama Administration used all prior studies, questions and public comments to draft a completely new rule.

The final rule identifies 83 industries in which WOSBs are underrepresented or substantially underrepresented in the federal contract marketplace. In addition to opening up more opportunities for WOSBs, the rule is also another tool to help achieve the statutory goal that 5 percent of federal contracting dollars go to women-owned small businesses.

The final rule removes a requirement included in a prior proposed version that federal agencies couldn’t participate in the program unless each agency certified it had discriminated against women-owned small businesses in the past.

It also established a $5 million contract ceiling for manufacturing businesses and a $3 million ceiling for other goods and services. (This amendment was part of the Fairness in Women-Owned Small Business Contracting Act of 2010, introduced by U.S. Senators Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), which I wrote about in more detail in an article titled, “New Act Introduced in Senate to Help Women Business Owners Get More Federal Contracts” in July.)

In announcing the final rule SBA Administrator Karen Mills said:

“Women-owned businesses are one of the fastest growing sectors of our nation’s economy, and even during the economic downturn of the last few years, have been one of the key job creation engines in communities across the country. Despite their growth and the fact that women lead some of the strongest and most innovative companies, women-owned firms continue to be under-represented in the federal contracting marketplace. This rule will be a platform for changing that by providing greater opportunities for women-owned small businesses to compete for and win federal contracts.”

What’s next? The SBA and the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council will begin a 120-day implementation of the WOSB contracting program, including building the technology and program infrastructure to support the certification process and ongoing oversight. The agency expects federal agencies’ contracting officers will be able to start making contracts available to WOSBs under the program in early 2011.

For more specifics of the final rule, read the SBA News Release (PDF) titled, “SBA Releases Final Woman-Owned Small Business Rule to Expand Access to Federal Contracting Opportunities.”