Do you want to discover your passion and turn it into an ethical online home based business? If you do, the internet makes it easier than ever to reach your target market. This article will explore steps you can take to build an online business around your passion.Here are seven essential steps for building your online home based business around your passions:1. Discover what you are passionate about. Find something that has meaning for you. You don’t have to find your passion to do something you love. I have found that people who aren’t interested in what they are doing, give up at the first obstacle they encounter.A technique I recommend is called the elimination technique. First, you write down all your interests and what you enjoy doing. Be sure to write everything down without censoring.Second, eliminate anything that doesn’t make much sense and arrive at a short list. Third, compare what’s left and decide on which one means the most to you.As an example, let’s say your short list consists of online home based business, personal development and real estate. Compare personal development to online home based business. Then I compared real estate to online home based business. The winner for me was online home based business.If you can’t use this elimination technique to arrive at just one, no problem. Perhaps, you can blend together your passions to create something valuable and unique.2. Determine the viability of turning your passion into a business. Find out if anyone is doing what you want to do. Competition means that people are making money. Look at what is working and what is not working, and determine your strategy for standing out. Ask for advice or find a mentor or coach.3. Focus on who you can help, why they should listen to you, and what you help them with. Everyone has a different set of problems, and you need to focus on a specific set of problems to be effective. This enables you to speak to customers in language they understand. The “why” tells them why they can trust you to know what you are talking about.4. Use a blogging platform. Blogging is one of the most effective ways of getting the word out about your business, if you know what you are doing. Blogs are excellent at attracting customers. You will need to build an email list to turn visitors into prospects who want what you offer.5. Give your readers what they want by asking, interviewing and researching. Look at their comments and emails, and ask them about what they are struggling with. Get into their minds. You need to help them come closer to what they want. The readers have problems, and they need solutions to those problems. If you listen to what your readers are saying, you will know what to write about.6. What are you going to sell? If you aren’t selling something, you don’t have a business. If you choose to create an information product or offer coaching or consulting, the focus has to be on who you are serving. Perhaps you can create an audio course, tele-seminar series, small e-book, or audio course. Once you listen to your readers and create a product to solve their problems, chances are that the product will sell well. Just keep the spotlight on your readers.Most importantly, take action. Create it and get feedback. Then improve it.7. “Feel the fear, but just do it anyway.” Yes, we’ve all heard that before. The fear is a sign that you are on the right track. Just decide whether you will give into the fear or not. Pushing the fear away doesn’t work. At least, it hasn’t worked for me. What does work is accepting the fear.Try this method that I learned from a coach: Observe the fear without judging or trying to figure it out. Then welcome it. Accept it. Let it be there. Take action anyway.If you are afraid of failing, understand that you are going to fail lots of times as you build your own business. The goal is to learn from your failures.Starting an online home based business is not easy. Get ready to put in the hours and work hard if you want to be successful. Building a business based on your passions will make it easier to stick it out when it gets tough. The steps above will help you turn your passions into a profitable online home based business.
Differences in the Types of Auctions That Take Place Around the World
Auctions are those events where properties or goods are sold to the highest bidder. Auctions are mostly public events, where bidders make a series of bids and purchase a particular item for a high price. During auctions, bidders decide the price of an item rather than the seller. It depends on bidders to decide the amount they would want to pay for a specific item. During an auction, a bid is a proof of a legal binding. Bidders agree to pay the amount that they have bid. In a high profile auction, bidders may have to pay a deposit in escrow accounts or give a proof that they can pay for those items.
Types of Auctions:
Different types of auctions take place around the world. Below mentioned are some types of auctions:
1. English auction:
This is a basic type of auction. In this type, people can see the item and then start bidding. Bidders slowly raise the value of their bid until everyone gives up. The highest bidder is the winner. An auctioneer manages an auction, keeps records of the on going bid and decides the winner. Sometimes, the seller will quote a minimum amount for an item to the auctioneer, below which the auctioneer cannot sell that item.
2. Dutch auction:
In this type, the auctioneer sets a particular price and then gradually lowers the price. People in public will start bidding and later decide which prices are suitable for the item. A seller may use this type of auction to sell large quantities of same products to the public. For instance, a seller may want to sell a large amount of hay and will thus, decide to sell this hay to people for the same amount, once a reasonable price is decided.
3. Silent auction:
In this type, the bidders in public will present their bids in a sealed format. These sealed bids open at the same time and bidder with the highest bid wins. There could be a modification in this type of auction. The bidders are allotted a specific period to bid. They can roam in a room displaying the items, and write their bids on an associated sheet of paper. The bidders are allowed to see bids of other bidders and can choose a higher price for an item. At the end of the allotted time, bidder with the highest bid is the winner.
Examples of Auctions:
Auctions can be of two types either public or private. Sellers may trade any kind of items in both types of auctions. Some areas where auctions take place are:
1. Antique auction: An antique auction consists of a trade opportunity as well as provides entertainment.
2. Collectable auction: In a collectable auction, the seller may put up collectables like coins, vintage cars, luxury, stamps, real estate, and luxury for sale.
3. Wine auction: In wine auction, bidders can bid for rare wine, which may not be available in retail wine shops.
4. Horse auction: Bidders can bid for young horses of the best breed.
5. Livestock auction: In livestock auction, bidders can buy pigs, sheep, cattle, and other livestock.
The other examples of auctions may not be public. These auctions are for bidders from corporate levels. Some examples of private auctions are:
1. Timber auction
2. Spectrum auction
3. Electricity auction
4. Debit auction
5. Environmental auction
6. Auto auction
7. Electronic market auction
8. Sales of business auction
Bidders in an auction need to examine the items displayed and decide an appropriate price for an item. Thus, auctions help buyers in getting the best deals and in gaining better profits for sellers.
How To Discover Your PERFECT Home Based Business – The 1st Of 7 Keys – A Profitable Business
This is the first in a series of seven articles that tell you how to sift through all the home business opportunities you hear about every day, and find the PERFECT home based business for you.
Are you ready to start making some real money in your own home business without working 60 hours per week? Are you ready to stop throwing your money down the “home business opportunity rat hole”?
Read on and I’ll show you how to test every home based business opportunity to make sure it fits the definition of The PERFECT Home Business, before you invest your time and money. Then, focus on the one that fits the best, and make it a success.
Each letter in the word “P.E.R.F.E.C.T.” stands for one of the 7 keys to finding the perfect home based business. Each key is something your home based business opportunity MUST have in order for you to enjoy the financial freedom and lifestyle you want.
What makes an opportunity P.E.R.F.E.C.T.? The “P” in PERFECT stands for “Profitable”. If your business isn’t profitable, why do it? If it isn’t highly profitable, you won’t be able to earn enough to make it worth your time, or you won’t be able to grow your business by reinvesting your profits back into the business.
“Profitable” means:
• High gross profit margin (preferably greater than 65%) and net profits of 20% of sales or better before taxes.
If you sell something for $1.00 and it costs you $.50, your gross profit margin is 50%. That’s about the profit margin most retail stores get. You need to do better than that to survive and thrive in your home business.
All of your other expenses such as advertising, overhead, and so on, have to come out of your gross profit before you have any “net profit”. If you sell something for $1.00 and the costs of your product, including all of your other expenses, add up to $.90, you only have ten cents per dollar in net profit (that’s a 10% net profit).
So, for example, if you want to earn $50,000 per year from home with a 10% net profit, you would have to sell $500,000 worth of your product. Wow, that’s a lot of product. Wouldn’t it be better to only have to sell $250,000 worth of product, or even less, to earn your $50,000 income goal?
That’s why you need a business with at least 20% net profit. And, if you really could sell $500,000 worth of products, wouldn’t it be better to have 20% net profit and earn $100,000 per year on that $500,000 in sales? The PERFECT home based business may even enable you to earn up to 40%-60% or more (sometimes more than 90%) in net profit. Yes, really.
At 90% net profit you would only have to sell $55,556 worth of product to earn your $50,000 income. That’s my kind of home business!
• “Profitable” also means a net profit (your “salary”) before taxes of at least $50,000 per year. And $100,000 or more per year would be more like it (unless your goal is to supplement your income to the tune of $500 to $1,000 per month. But, would you turn down $50,000 per year if you didn’t have to work any harder than you did to earn $10,000 per year?).
Your goals may be different than mine and you may be satisfied with lower profits. But, I believe you need to set your goals high, yet at a reasonable level. Then, even if you fall a little short, you will still be very successful.
• Low overhead (less than 5% of sales). Overhead is all the “fixed expenses” of running your business such as computers, printers, other equipment, furniture, office supplies, and office space rental costs.
A home based business is ideal for keeping overhead low, but you still have to be careful to minimize the space needed, the cost for utilities, and the equipment needed to run your business. Don’t go hog wild buying an expensive desk and file cabinets with your first profits. Instead, reinvest those profits in your business and keep your overhead low. You’ll be glad you did.
• Low labor content for manufacturing, assembly, or shipment of the product(s).
You don’t want to spend all of your time assembling and shipping something you sell. Most of your time should be spent on marketing and growing your sales and profits. The PERFECT home business enables you to sell products that involve little or no labor cost to make them or ship them.
• A high average order. Believe it or not, it takes as much effort to sell a $5.00 product as it does to sell a $50.00 product or a $500.00 product, maybe even more effort. So, the PERFECT home based business offers products with a high perceived value and a price well above $20.00. The exception is when you want to sell a low priced product, or even give something away, just to get customers added to your e-mail list so you can sell them other more expensive items later.
• Low initial investment required (less than $1,000 preferred). I don’t know about you, but business opportunities that require $5,000, or $25,000, or more to start scare me a little, unless the return is well worth the risk. There aren’t too many people that even have that kind of money to invest in a business. Why not find the PERFECT home based business that only requires $1,000 or less to get started, perhaps even a few hundred dollars?
• Small inventory with rapid turnover, or no inventory required. Imagine your garage or basement stacked from floor to ceiling with products waiting for someone to buy them. Yuk! Much better to fill each order as it is received without having any inventory in your home, or at least a very small inventory. The PERFECT home based business will allow you to do that.
• Repeat or backend sales potential. One of the highest marketing costs is the cost of getting a new customer. If that customer buys your product over and over from you (repeat sales of a consumable product or a monthly membership fee, for example), or if the new customer buys other products from you later (backend sales), you can dramatically increase your sales and profit. This is a very important ingredient in the recipe for a successful home based business.