I’m not promising you a thousand dollars a day. But I do promise that there’s a way to make money from your home without pouring your entire life savings into bone density scanners.

Learn What “Marketing” Means

The first step is to learn how to market yourself. No one understands value until you teach them what that value is. “I need work because we need groceries this week” has two problems with it: “I” and “we.” The first rule of marketing is to learn to think in second person: “You need this service, because your life will become infinitely easier with it. You can do such and such, and this is how. For something that amazing, it will only cost you $X.”

Repeat Customers and Word of Mouth

The second step is so important, I might even consider it step #1 ½: Start small. That’s right, take it easy. Whether you’re going the acai berry route, writing code for websites, or building furniture, don’t go all out by quitting your job right out of the gate.

Get a couple of customers or clients, and give them the most amazing work you have ever performed. Give them more than what they paid for. Don’t hold back on them—you may even lose money or spend far more time that you normally would, but it is worth it. They will hire you again, and they will tell their friends. Repeat customers are a steady stream of revenue, and word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing available. (This is about the time you should consider social media.)

Do Your Research

It’s very exciting to pull in several hundred to even several thousand dollars a month on the side; but it’s not time to quit just yet. Research the demand in your area. Start running numbers. If you were to go full time, would you need to hire more help? Do you have trade secrets that you would have to be careful with? Can you continue working from home, or would you need to buy a brick-and-mortar? What is the overhead that you have to consider?

The question that I did not answer when I first started was taxes—untaxed income is absolutely wonderful . . . right up until April of next year.

Go for It

You can ask the questions to convince yourself right out of the entire deal. But I dare you to take a risk, make an informed decision, and do a job where you hire yourself. If you ever decide that you’re done and want to go back to a 9 – 5 behind a desk, consider the amazing experience you’ve had: marketing director, quality assurance specialist, vice president of sales, chief executive officer, human resources, and chief financial officer.

Who knew that an acai berry could become so fulfilling?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Author. Guru. Content manager. Aficionado. Nerd. Freelance writer. Call him what you will, Jared Heath has a few very important passions: his wife, his writing, and his marketing. Take it from a guy who has been there—taking the risk is often worth it.

Thought I’d share some things that I see/notice people doing when thinking/talking about business ventures that might be helpful advice for some people here…

The first thing I’d have to say is to do something you enjoy. Too many people try to be followers when they see someone else making money at something. They’ll try to jump into markets they don’t know about and probably don’t enjoy because they see others having success there.(I used to do this a lot) Your thought process shouldn’t be, “this person is successful, how can I make money like them,” it should be “here’s what I like doing, how can I find a way to turn this idea/passion of mine into a successful business like this person has done with theirs.”

Don’t go into business trying to sell X amount of Y to try and make $Z. Too many people go in with the mindset of, “if I can just sell 5,000 of this product I should make $250,000.” When you ask about the demand/the market their response is, “well, even if they only buy 1,000 I’ll still make $50,000.” That’s thinking backwards about it. You can’t go into a business thinking about what it’s going to do for you, you need to first go into it thinking about what it’s going to do for the potential customers, and if after your due diligence you decide the demand is there for what you have in mind, then you can figure out your strategy for how you can make these sales. It’s at this point after you’ve done that where you can start crunching numbers to look at the potential of profit for your business venture.

When people want to start a business they often don’t know where to start. In my opinion there’s only two steps you need:

Step 1: How can you create something of value better than what’s out there?

Step 2: When you do that, how can you reach your potential audience?

It’s really that simple if you think about it. All the details where people want to think about complex business plans and all that is kind of pointless since if you don’t have 1 and 2 you don’t know if you have a business yet. Worry about the details later, until then it’s just noise.

Due diligence: Most of the times newbies aren’t doing due diligence. People who’ve had success did crazy amounts of due diligence. Plenty of things they did due diligence on they didn’t pursue, because after the due diligence they figured out that it wasn’t worth pursuing. Oftentimes people just sit around wondering if they should do something without looking into it. By looking into it I don’t mean asking a couple people if they should do it. I mean, really digging in and finding out whatever you need to know for you to figure out if it’s worth your while. Before I took a ‘leave of absence’ from entrepreneurism to play poker, and plenty of times during my poker playing, I can remember staying up through the entire night many times trying to learn everything I could about a certain business I was interested in. One example of one way back in the day was candy and vending machines. I remember thinking it might be a good way to get cashflow with very little investment since I didn’t have much money at the time, and I think within 1-2 days I’d read almost every single post ever made on candy/vending machines, read articles from authority people in the business, been in contact with a couple big vending/candy people who were willing to spend a few minutes talking to a kid about their business, knew what all sorts of different equipment would cost to get going and who to get it from, why I shouldn’t buy new, etc… By the end of a couple days I knew I didn’t want to be in the business because it was a ton of work for not the type of money I was aiming for. But without the due diligence I wouldn’t have known that. People don’t hear of the due diligence on things that don’t happen, so when someone starts a company and people see them doing well they think, “man, they’re lucky.” Often businesses don’t end up being worth the time to pursue but if you didn’t look into them you’d miss the one where you’d get “lucky” since you decided random ideas weren’t worth looking into.

Change your thinking: If you do things the way other people do them, you can only be as good as those people. Think outside the box. Stop thinking a-b-c. A crazy idea is way better than thinking along the same lines as everyone else. Think about it. You’ve got all sorts of people thinking the same way. Then you’ve got a few people thinking different and willing to be a little ‘out there’ with their ideas. Where do you think there’s more money to be made?

Ideas: Ideas only mean a little. Implementation is where it’s at. I didn’t understand that for a long time, but it’s real important. I don’t talk about a lot of my ideas on the forum, but as anyone who talks to me much off the forums can probably say about me is I love coming up with ideas/thinking of doing things in ways people just aren’t doing them that should drastically change the end result. When I was younger I’d have a ton of ideas and just never do anything with them because I didn’t know what to do. You need the two to work together, and you can improve both by practice. I didn’t know how to implement things because I wasn’t practicing implementation with my ideas. I always worked on coming up with crazy ideas and I’d put money up against anyone in an “idea contest”, but without ever implementing an idea it’s basically worthless. The same with people who know an industry and would know how to implement it/have the contacts or whatever to make it happen. They say, “well, if only i had an idea.” Chances are you haven’t practiced being creative with ideas. Both ideas, and implementation of ideas are ‘practiceable’ in my opinion. You’re not just going to wake up tomorrow and all the sudden be an “idea guy.”

Variance: You’ll have variance being an entrepreneur; get used to it. If you had a weighted coin and you’d win more than half the times you flipped, and someone offered to flip you for money for as long as you wanted, you’d never stop flipping the coin, and you’d end up being very rich. The thing with being an entrepreneur, some people take one or two “flips” and give up because the first couple didn’t go the way they wanted. Go in understanding the variance, and you’ll be mentally prepared. The funny thing in the game of entrepreneurism is the more you flip the coin, the more weighted the coin becomes in your favor since you’re learning as you play.

A lot of people get gun shy about pulling the trigger on deals that could end up being very profitable for them because of the variance involved. A lot of people don’t break it down logically because they become emotionally involved.

Example:

Person A says, “I can invest $20,000 and if it goes well I’ll make $100,000, but if it doesn’t I’ll lose $20,000. $20,000 is a lot.”

Person B, who understands equity realizes that they only have to be successful over 20% of the time to have the deal be profitable, and that a lot of times if it doesn’t work out like they had hoped, oftentimes they’ll return some of their initial investment anyways.” So if they did their due diligence and thought they’d be successful 50% of the time, they’d pull the trigger since they know their equity in the deal is at least a $30,000 profit. Person A would have never got that far because they were thinking emotionally and not logically.

If they pull the trigger on this deal and lose, they lose $20,000. If they pull the trigger on the next deal like this, and succeed, they make $100,000. They’ve made $60,000($30k/deal) because they were willing to “risk” it. If you just break down the numbers it’s really not risky, just math.

Start up money/cashflow: You don’t need a bunch of start up capital to start a business. Be creative. With the ease of starting something on the internet, “needing” a bunch of money is crazy talk. For the people who want to start cashflow businesses, I don’t know how people could ever consider saving up a $30,000 downpayment for 1 house so they can hopefully have $200/month in cashflow, where on the internet with $300 you could create the same $200/month cashflow.(You could also make $20,000/month) I didn’t know much about internet businesses and still have lots to learn, but if I could go backwards I’d have started a bunch of internet businesses by now because you can try ideas with barely any risk, and the potential is insane. The potential for a house is maybe you can charge an extra $25 on rent next year. Ceiling is insanely low. Get into things with high ceilings, and realize that a requirement for doing so isn’t high start up funds.

Time is money: Don’t spend a bunch of energy trying to program a $300 site if you’re not a programmer. Outsource it. By the time you programmed it you could have been testing 3 or 4 of your ideas. Ideas and your ability to market your ideas are how you make the money. Why do you buy your furniture from the store? Why didn’t you just make it yourself and save money? I know that’s an extreme example, because obviously the answer is it’d take you a long time to make it yourself where you could have been doing things that would have been more beneficial for you and someone else can do it better. Start to view your business ventures the same way.

This wasn’t in any specific order just wrote things as they came to mind. Just some advice I thought might be helpful.

[Source]

To get the most out of the situation, you need to do a few things. Specifically…

1. Create a schedule that you abide by. This means getting up at the same time each day, doing certain things at certain times, and basically living by a routine. It will be a form of structure that will help you be productive.
2. Take breaks at specific times. You need to get out of your chair and do something different at least every two or three hours. Why? One reason is because home workers tend to overwork – and you need to break up your day so your mind doesn’t get burned out.
3. Work out. Yes, you need to do this. If not, you’ll gain weight and have less energy. I have a punching bag (a heavy bag), a weight bench, and some dumbbells. I regularly work out on the heavy bag, and usually do some weight lifting as well. Sometimes I jog in the afternoon during lunch (just a half mile). When I get back, I feel good about myself and my mind always feels more sharp and alive. I rarely see anyone else jogging at that  time of day – and I always think of how fortunate I am that I’m not stuck in an office somewhere.
4. Eat healthy snacks. Yes, I am serious about maintaining health – it’s important! So you need to keep some good things at home to snack on. One thing I would suggest is green tea. If you can find it, get the kind with ginseng – it is beneficial for your brain as opposed to loading up on caffeine all day. Also, have dried fruit, nuts, and chopped up celery and carrots. You can eat those and feel full…and not feel greasy afterwards. Healthy snack will give you energy and help you do better work.
5. Quit when its time to quit. Don’t overwork yourself, or you’ll end up being less effective in the end. Stop when it’s time, and make a list of what needs to get done for the next day. You’ll have the list waiting for you in the morning, and you can forget about what needs to get done until then.

So you need to charge more money. (I already mentioned charging more money in fact – but never explained how.)

It’s almost a given that people need to be willing to pay you more, as well. That much is obvious. And that’s the real question here: how to get your customers to pay you more – willingly.

It’s simple. Not easy, mind you – but simple. You need to do work that demands more money. Your finished work needs to say to the customer, “Hey man – I’m awesome. You know it. And I ain’t cheap.”

I know someone who embodies this. He’s a general contractor, and presently he’s not only very much in-demand in my city but he’s also not “cheap”. If you’re a penny-pincher, and you’re watching your budget, and you would do the work yourself if you only knew how…well, he’s not the guy to call. Because he charges more money than other contractors that purport to do the same work.

But remember: he has no shortage of work. And, you will not find him in the phone book or listed in the paper under “Handymen”. He hands out cards to his clients…and they tend to pass those on to their friends. (Their rich friends!)

My contractor friend can do this because he made a decision a few years after starting his business: he would only do top-notch work, and insist on using high-quality materials. He did that, and met resistance from customers. He had only a few jobs at first, but his attention to detail and pride in his work paid off, because he started getting business from people who saw his handiwork in their friends’ homes.

Now, years later, he’s built up a reputation as an honest contractor who does the best work in the city. And he can charge what he’s worth.

So how do you charge more? Do work that’s worth more and demand what you’re worth. It will come.

It was probably two years ago when something happened that taught me this lesson; I supposed I would have agreed with you (before that) had you told me: “Shawn, never do things that are under-handed. Playing dirty is unacceptable.” I would have said, “Yeah, you’re right; ok.” But I’d never had to experience what that really meant. Until one day, at my new job.

Someone, somewhere, a person who wouldn’t reveal themself, was harrasing my boss and the employees. We were receiving mocking, critical emails about our websites. We saw intrusion attempts on other sites we ran. We looked for evidence, and we found a suspect in a previous unhappy (“disgruntled” I think is the word most often used for these people) employee who was fired.

I won’t go into how we knew…but we knew. Too many things pointed to this specific person as the culprit. This person even emailed one of our people to ask how a website was doing, as if a website needed checking-up on. That website was the same one we found compromised a short time previously.

So naturally, I was incensed (“pissed” is a word often used for how I felt). I looked up this person, and found a blog entry that attacked my place of employment and, on a personal level, attacked my employer. So…I decided to go black hat on ‘em. I spammed the search engine results every which way, and knocked him out of the top ten for his own name.

I thought it was kinda funny. My coworkers couldn’t believe it. My office had no idea such a thing was even possible. And then I felt bad about doing it.

It turned out that the “victim” (depending on how you define or look at the situation) also noticed, and through some luck of his own found out who I was. I let it go, having pulled the brakes on the industrial-strength torrent of new search results I had introduced a few days previous, and the thing corrected itself.

He had his search results back for his name in a few days.

But all did not end well: I ended up pissing off (even further) someone who had shown evidence already that he was at least a bit unstable and/or vengeful, and I had sullied my own reputation. I had made an enemy, whereas I previously had zero enemies. I’d done something that made me feel awful – regardless of who knew or didn’t know about it.

It wasn’t worth it, from any angle.

Thinking about this recently, it came to me as a clear lesson: never play dirty. It’s a simple rule, but until you’ve learned it firsthand…you might not really understand it. In other words, there are reasons for this rule.

In business, this is abundantly evident. I saw how it played out in the eco-system of my city and its tiny website community and the people who are a part of it. And I learned why we shouldn’t do things like that. Good thing, too – because “business” is just a small version of life. The way we run our businesses and work with others is a microcosm – a small version – of the way we live. You can’t separate the “business you” from the “real” you by very much.

Are you a “dirty” person? Hopefully not. No one wants to be labeled that way. If you’re not, then do business in a clean fashion. It’s a reflection of who you really are.

Never play dirty.