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Featured Home Business Articles

Home Business Opportunities with SFI
SFI is a proven business program currently working for thousands of men and women all over the world. Since 1985, SFI's parent company (Carson Services Inc.) has been helping entrepreneurs--just like you--create profitable businesses and achieve their ...

Home Business Tips Newsletter
Home Business Tips NewsletterAuthor: Carolyn Rowley Business no longer offers their employees the stability and benefits that they once did, which has led to the “Work at Home-Business Boom.”The main areas people look at are the Internet and Network ...

The #1 Reason More People Don't Succeed in Their Home Business
Most of you know of the potential of the home-based business industry. Most of you know that there is significant money to be made and that many people are making huge incomes. You know that this is the best way to create a second source of income, and ...




Building Up Your Home-based Business Web Presence
 
It is not easy to establish your presence on the web. Don't let anyboday tell you otherwise. Be prepared for long days and nights while you are building your Business on the internet because you have to cultivate relationships with your customers through a good reputation, and this doesn't happen in one day. If you have a satisfied customer, they usually will buy over and over again. It all starts with your website. There are several steps you must remember. First of all, start with a clean design and make your site as easy as possible to navigate. One method for doing this is to feature a Sitemap. Google even has a webmaster section on their site where they discuss the benefits of having a sitemap. Make it simple to move around your site from each individual page. Ease of navigation is key because if your customers get too confused they just won't buy from you, plain and simple. Also consider that when you are building your site to keep graphics to an absolute minimum so that your site loads as quickly as possible. Research studies show that visitors will not tolerate slow-loading websites. There is just too much competition out there for them to waste their valuable time. The slower loading the site is, the swifter the visitor is out the door. When you go to review your web statistics to see how long your visitors remained on your site you may be astonished to find out that they have hit the back button on their browser shortly after entering and left skid marks in the process.

You will also need to decide who you are going to trust to host your website. Reliabilty is a prime concern so I cannot recommend free hosting services but if you must go that route there are several things you should know. There are now many free web hosts, and each one appears to have a certain benefit and limitations. Some of the completely free hosts like Tripod and Geocities, for example, have banners or pop-up ads. You do not get any scripts or other database features such as site statistics but you can put a counter on the site from an outside source.

Normally I only recommend using free web hosting for personal webpages where you simply require a simple homepage. There are certain exceptions but for most home-based business websites you really do need a dedicated host who features enouph disk space, bandwidth and technical support. However, there are numerous free web hosts who are reasonably reliable. And I can recommend such sites for link pages and so forth. They are usually automated so you don't have to wait to be approved to have a site up and running. You just need a valid e-mail account, generally.

But a negative is that they put a lot of java-type scripts at the top of your html source (for their ads) and this can really screw up your site ranking on some search engines, I have noticed. For your first trial site they can be good because they have tutorials and a handy features such as color code programs.

If you are on a tight budget I suggest you try one of the many budget hosts that exist on the web. Just type in "budget web hosting" in you favorite search engine and you will get a myriad of results. But do not choose just anyone. Double check their customer service and uptime. Read through their FAQ section.

In the last few years hosting packages have gone down in price as competition has increased. So you may be able to get one hundred MB of space and two Gigs of transfer for as little as five dollars a month.





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Home Business News


Vivitek Launches Seven Business and Home Theater Projectors
PC Magazine - 19 hours ago
Both are aimed at home, business, or school use, and both can accept 720p and 1080i HDTV signals. Both are also available now, according to Vivitek, ...

CNET News

Cisco Systems
CNET News, CA - Jan 7, 2009
Cisco initially got into the home networking business in 2003 with its acquisition of Linksys and it increased its presence a couple of years later with the ...
Cisco down to business with gear for digital home Computerworld
Cisco acquisitions deliver in burgeoning consumer business The Daily Deal (subscription)
Cisco Targets Consumers With New 'EOS' Product CNNMoney.com
EETimes.com - CNNMoney.com
all 280 news articles

Handling Home Payments Loses Profit Luster as Bad Loans Pile Up
Bloomberg - 6 hours ago
s servicing business from H&R Block Inc. for $1.3 billion in May. “It looked pretty cheap and everyone thought Wilbur was really jumping in at the right ...

Editorial: Home is where the business is, too
Sacramento Bee,  USA - Jan 7, 2009
The proposed new rule permits home business owners to have one nonresident employee report to the home work site each day. ...

AdAge.com

Meredith Dismisses 7% of Its Workers and Closes Country Home Magazine
New York Times, United States - 13 hours ago
Six years ago, Country Home had single-copy sales well over 200000, and the average subscription price was $1.51 an issue. More Articles in Business » A ...
Meredith closes Country Home, lays off 250 Crain's New York Business
Mag Bag: 'Country Home' Shutters Mediapost.com
Meredith magazine cut; 100 lose jobs DesMoinesRegister.com
Forbes - Media Buyer Planner
all 59 news articles

Starting A Work From Home Business
SVG.org, France - 21 hours ago
Starting a home business may sound very interesting at first but if you've not developed a good marketing plan, working on your own and becoming your own ...

eFluxMedia

Citi Reaches Deal With Lawmakers on Home Loans
New York Times, United States - 15 hours ago
More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on January 9, 2009, on page B1 of the New York edition.
Boost for bankruptcy bill as Citi backs MLive.com
Citigroup, Senators Agree on Bankruptcy Role to Trim Loan Rates Bloomberg
Citi, Senators Reach Mortgage Deal Wall Street Journal
all 571 news articles

Why go home when there's MyHouse?
Los Angeles Times, CA - 5 hours ago
"I've been critical for some period of time that Hollywood was giving out too many entitlements and they were ruining the nightclub business. ...

Still the Governor: Blago Stays Busy Doing the People's Business
FOXNews - 16 hours ago
Illinois is investing an additional $2 million to support the Home Modification Program, a statewide program that adds ramps, chair lifts and other features ...

Lazer Marketing: A promoter of home based business
Merinews, India - Jan 8, 2009
Want to work from home with your home based business modeled after a successful home business? Work from home, reap the benefits of other’s success. ...