How to Stay Motivated Working from Home

Tips for making it through the tough times
From Scott Allen


You're lucky. You work from home. You're your own boss and you answer to no one but yourself. You may have worked years or even decades at a regular job, but now you get to make your own rules and set your own hours. There's no need to fight the alarm clock every morning, nor is there any reason to go to bed early at night. Since you're your own boss, you don't have to worry about getting written up, laid off, or fired.

Since you're reaping all the benefits of working from home, you're also stuck with the responsibilities. You're in charge of every aspect of your home business, which means you have to handle the bad along with the good.

One of the biggest challenges you'll ever face is motivation. Many individuals working from home are content with just earning enough money to get by, and don't strive to take their small business to the next level. If you find yourself slacking from time to time, then you need a good motivation boost.

Here are some tips to help you stay motivated:

Take some time to think about why you started working from home to begin with. Was it because you wanted freedom? Was it for the money? Were you having trouble finding a job anywhere else? In other words, what motivated you to start your own small business in the first place? Try invoking the same feelings again, and you will find yourself motivated once more.

Set goals for yourself. They don't necessarily have to be large goals—in fact, you will be better off setting small and easy goals. Try to get through one step at time. Plan to work an hour more every day. Try earning an extra $100 a week. What about $200? Just imagine what all you can do with that extra $100 or $200 each week!

Create a vision board. A vision board can be a wallpaper or collage of everything you want in life. It can include pictures of your dream car, dream home, yacht, land, famous places that you want to visit, and so forth. Anytime you need a boost of motivation, just look at your vision board! It will remind you of everything you can obtain if you work hard enough.

If you're not feeling very inspired and your creative juices aren't flowing, don't force yourself. The more aggravated you become, the less motivated you'll be. You also won't be able to produce quality content when you're feeling down. It's ok to take breaks. Sometimes lack of motivation doesn't necessarily mean that you're not doing any work—it could also mean that you're working TOO hard. Lie down to read a book or take a nap if you have to. Sometimes a bit of rest is all we need to stay motivated.

Working toward goals and taking breaks may seem contradictory, but they both play an important role in motivation. You can work and still rest. There is time enough to do both. Napping doesn't necessarily equate to laziness. Laziness is when you don't even try to motivate yourself.

If you work hard and find yourself stuck, then you need to rejuvenate yourself somehow. Once you're done resting, then you can get back to work again. You will more than likely have everything sorted out in your head after resting up, and before you know it, your work will be all done!

It doesn't matter how much money you earn by working at home. Nor does it matter how successful your small business is. At some point in time, you will find yourself needing motivation. You need to: think about why you wanted to work from home to begin with, evaluate your present situation, and make plans for the future.

Never let yourself forget why you're working from home. You are luckier than most people out there. You don't have to trudge to work every day slaving away for a thankless boss. Be thankful that you have freedom and independence that most people don't. As long as you can stay motivated and focused, your earning potential is unlimited and you can live a lifestyle most people only dream about.

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Tax Tips for the Self-Employed

f you know what you're doing, you can avoid the pitfalls and leverage as many credits and deductions as possible.
By: Roni Deutch | 05/28/2009


This is the first of a three-part excerpt from The Tax Lady's Guide to Beating the IRS and Saving Big Bucks on Your Taxes, by Roni Deutch, available from BenBella Books.

"Take care of your pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves."
- Andrew Carnegie
tax-lady-book.jpg
There is a humorous story about the above quote. Apparently as a 10-year old attending Sunday school back in Scotland, Andrew Carnegie, the powerful head of U.S. Steel in the early 1900s and the son of a hardscrabble Scottish weaver, was singled out by the teacher and asked to quote a passage from the Bible.

After he replied with the above, the incredulous teacher admonished the young lad. "Surely," the teacher answered, "such an answer is not in the Bible."

"It ought to be," shot back Carnegie.
content continues below

Now there was an entrepreneur who knew the secret to running a business: Take care of the little things, and the big things will take care of themselves.

That is a good lesson for today's self-employed business owners. In the tax world, the pennies can really add up in the form of the many deductions and credits available under U.S. tax laws. The trick is to know where to find them--and how to use them.

That is the aim of this chapter--to help you understand the self-employed tax picture and leverage as many of its tax favors as possible. The best place to get started doing that is to learn more about taxes and the self-employed.

What is the Self-Employment Tax?
The good news is that the income tax form for self-employed individuals is the same as just about everyone else: IRS Form 1040. In addition, the self-employment tax is the same amount for wage earners as it is for self-employed individuals. A portion is even earmarked for Social Security and Medicare.

There are some differences. First, unlike the wage earner, the self-employed individual must voluntarily make self-employment tax payments throughout the year, instead of having them passively deducted from his or her wages as they are paid. Second, unlike a wage earner, a self-employed person can deduct Social Security and Medicare taxes from his or her Form 1040 tax bill.

Fast Fact
What is Taxable

At the end of 2008, Social Security and Medicare tax rate for self-employed individuals was 15.3 percent. The IRS slices that rate into two categories--12.4 percent of it goes to Social Security (yes, as a self-employed taxpayer you pay both the employee and employer portions of that tax, or an extra 7.65 percent) and 2.9 percent of it goes to Medicare. Note that the employer half of the Social Security payment--otherwise known as the "self-employed tax"--is tax deductible. And remember, only the first $102,000 of your annual income is subject to the Social Security tax.

Estimating Your Tax Payments
As a group, self-employed taxpayers already know that tax planning is a year-round event. That is because they often pay taxes on a quarterly basis, four times a year. The self-employed pay these taxes on an estimated basis. That means "estimating" your tax bill if you anticipate owing Uncle Sam when you file your return. In general, the self-employed do so on Form 1040-ES, Estimated Tax for Individuals, which helps figure out and estimate taxes. For example, if you estimate your tax liability to be $10,000 for the year, you can ship the IRS four quarterly checks of $2,500 apiece. Alternatively, you can wait until the following April 15 and fork over the entire $10,000 at one time--however this method may expose you to a penalty, so it is best to stick with the quarterly check approach.

Tax Tip:
$0 in Estimated Taxes

A self-employed individual need not make any estimated tax payments if the amount due after subtracting exemptions, deductions, and credits is less than $1,000.

The IRS offers several different scenarios where you can pay estimated taxes. It has a "voluntary" payment mechanism where you can pay estimated taxes based on your previous year's tax bill, even though this year's tax bill may be higher. By paying under the voluntary method, the IRS allows you to pay just the minimum amount required now and pay the rest on April 15. Voluntary payment is a good move if you have a steady flow of income and have the time and financial wherewithal to spread your tax payments out through the year.

Self-employed individuals can also make estimated tax payments even when they do not have to. Granted, this occurs only when a self-employed individual is running at a loss or an extremely low profit. But with a struggling economy, this may actually be the case for more taxpayers than it has in the past. Perhaps continuing to make your estimated tax payments allows those folks to sleep better at night knowing that April 15 will not bring a big tax burden. Alternatively, maybe these individuals are expecting a big cash crunch when the tax bill comes due. Either way, it is an option worth considering.

When deciding what method to use to pay your taxes, take your personal characteristics into consideration. If you are the sort who cannot resist temptation, pay on a quarterly basis. That way you will not be tempted to grab some of that $10,000 and buy that new big screen TV you noticed down at Best Buy. But if you can manage to leave your mitts off the money, you can gain some valuable interest on it by waiting to pay.

Also, if you have a new business, different tax rates apply. I advise my clients to put about 20 percent of their income aside to handle their tax burden.

Tax Tip
Pay or Hold?

It may be a load off your mind when you pay your taxes on an estimated basis well ahead of April 15. But Uncle Sam is not going to be paying you interest on that money in that saved time like an investment account could.

If you are confident in the stock market, you may be better served holding off on paying your taxes and making a few extra bucks for yourself in the interim. If you are not so sure about exposing your tax dollars exposed to the financial markets, just open an interest-bearing checking account at your bank. That way, you can draw your money out to pay your taxes, but keep that interest you have accrued.

Are You a Business?
How do you know if you are self-employed? The IRS has a few criteria.

In general, any commercial endeavor that attempts to make a profit is a business. That is not to say that your daughter's lemonade stand is something the IRS is interested in. But if a business exceeds certain profit levels on an annual basis, then it does become a taxable entity.

Fast Fact
Tax Dates

If you pay your taxes on a quarterly basis, the IRS is going to make you meet certain deadline requirements. Usually that means you will have to pay up on the 15 of April, June, September, and January of the following calendar year.

Once you establish a profit motive--that is, if your venture has earned any net income during three of the past five years, per the IRS' definition--you can describe yourself as a business and begin taking the appropriate deductions for what, in many cases, you used to call personal expenses.

Fast Fact:
The IRS Rules

In most cases, establishing a "profit motive" is enough to determine if you are self-employed. But what specifically is the IRS looking for to confirm that you are in fact running your own business? Here is a list:

IRS Checklist to Determine if You are Self-Employed

* Manner in which you carry on the activity
* Expertise of individual and his or her advisors
* Time and effort expended in carrying out the activity
* Expectations that the assets used may appreciate in value
* Success in carrying on similar or dissimilar activities
* History of income and losses with respect to the activity
* Amount of occasional profits earned
* Financial status of individual

Source: Internal Revenue Service

Next: Set Up a Tax-Friendly Business

Roni Deutch is the founder and owner of the nation's largest tax resolution law firm, Roni Lynn Deutch, A Professional Tax Corp. She is also founder and owner of Roni Deutch Tax Center, one of the fastest-growing tax preparation franchises in the U.S.

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Do You Have Character?

A new client explains how she concluded the author had 'character' worthy of being hired.
By: Cynthia McKay | 05/25/2009


A new consulting client just signed with me to develop a distributorship program for selling home furnishings. Our initial meeting was a comfortable, quiet lunch meeting. She is a brilliant young woman with a Princeton education, extremely pleasant and easy to chat with concerning life, politics and business. We spoke for several hours, and her decision to come on board with my consulting firm was made at the time of our tête-à-tête. She requested that a contract be drawn up immediately.

This sort of reaction is highly unusual. In fact, it was so unexpected that I had no legal documents with me with which to seal the deal. I wondered why her conclusion was almost instantaneous. I wanted to know what happened so that all of my future business meetings would be this effortless.

To solve this mystery, I asked my client what made her choose my company to develop her distributorship model. She told me she thought both the company and I had character. That's an oft-used word, but I wondered how to define the term in relation to this situation.

I asked what character meant to her, and I asked her to be completely honest in her answer. After all, our conversation had run the gamut, and I felt I could trust her to provide more detail. Her response surprised me. According to my newfound friend and client, the following are the reasons for her decision:

1. My company appeared successful.
2. I was dressed well.
3. My car was impressive.
4. My staff were professional and friendly, both in person and on the phone.
5. I had a clean and concise company website.
6. I offered nice business cards.
7. My education was "trustworthy"
8. My introductory packet sent via mail was of high quality.
9. Her free consultation was informative.
10. I had nice teeth.

I was both pleased and perplexed by her explanation, and requested further clarification. I understand that the overall appearance of a company can impress or offend a client and, of course, that competent staff members--whether comprising one employee or 500--make a significant contribution to any company's success.

For my part as CEO, dressing well probably means a small victory in some personal way, and a good car can also give a client the impression that we're "doing OK." Decent stationery, business cards, website and presentation folders are an integral part of achieving credibility. That left us with a discussion of my education, free consultation and teeth.

I began the next dimension of our conversation by asking her to relate the relevance of teeth and character. She said good dental hygiene showed that I cared. I wondered what that meant. I cared about what? Orthodontics, flossing and regular dental checkups? No. She explained that, in her opinion, teeth are a telling sign of "personal care" and "business savvy." To her, teeth indicated attention to detail, lifestyle and a concern for all things relevant to an individual. So teeth are a metaphor for life and business. Interesting. Teeth equate to a philosophical trust for her, and I was lucky enough to have a great cosmetic dentist.

Back to character. Was her conclusion that my company and I had character a result of my interest in her business and her goals, or was it the accomplishments of my firm? It couldn't all be related to the aforementioned aesthetics. No, it's about "character," she said, not the car, suit or anything else. It was a culmination of things in her eyes. "Not the car?" I asked. No, apparently it was about the cleanliness and uncluttered status of the vehicle I arrived in. She was also pleased that I didn't have vanity plates.

That was close. Just last year I had a sedan sporting plates that said, "HLONWLZ" or, as one of our corporate attorneys tagged me, "Hell on Wheels." As a matter of full disclosure, I confided to her that I once had a car with vanity plates, but assured her I'd grown as a person since then. She cautiously accepted that explanation.

I asked her about the suit and education. She told me the law degree indicated I was tenacious and could finish a project. I agree with that--I'm still attending school, and find it rewarding and challenging. I suppose if you look at the fact that I've been attending one college or another for more than 20 years, you could retract that comment and wonder whether I actually have a direction in life. No matter, she liked me as I was that day.

She continued with a comment on the attire. The suit was tidy, neat and orderly; it was clearly chosen, she said, to make a good impression at our first meeting. I was struck by her contemplative method of communication. It wasn't about "stuff"--it was about how the stuff was presented in terms of delivering consideration, concern and attentiveness.

As a side note, she said she was impressed that I was on time for the meeting and, in fact, early. She had arrived 20 minutes prior to the scheduled time to meet, and I arrived 10 minutes ahead. Her early arrival was orchestrated by the need to see whether I would care enough to be there at the time I promised. Arriving early, she said, showed respect for her.

Further, I was generous with my time. She explained that I never looked at my watch or acknowledged the presence of a cell phone. I didn't care about the time, and I turned the phone off for the duration of our meeting. She appreciated that I offered her a free consultation with no time limit whatsoever and paid for lunch as well. She deemed that behavior as true character with no dollar signs.

Everything I did had a unique meaning to this individual. Her interpretation of life was influenced by her study of Eastern culture. Respect, character and consideration offer a strong basis for a relationship. I realized that character was about recognizing my own flaws, yet wanting to offer my "best side" to an individual I had never met before.

Character, though difficult to define, is about respecting others and offering your best, even though it's a bit more inconvenient than taking another, less complicated and tiring route. I learned a great deal that day.

Cynthia McKay is a business growth consultant and CEO of Le Gourmet Gift Basket, a company she began as a small home based business in 1992 and has grown to 510 operating distributorships and more than $1 million in revenue.

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Give Your Brand a Multivitamin

You'll stay healthy by reinforcing your brand promise in everything you do.
By: Lynn Parker | 05/18/2009


Most of us are looking for the magic pill to keep business flowing in the down economy. Sadly, that magic pill doesn't exist. But the equivalent of exercising and eating right can be applied to business: I call it Vitamin Brand. Taken regularly, the hypothetical Vitamin Brand can help you weather the economic downturn. Here are five ways Vitamin Brand can work for you:

1. Take Vitamin Brand to make your difference bigger. Branding is about meaningful differentiation and focus. Since so many people are hunkering down instead of getting out there, you have a great opportunity to increase awareness of your differentiation. Look for low-cost or no-cost ways either to deliver more of your unique benefit or communicate that benefit to others.

For example, Group Health Cooperative is demonstrating its brand of innovation for better health by taking a leading role in the current health-care reform conversation. CEO Scott Armstrong, recently appointed to President Obama's task force on health care, is championing electronic health records, integrated payment and delivery systems, evidence-based decisions, preventive and primary care, and universal coverage.

2. Ensure that your online presence exudes Vitamin Brand. Your entire web strategy needs to reflect your brand, from applications, user interface, navigation and content to audience gateways. You can have a great promise and deliver great value, but if your website looks and acts like everyone else's, you've lost an opportunity. If your company is branded as the friendliest, then have a friendly website. If you're the most innovative, have the most innovative one.

3. Look for more customers like those already taking your Vitamin Brand. Branding is about aligning your value with your customers--moving them from awareness through preference, loyalty and on to commitment by demonstrating how your approach and their needs are in perfect harmony. This means that for a specific set of customers--your most loyal, evangelizing ones--you provide value unlike anyone else.

By figuring out who your best customers are and specifically what they value about you, you'll have a blueprint for getting more loyal customers. At Parker LePla, for example, we discovered that nonprofits appreciated our long-term, values-based approach, so we grew a nonprofit part of our practice, with messaging, marketing and focus on that subset.
4.

Increase your Vitamin Brand-based promotions. Money-off promotions are a tried-and-true way to kick-start sales; but make sure they reinforce your brand. For example, Hyundai is offering to let people return cars if they lose their job. Very on-brand, very promotional.
5. Share how Vitamin Brand has helped. It doesn't cost money to think up brand-based stories and talk about them. If part of your brand is alternative thinking, come up with anecdotes demonstrating that quality, then tell them to your employees and have them share their own stories. Your employees are your best brand ambassadors. If you get them to tell their friends and neighbors about your company's products and services through the lens of brand promise, then you're employing the cheapest and most trusted marketing around: word-of-mouth. Create a culture of storytelling at your organization, so that every voice is reinforcing your brand difference.

So no magic pill--just advice to look long-term, continue to improve and reinforce your promise in everything you do.

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Don't Let Promising Leaders Sink or Swim

Give them your time and the guidance they need to live up to their promise.
By: Kristi Hedges | 05/06/2009


The CEO's most important job is to grow the company's people. We need to groom team members for more responsibility, for leadership roles and simply to do a better job day-to-day. We need a strong bench of talent so we're not overly dependent on one person, ourselves included.

This is true in any economic situation. In times like these, however, when companies are cutting back people and resources, it becomes imperative to get the most out of the people we have. Typically, we cut senior people and ask the team member the next level down to step up. But we often fail to give these rising leaders the mentoring necessary to do the job.

This is a major oversight. It's been a mantra in recent columns and I'll say it again--when times are tough, our people need more from us. That's especially true when we ask them to take on more duties, swim in uncharted waters and excel at everything.

Here's what you, as the leader, need to do to make sure your next-level leaders achieve:

1. Make time. We know it's important to have regular meetings with direct reports to give direction and feedback. Yet when we get stretched, it's often the internal meetings we wipe off our schedules first. Plan to increase your time with employees when you ask them to stretch their skills. Meet at least once a week for an hour, and give ad hoc feedback frequently.

2. Foster an environment of feedback. Make it part of your company's culture to give continuous feedback, both positive and negative. If that seems out of reach, at least foster feedback with direct reports and those you mentor. Frame this feedback as a positive: You're giving these people more attention because you see that they have what it takes to succeed. Feedback is the ultimate compliment. It means someone cares about your development.

3. Don't hold back on your plan for someone. If you tell a rising leader that you see unique capabilities in her and have a plan for her growth, it's much more likely that she'll get there. It's the Pygmalion effect at work--the research that people will rise or fall to our expectations. Let your high-potential employees know what is possible for them, and you'll increase their confidence and success rate.

4. Be specific about what you need. This is neither a time to micromanage nor to sit back and see what someone can do. Be clear and specific about what the person needs to do to achieve the goals you've set for her. Lay out the vision and the skills she must develop, and have her repeat back to you what she heard. You want to avoid misunderstandings at all costs. They waste time and take you off track.

5. Match potential leaders with other mentors. Use your reach to find other performers, inside or outside the company, to act as mentors. Modeling others' behavior is one of the best ways we learn, so encourage your people to find role models. Because the CEO often has a strong network, you can be a powerful facilitator in this process.

6. Invest in training or coaching. This is what I do for a living, so I'm biased. I've seen the enormous demand--and results--of leadership development on high-potential professionals. It's much more common, and often more impactful, than corrective coaching. You can contract for a tailored leadership training program, individual executive coaching or a combination of both. There are also countless management training programs to which you can send employees. The Center for Creative Leadership provides some good ones.

As with most things in leadership or life, what's worth doing takes time. If forecasts are correct, the current economic environment isn't going to end soon. We will need our people to stretch and grow.

There may never be a more critical time to focus on developing your bench strength. Do it, and you'll emerge even stronger than you were before the crisis

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Lessons from the Amazon, Domino’s Debacles

By B.L. Ochman


These are confusing days for companies used to doing business by pre-Internet rules. We’re in an age of conversation, collaboration, and real-time communication. It’s not just how we communicate that has changed, but also how products are created, sold, bought, and evaluated.

Corporations’ old-fashioned, secretive, top-down approach to communication is being turned on its head. Power has shifted to consumers, and change is happening at dizzying speed.

Just ask Amazon.com (AMZN) and Domino’s Pizza (DPZ). Both brands have sustained heavy damage in recent days and neither company was prepared to confront or contain crises that wound up greatly amplified in the blogosphere.

As you’ve surely heard by now, on Apr. 13, two Domino’s Pizza employees turned the 50-year-old company’s reputation to toast after they filmed themselves doing nasty things to cheese and other sandwich ingredients they said were about to be sent out to customers. Within two days, the video had been viewed more than a million times on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. As of Apr. 17, a Google search for “Dominos” still turned up multiple, prominent references to the video, including one in the third-highest spot. Late on Apr. 15, Domino’s responded with a YouTube video message from Patrick Doyle, president of Domino’s USA. By late the following day, the video had only about 66,000 views.
“Punk’d by Social Media”

Just days before the Domino’s debacle, Amazon was plunged into a controversy of its own. Overnight, sales rankings and search results for gay and lesbian books seemed to disappear from Amazon’s Web site. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other online forums erupted with criticism. Amazon said nothing for two days until it told the Associated Press that there was a “glitch” in its system. Twitter users immediately responded by attaching a tag (#glitchmyass) to their tweets that made it abundantly clear that they weren’t buying Amazon’s explanation.

In response to my AdAge post on Amazon’s silence, a commenter said the social-media firestorm might have made a million or so people aware of either problem—a number he insisted isn’t big enough to have long-term impact on the brand. But a million people are enough to swing an election, populate a fair-sized city, and turn a book or movie into a hit. And if each of those million people tells just one other person, the brand damage begins to multiply.

Domino’s quickly was added to a long, growing list of brands that have been, in the words of Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang, “punk’d by social media.”.

I’ve got some advice for companies that want to keep their brands off that list of shame.

1. Monitor your brand 24/7. We live in a 24/7 world. Deal with it. Information flows in real time. Finding out tomorrow about a problem isn’t soon enough.

There are numerous free and paid tools for monitoring social media.

But monitoring is not enough.

2. Establish a credible presence in blogs and social media. If Amazon or Domino’s had a brand presence on Twitter, either could have responded to conversation quickly. Chances are good that their participation would have been welcome. All they had to say was: “Thanks for letting us know there’s a problem. We’re looking into it.” If the issue blew over quickly, that wouldn’t hurt anything. If it escalated, at least they would have joined the conversation early.

Domino’s was right to cut the video, but it acted too late. Anyone who cared knew a full day earlier that the employees had been identified, fired, and prosecuted.

3. Acknowledge the conversation where it’s happening. When a statement is issued, don’t ignore new media. Domino’s and Amazon talked to mainstream media first, ignoring bloggers and social networks. That strategy backfired.

Endless conversations about whether blogs are journalism, or whether Twitter has any actual communication value, are moot. They’re here, they’ve got millions of readers (more than much of mainstream media), and many of the writers are trusted online influencers. The day after the crisis erupted, while the blogosphere was ablaze with the news, major news outlets had yet to contact Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre, according to Ragan.com. “Right now, it’s on Web sites and blogs,” McIntyre is quoted as telling the blog. “It’s not ABC, CNN, or USA Today.” What’s that supposed to mean? It’s not news if mainstream media ignores it? Tell that to the Tweeters.

Amazon waited three days before issuing an official statement to AP, admitting that they handled the incident in a way that was “embarrassing and ham-fisted.” While the company’s chief technology officer is on Twitter, he didn’t say a word about the incident.

4. Explain how you’ll address the problems to prevent them from recurring. Companies whose customers complain are the lucky ones. The real problem is people who get so disgusted they walk away without saying a word, never to return.

Listen. Respond. Help. Here’s a list of companies already involved in Twitter. Their approach may not be perfect, but at least they aren’t ignoring the millions of people who talk to each other online. Here are more than 35 examples from Mashable. If you are listening, responding, and yes, changing, you are more likely to keep complaining customers than to lose them.

5. Have a crisis strategy ready to roll. The main thing Domino’s and Amazon had in common is that they did not have a social-media crisis strategy in place. If you haven’t participated in social media deeply enough to know who your brand evangelists are and where they talk to each other, how are you going to be able to enlist their help in a crisis?

If you don’t have tools in place to monitor your brand—and if you’d have to scramble at the onset of a crisis to set up a blog, learn how to send a message or post a link in Facebook, develop a channel on YouTube, and follow people on Twitter—you’re already too late.

Source : BusinessWeek

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Start Your Online Business for Less Than $5,000

Create a great website on a budget--without skimping on the essentials.
By Danielle Babb | May 04, 2009


Many in today's market are turning to internet businesses as a way to make money without the overhead of a brick-and-mortar store. After all, an internet-based business grows our market place to a global one--the internet has a global presence and our customers can come from all over the world. Regardless of the economic climate, the more customers the better. And you can get started for less than $5,000.

What can you do with less than $5,000 to make a great web-based business? First, don't skimp on design. Work with a great designer who understands user experience. You should interview several web designers who are local to you so you can sit down and explain your vision to them. Logos are less important than usability-- how usable customers find your web site.

Avoid gimmicks, excessive advertising and anything that detracts from your message and consumer-based content. Customers like to be able to leave feedback on products and services, and connect with each other, so give them a way to do that. One system I personally like is Joomla. A competing product is WordPress. Your web designer may choose one of these two, but both are modular and allow you to add plug-in components to make your site consumer-driven. For instance, on my site I have user-to-user chat, user-to-user private messaging, and user forums where people can go and talk about various topics of their choice. I jump in and comment on occasion, but usually that's only in an area where I'm a subject matter expert. At some point, Joe might log in to see if Suzy is on to chat with--now you have a consumer staying on your site.

Your initial e-commerce site will probably cost between $2,000 and $3,000, and the plug-ins are between $10 and $30 each. For no cost at all, you should add all the social networking media available. Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, Plaxo--you name it. Create links and RSS feeds off of your site so people can be updated on what you are doing--and it doesn’t always have to be about business.

Make it easy for people to buy. They shouldn’t have to hunt for what you're selling. Don't delete candid feedback from visitors, and make it easy for them to tell others about your site using "share" buttons.

Instead of integrating merchant accounts right away through a bank, which can drive up your startup costs, you can accept PayPal, which takes about 3 percent of your sales in fees. This requires your consumers have a PayPal account, so you might still choose a merchant system, which will run you about $25 per month. Be sure to protect your system with an SSL Certificate that your web developer can integrate.

Danielle Babb is the founder of The Babb Group, an online entrepreneur, a professor, an author, public speaker and consultant. She has a Ph.D. in Organization and Management with a Technology emphasis, as well as an MBA with a technology emphasis. She is featured regularly on top networks such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business and the Today show. She is also the author of The Online Professor’s Practical Guide to Starting an Internet Business, available from Entrepreneur Press.

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