Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

Tell me if this doesn’t sound familiar. You’re told that if you work from home, you can make a good living and finally say goodbye to your boss. So you take the advice and plug away at your home business. Months go by and you’re hardly making anything at all. You’re wondering when the money will come. Will it ever come? What really are the rewards for running your own business from home? Well, read this article and maybe it will inspire you.

First of all, I was in the same place you’re in now about 8 years ago. It was January of 2003 when I first started my home business. It took me 5 months just to make $28. Do you think that qualifies me a somebody who knows what it’s like to struggle? I think so. I certainly didn’t see any rewards…not back then.

Today, 8 years later almost to the day, I look at my work schedule and it’s pretty light. Write one article and update my home business help center with another product review and then I’m done for the day. I might go hang out at the Warrior Forum for a bit and network with the other members, but for the most part, my work day is maybe an hour at most. The rest of the day is mine to do with as I wish.

I have the luxury of being able to have days like that because of the 8 years of hard work that I put into my business. No, the success didn’t come overnight…not even close. But it DID come. And today, I can work when I want and take off when I want and still earn a nice living.

The problem that most people have, and I am speaking from experience, is that they have no patience. They want it yesterday and they want it without having to put too much time and effort into it. And they certainly want it without having to spend any money. My monthly expenses, while relatively low, would send some people into a coma. But it’s the minimum I know I have to spend in order to live the lifestyle that I want. Anything less won’t give it to me.

Ultimately, it comes down to sacrifice. What are you willing to sacrifice in order to receive these rewards? Most people don’t want to sacrifice anything. They just want it handed to them. I worked 14 hour days for years. I didn’t get to go out and do things that others did. I didn’t have a lot of free time. And I didn’t get as much time to spend with my family, especially my daughter, as I would have liked. Today…I spend most of my time with my daughter and I’m having a blast. For me…that’s the best reward of all.

No reward comes without some sacrifice, effort and maybe even a little pain. You have to decide if the reward is worth going through all that. If it is, you’ll keep working at your business and working hard. You’ll sacrifice free time and even some money. You’ll do what you have to do.

The rewards will come…and they’ll be worth it.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

There are a lot of questions that get asked quite often by people who run their own home business. One of them is this one. “How can I make $100 a day?” I don’t know why $100 seems to be the magic goal line, but it is. Maybe because it’s a nice round number. Maybe it’s because $99 sounds so “bargain basement.” Whatever the reason is, this question gets asked a lot. Well, read this article and you’ll get a straight forward, no nonsense, right to the point answer. Well, kind of right to the point.

First thing you need to understand, and if you get nothing else out of this article, get this…there is no ONE way to make any kind of money online. If you’re running a home business, the options available to you are virtually unlimited. But for the sake of keeping this article somewhat within the realm of readability, I’m not going to go into all the different things you can get into but instead, I am going to take a different direction.

Let’s say, for argument sake, that you decide to tackle a specific niche with your home business. You set up your site, complete with product and everything else you need and find, without too much trouble, that you can earn $10 a day. That’s not a lot of money by any means. Would you agree? Okay, but it’s nowhere near $100 a day. However, you find that reaching that level with your current niche would take an enormous amount of work. So why not do this instead.

Instead of trying to build THAT niche up to a $100 a day business, start a completely different niche while your first niche is essentially running yourself and get THAT one up to $10 a day. Certainly that can’t be very hard to do. Now, look what just happened. Your $10 a day home business is now bringing in $20 a day. Do you see where I am going with this? If you set up 10 different niches that all make just $10 a day, which is NOT hard to do, you are up to $100 a day in income. See how easy it is?

Don’t want to do 10 niches? Fine, do 5 niches and get each one up to $20 a day. Certainly $20 a day can’t be that hard to achieve. My point is, there are many different ways to make $100 a day without having to have it all come from ONE source. Diversify your efforts, like I do, and you can make more money than you’ve ever dreamed of.

I hope this article has given you some inspiration to get out there and do it. As you can see, you don’t have to create a monster site bringing in tons of cash each day. A bunch of little sites can do the job just fine.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business… FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

There is no question…the world is looking for a speedy solution to everything. And for those looking to start a home business, it’s no different. Everybody wants to start on Monday and have the money pouring in on Tuesday. But how long DOES it take to create a successful home business? A week, a month, a year? What’s the magic number? Is there a magic number? If you’re looking for an answer to this question, you might want to read the rest of this article. However, you might not like the answer you get.

I guess the thing that makes me chuckle the most is this. If you were to start a business in the brick and mortar world, you’d probably have to wait two years before you got out of the red. Heck, most new businesses fold up shop long before that. And yet, here you are, starting a home business and royally ticked off because it’s been two months and you haven’t seen a profit. Yeah, I get a real chuckle out of this.

Okay, here is the answer that you’re not going to like. How long does it take to create a successful home business? As long as it takes for you to do the following:

1. Find a niche and a hungry buying market with money to spend on a solution to a problem that they’re having.

2. Find or create a product or service that solves that problem. If you can’t find one or one doesn’t exist, you either have to create it yourself or hire somebody to create it for you.

3. Develop an ad campaign that will effectively reach that target market and convey the benefits of purchasing the solution from you and NOT from your competitors.

4. Continue doing this on an ongoing basis, making sure that you keep up with current trends in the market and/or changes…ensuring that you stay one step ahead of your competition.

I could keep going but I think you get the point. For some people, the above is a piece of cake. They can do it in their sleep. They’ve tapped into just the right market and have just the right product. They can write ads that make Madison Avenue jealous. For others, the above is near impossible either because they don’t have the education, the money, or both.

Wherever you fall in that mix, make no mistake about it…creating a successful home business takes a lot of work. How hard you’re willing to work and how much work you’re willing to put in will greatly determine how successful you’ll be and how quickly that success will come.

Like I said, not the answer you wanted to hear.

Were you really surprised?

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

You’re probably wondering what prompted me to write this article. Well, don’t worry…I’m going to tell you shortly. But what I want you to think about right now is the answer to this very simple question. When you see the finish line dead ahead and know you’re almost there, do you push even harder to get your project done or do you slack off a little, knowing that you’re almost there? If the answer is the latter, you might want to read this article.

Okay, let me first answer the question as to what prompted me to even write this article. Well, I’m in the Ezine Articles 100 article challenge. And while I passed 100 articles around day 50, I’m working toward the 200 article goal. As of this article, I had only three more articles to write with about 7 days to go. Certainly I can see the finish line ahead and could afford to slack off and still reach 200 articles. Heck, I could write an article every other day and still make the 200. So why don’t I slack off? Why have I decided to push it hard and finish all my articles today?

It’s called human nature and it’s something that gets the best of everybody. When confronted with something that you have to do, if that task doesn’t have to be completed for several weeks or even months, you tend to put it off. I think we call that procrastination. The problem is, when we do that, we tend to get lazy. We figure that since we have all the time in the world, there is no need to kill ourselves. Problem is, and I’ll take my last three articles as an example, if we do that, sometimes we don’t ever get back to what we have to do.

What happens then is this, and I am speaking from experience. Again, take my three articles. Let’s say I decided that I didn’t need to write today. I had 7 days to write three articles and didn’t need to kill myself. What would happen is this. On day two, I still have 6 days left…so there is still no urgency. So I put it off another day. And this keeps going until all of a sudden, it’s the final day and I have three articles to write on the last day in order to make my 200 articles. Now I have to push myself anyway to get them done. However, this is one difference.

Pushing to get the articles done early makes it so that there’s no real pressure. You can relax. The ideas will come easier. Pushing to get them done on the last day puts so much pressure on you that it makes it difficult to concentrate. It’s not so easy to write those three articles, not to mention that it makes the experience less than pleasurable.

Take it from me, when you see that finish line…push to get to it.

The alternative is less than pleasant.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of spinning your wheels trying to get your marketing off the ground? Haven’t got a clue what you’re doing and sick of being dead broke? Why not get some solid mentoring from somebody who has been EXACTLY where you are today? Check out my mentoring program at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/mentoring/mentoring.html and finally get yourself the one on one education that can FINALLY give you the success that you’ve been looking for.

It’s funny how a lot of people think that they’re in charge of things when they’re really not and just a pawn in someone else’s game. If you’re running your own home business and think you’re in charge of things, you might want to read this article. It might give you a whole new perspective on the issue.

Let me start off by saying that the idea for this article came from yet another Warrior Forum thread which really didn’t have anything to do with running a home business or being in charge of things. But it made me realize that by depending on others, we sometimes put our fate in their hands and effectively makes it so that we’re not really in charge at all.

The thread in question had to do with Clickbank and slumping sales. Seems that a lot of affiliates are reporting a significant drop in sales the last couple of weeks. Now, while that could very well have to do with the fact that Christmas is coming up and people are broke, think about this for a moment if you will.

As an affiliate of a product, you REALLY have very little control. The creator of the product makes all decisions about price, sales copy and so on. All you can do is promote it and hope for the best. However, as a product creator, you are in control of the whole process from the actual product and price all the way down to the last PS on that sales letter. On top of that, you can have OTHER affiliates help promote your product. Now THAT is control.

And you can apply this to just about anything. Take an autoresponder service. You are at their mercy as to how and when emails get delivered and how long you’re able to even keep your account. I have heard many horror stories of people losing their Aweber accounts because of some TOS infraction. Now, if you had your OWN autoresponder on your own server, that’s control.

However, with control comes a price…and at times a heavy price. You have more responsibility and more risk when you have more control. With your own product, there is more to do. The product creation process can be an excruciating one and take weeks if not months to complete. Salescopy, if you can’t write it yourself, can cost a fortune. With an autoresponder on your own server, enough spam complaints and your ISP can shut you down.

So ultimately, it comes down to how much control you’re willing to give up in order to minimize your risk and work load. Yes, it’s a balancing act. For example, I’ll create my own products but I won’t use an autoresponder on my own server.

But take a look at your home business and see how much of it you’re REALLY in control of.

The answer might surprise you.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

All work and no play makes Stevie a dull boy. It also makes Stevie very grumpy. Okay, there seems to be this idea going around that you can’t have fun running a home business, that everything has to be serious work. Now don’t get me wrong…running a successful home business IS a lot of work, and sometimes it’s very hard work. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun in the process. I’m going to share with you a few ways that I have fun with my home business. These may or may not work for you as everybody’s idea of fun is different.

At the top of my list of fun things to do is mix things up a bit. I don’t do this a lot but every once in a while, when I feel that I am getting into a rut, I will change up my routine. Maybe instead of writing my articles first thing in the morning, I’ll write them at night. Believe it or not, your mind functions differently at different times of the day. For me, daytime is the more serious and dull time and nighttime is the more fun time. It’s also the time I’m more awake so I tend to be more creative at night. So change up your routine a bit and see what happens.

Another thing I do is add something new to my day once in a while. For example, for a long time, what I did was I created videos with tips and uploaded them to YouTube. For a long time, because this was fresh and new, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed playing with my new toys such as video camera and editing software. Sure, after a while it did start to get old so I stopped doing it when it was no longer fun. But while I was doing it, I was getting some great content out there that I normally wouldn’t have created simply because I wanted to have a little fun. This is something else you can do.

Finally, and this works really well, especially when I have deadlines, is I reward myself for completing certain tasks. For example, if I’m creating a new product and it’s getting a little tiresome, I say to myself, “Steve, get this product done by such and such a date and when it’s finished, you can treat yourself to…” and then I fill in the blank. Sometimes the treat is small and sometimes the treat is rather expensive. It not only makes things more fun but it gives me inspiration and incentive to get things done quickly.

So as you can see, running a home business doesn’t have to be ALL work. You can actually have fun in the process.

Of course it helps if you enjoy what you’re doing to start with.

And that I do…in spades.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

Well, we’re almost at the end of the year. As of this article, there are only 13 days to go. Regardless of what level you might be at with your business, you probably have plans to expand it in 2011. Maybe you do but maybe you’re not exactly sure how to do that. Hopefully, after reading this article for inspiration, you’ll get a clue as to where you want to go.

First let me start off by saying that I have finally reached that point in my business where I have no desire to expand. The last thing I want is more work or more responsibility. Don’t worry…you’ll know when you’ve reached that point as well. But for now, where to go? How do you go about expanding?

You might want to think about moving away from a model where you’re constantly creating products to one where you have one continuity membership program. This way, you’re creating one thing and simply advertising for more members. With most continuity programs, it’s no more work to cater to 10,000 members as it is to 10 members. Simply set up a support desk, hire some people to run it, and you’re done.

But okay, maybe continuity programs are not your style and you prefer to just branch out into multiple products. The question becomes, how do you go…wide or deep? Well, there are advantages and disadvantages to both models. Let’s take wide first.

By going wide, you’re creating products in a number of different niches. The advantage of doing this is that you can create a number of low end products that are affordable enough so that you probably give yourself a decent chance of converting well, not that you can’t sell higher priced products. They just require a little more effort on the creation and promotion ends. The biggest disadvantage of selling low end products in multiple niches is that you’re constantly looking for new customers to sell to.

What about going deep? This is where you have a product line in one niche. The biggest advantage of doing this is that once you’ve made that first sale, you’ve got a customer for life if they’re happy with the product. Selling a more expensive product to that customer won’t be nearly as hard as converting a new customer. On the downside, once you start selling more expensive products, it does become a little harder to get people to open up their wallets…no matter how dedicated a customer they are. Conversion percentage WILL go down the more expensive a product gets. However, you don’t have to sell as many to make the same profit.

These are a couple of ways to think about expanding your business for 2011. There are plenty more, but I’ll let you chew on these ideas for a while.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

Today at the Warrior Forum, somebody asked when we first went full time with our business. This got me to thinking. I realized that even though I had been doing this full time from day one, there are some people who have never gotten to full time status after many years, nor do they have any desire to do so. What about you? Are you full time or part time? Not sure which is better? You might want to read this article for some advice from somebody with a clue.

There are definite advantages and disadvantages to working full time on your home business. Ultimately, you have to decide what’s best for you.

At the top of the list is time. Time is something that we can never get back. So if you’re working a regular job and doing this part time, there is only so much you’re going to be able to get done in a day. The time you spend working at your regular job is gone forever. You can never get that time back. Now, if you’re desperate for money and your full time job isn’t providing you with the income you need, running a part time business is only going to delay reaching your ultimate goal.

On the other hand, if you quit your regular job, there is no longer any safety net. There is no guaranteed income coming in at all. So now, you MUST make your home business work in order to just survive. This can be a scary thought for some people. It was scary for me even though I lost my job and had no choice but to go full time. In the back of my mind, I still wished that I had a full time job to fall back on. But I didn’t have that luxury. For me, it was either sink or swim.

Another plus about going full time is that you get to keep your concentration and focus on your business all the time. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have to go to work, come home, get a little something done, and then, just as I am getting somewhere, have to go to bed, get up the next morning and go to work, thus leaving my business behind. For me, that would be a very frustrating thing. I really couldn’t honestly say I could keep my mind on my regular job under those circumstances.

If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing…as scary as it was being out of work. Concentrating on my home business full time allowed me to focus and get things done that I probably wouldn’t have gotten done had I still been working. Ultimately, you have to do what you think is best for you.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

I want to thank yet another member of the Warrior Forum for posting yet another tiresome thread asking other members how much money they make with their business, not that I have a personal problem with people doing it. Honestly, I couldn’t care less. But their reasons for asking, motivating other members, just don’t hold water. This article explains why I feel this way and also shares why I asked the question in the first place. Don’t feel obligated to answer.

Let’s get back to the reason why people ask this question at forums. They say it’s to motivate the other members. They feel that if people hear that others are making money then that will motivate them to work hard at their business because NOW they know that it’s possible.

Bull cookies.

Do you REALLY need to know that somebody else is making money with their home business to motivate yourself? I mean, isn’t it painfully obvious that SOMEBODY on the Internet is making money? Oh no? Well, then let me ask you a few questions.

For starters, have you ever personally spent money yourself online? Okay, maybe you haven’t. Some people are deathly afraid of spending money online because they’re afraid of their credit cards getting hacked or whatever. Fine. Well, I’m NOT afraid of spending money online. In fact, I spend TONS of money online. My eBay bill alone for the last two months had to be well over $500. I bought myself a bunch of hard to get Magic The Gathering cards.

Forget eBay. I practically live at Amazon. I buy many of my Christmas presents from them. I also by from some odd places online that sell shirts and things when my daughter wants something special. I can’t count how many individual sites I’ve been to where I have spent money. Somebody’s collecting it, aren’t they? Well, then isn’t SOMEBODY making money online? I’d like to think so.

And if you’re argument is that Amazon and places like it are big companies run by thousands of people, well what about the Warrior Forum itself? Allen Says is a one man operation outside of the moderators. The guy wakes up to $1,000 a day just from his banner ads. That doesn’t even count the money he makes from WSOs and the War Room. He’s certainly not a mega corporation.

Truth is, money is being made all around us and the thought that we need motivation to make it ourselves is absurd.

So why did I ask this question? To show how silly the whole thing is.

Me? I make about a buck three-eighty a week. I scrounge up my nickels in order to buy myself more Magic The Gathering cards.

This week…I’m shooting for a Platinum Angel.

So…how much money do YOU make?

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim.

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

Here is what I want you to do. I want you to picture taking your home business off of the Internet and bring it off line. If you were to do that, would it succeed? If you’re not sure, or if the answer is no, it’s quite possible that your home business is not as stable as you might think. This article explains why.

A lot of people, and I am guilty of this myself, think of their home business as something that is meant to be done on the Internet…period. But what if the Internet didn’t exist? Or more realistically, what if you lost your Internet access for an extended period of time? Would your business survive or would it crumble? Could you take it to the off line world and make it a success IF you had to?

Why am I asking you this? Well, do you remember Joe Karbo’s “Lazy Man’s Way To Riches” from back in the 60s? I do. It was in all the trashy newspapers? Do you have any idea how much money that man made with that ad? And all he taught people to do was the same thing he was doing…writing ads telling people that they could make money from home and selling a little pamphlet on how to do it. The FTC would probably have a field day with this model today, but back then…it was gold.

Now granted, it’s probably harder today to take a home business off line as there are expenses involved that you don’t have online. But it’s not impossible. Those same ebooks that you’re creating and selling for ungodly amounts of money…well, you may not get that much in a hard cover, but you can certainly have the book published and sell it for $9.95. Imagine if that book was actually GOOD. You’d have it in just about every major book retailer in the country. Sounds like a pipe dream? Well, if it does to you, then your home business is probably not much of anything.

And that’s the point. If you TRULY can take your business off line with a reasonable effort, then you have something there. I could easily take my home instruction courses, package them all together and maybe get $29.95 for the whole collection. Come to think of it, I don’t know why I don’t go that route. Probably because I’m just too lazy. But I certainly could pull it off with no problem. Can you say the same about YOUR home business?

It’s time to take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly…if my home business had to go off line, would it survive? If the answer is no, or you’re not sure, you might want to think about reevaluating and restructuring. Because you never know when the bottom might just fall out and leave you with a big hole where your business used to be.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!