Starting home based legitimate business online is just the beginning. What happens after that? This article explores the crucial, yet very often overlooked tips to operate your home based business online to it’s optimum.
Let’s start with your computer. How old is it? If it’s more than 4 years old, up-grade it if you can or better still change it. Look, your business is at stake here, you don’t want to run an online business not knowing if your computer will boot up each time you press the start button. Belief me, this will be worth your investment. A little tip before on purchasing a new computer. If it runs on Windows Vista, make sure the RAM size is 2GB or more. Any lower than that and your computer will be slow to respond. If you are a notebook person like me, make sure to test the screen size you are most comfortable with. A 13.3inch would be the minimum for me. Smaller than that and it will hurt your eyes.
Do you promote affiliate programs? I promote loads of them and that’s why I keep a database of all the programs I am affiliated to in a simple spreadsheet. I include in it the affiliate manager’s url, my affiliate links, login ID, login password, their support email addresses, email address I used to subscribe to them, payment gateways, payment received, payment pending and remarks. This will give you an easy reference and a good way to monitor your paychecks. You can get a free spreadsheet software with OpenOffice.
One thing most people do not do except for IT personnels, is to back up your files. When you are running a home based legitimate business online, your database is everything. For example, I keep a database of my newsletter subscribers, affiliate programs (above) and hosting directories. You should too and always keep a back up copy of them in a secondary storage device like an external hard drive. You can also burn them in a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM. To make this task easier you can store all your important files in a common folder for easy backup. I store all my home based business online stuff in a folder called “IM” for internet marketing. I just copy the whole file when I do a back-up. Simple right.
Here’s another one. Test the availability of your site at least once a day. Key your site’s url in a web browser and make sure your website opens up. After it does, do a random check on the links you have on your site to ensure there are no broken links. If there are then fix them. There may be changes to the links without you knowing about them. There are softwares available in the market you can use to check this for you, but a random manual check is recommended. This way you are actually forcing yourself to spend some time on your site and by so doing, can easily identify irregularities and correct them if any.
Above are some of the more important tips that I have used and still am using to ensure the smooth running of my home based legitimate business online. Though not often being highlighted as part of a marketing strategy, yet can mean the survival of your home based business online venture.