Owning a home based business has many perks. You get to set your own hours; there is no travel, minimal inventory and the freedom of working for yourself. No bosses, no coworkers, and no politics allows for less stress in your life. There are many opportunities to choose from.One key to being successful is to do your due diligence. Check out the company online. Google the company and its owners to make sure this is a legitimate home based business opportunity. Be sure that the company you choose provides good support. There should be ample conference calls, webinars, a call center and a sponsor for you to talk with. You should feel very strongly that this is a product or service that you feel passionate about.You absolutely must believe in your success from the very beginning. Know that you will have a learning curve and frustrations. Owning a home based business is not easy. Be willing to put in the time and effort it takes to be successful. Decide never to quit. There will be challenges to overcome. Look at the challenges as opportunities to learn something new and find a way to overcome them.Did you know that Thomas Edison failed 2,000 times before inventing the light bulb? He viewed this not as a failure but as a new way not to invent the light bulb. Learn from your failures and move on.Be positive and surround yourself with positive people. There will be naysayers and negativity. Ignore it. Keep company with others that believe as you do. Continue to believe that you are successful. Find a mentor that has been successful at what you want to do. Ask for help and home based business advice from others that have already achieved what you want.Set goals. Know what is important to you. Is it sales, marketing, financial stability, your reputation? Set short and long term goals. You achieve what you put your mind to, so set your goals high. Write a vision statement for where you want to be five years from now and then read it every day. Believe.The compensation plan of the company you choose should be easily understandable. It should pay out immediately and not after some number of sales. Check the affiliate programs and what other offers are out there.Look at the reality of the situation and know that this will take some time and some money. No one ever starts at the top, but if you are willing to put in the time and effort and believe in your personal success, then it will come to you. You must stick to it. Refuse to fail.Finally, take action. The best home based business advice I can give is if it feels right do it. Jump in, get started and learn what you need to know to be a success. There are home based business owners making millions, hundreds of thousands and much less than that. Decide who you want to be and get going.
Auction Listings Are Vital to the Success of Fundraising Auctions
Fundraising Auction Tip: You should always provide potential bidders with a printed Auction Listing of both your Live and Silent Auction items at any Fundraising Auction. A printed Auction Listing is vital for several reasons:
An Auction Listing informs bidders of the order of sale, and what is coming up next. If you keep your bidders guessing, they will simply not bid.
If bidders are not 100% certain of what they are bidding on, they will not bid. A printed Auction Listing should answer any and all questions about what is being sold in order to encourage bidders to bid as much as possible.
Bidders often need time to plan their bidding strategies, especially on multiple and/or larger value items. A printed Auction Listing helps them to do that.
Couples often need time to consult with each other about what they are willing to spend on something. A printed Auction Listing helps them to do that.
Potential bidders need to know the specifics, the benefits, and the restrictions on any item they are going to bid on, especially on travel and/or other higher value items. A printed Auction Listing should answer all of their questions, in writing.
After bidders see that they have lost an item to another bidder, a printed Auction Listing makes it easier for them to re-strategize on what else they can bid on.
Printed Auction Listings generally come in 3 forms:
Printed in the Event Program or Auction Catalog.
Printed on loose sheets of paper and hand-inserted into the Event Program or Auction Catalog.
Printed on loose sheets of paper and hand-delivered to all attendees, or left on each dinner table in the room.
Auction Listings cost practically nothing to produce and they can make the difference between the success and failure of a Live and Silent Auction. You should never conduct a Fundraising Auction without one.
A Case Study
Let me share a real-life experience with you. Once I was hired to conduct a Fundraising Auction for a nationally renowned organization. The event was held in a major hotel, in one of the country’s largest cities, with several hundred “black tie” participants attending. It was an extremely professional event, with the music, singing, lighting, speeches, and awards all perfectly timed and choreographed. Everything was done to perfection… exception the Fundraising Auction.
Although I had signed an agreement to serve as their Auctioneer nearly one year in advance of the event, no one bothered to contact me for any advice or help. Approximately one week prior to the Auction date, I contacted the group to see if they had replaced me with another Auctioneer. But they said that I was still their man.
Upon arriving at the event I asked for a copy of the Auction Listing. I was told that there were none. I’m not sure whether they felt that the Auction Listing wasn’t necessary, or whether someone forgot to have them printed. This was never made clear. When I asked what I was to use at the podium, I was told to copy the list of Live Auction items from a committee member’s computer. It took me about 30 minutes to copy three pages of hand-written notes in order to prepare for my role as their Auctioneer.
I knew that they had created a PowerPoint program showing the various Live Auction items. When I asked whether the PowerPoint slide order corresponded to the order of sale I had copied from the committee member’s computer, I was met with a blank stare. The committee member left to check the slide order, and returned to let me know that the slide order did not correspond my notes, and he provided me with the correct slide order… hand-written on a paper napkin. This forced me to re-arrange my three pages of hand-written notes before taking the podium.
There was a Live Auction Table with descriptions of the Live Auction items that were to be sold, but the table was not clearly marked, and it received significantly less attention than the Silent Auction Tables, which were clearly identified. Since the Live Auction Table was located adjacent to the “Raffle Table”, it appeared that most people thought it was part of the raffle and therefore paid very little attention to it.
According to the event program (which did not include an Auction Listing), I knew approximately when I was to begin the Live Auction. At the designated time the Master of Ceremonies announced the start of the Live Auction to the several hundred people in attendance, and introduced me as Auctioneer. As I approached the podium I realized that photographs of award winners were still being taken… directly in front of the podium where I was to stand… which required me to stand aside for several minutes until the photographers were done. Can we say “awkward moment”?
As the photographers cleared, I approached the podium and began my Live Auction introduction. Approximately one minute into my introduction, the “Raffle Committee” approached the podium and stopped my Live Auction Introduction in order to pull the 8 or 9 Raffle Winners. These drawings lasted about 5 minutes. Upon it’s conclusion I was allowed to resume the start of the Live Auction.
When standing at the podium two intense and extremely bright spotlights were pointed directly at the podium. The lights were so bright that I literally could not see the center 1/3 of the room. I could see the tables on the right, and on the left, but was totally blinded when looking straight ahead. It took perhaps five minutes before the spotlights were turned off.
While at the podium and describing Lot #1, I had to ask someone to start the Lot #1 PowerPoint Slide… because apparently no one was assigned that job.
So with only the Auctioneer’s verbal description, and a PowerPoint slide, it appeared that few people in the room had any idea about what we were selling… or when we were selling it… until it was announced by the Auctioneer. As a result, bidding was extremely light and the final results fell several thousands of dollars short of where they should have been
The learning experience is this:
The Live Auction is where you place your better items, and where the real money should be made at any Fundraising Auction. Let bidders know as far in advance as possible what you will be selling, and the order of sale, so they can get excited about the Auction, and plan their bidding strategy accordingly.
Auction Listings are absolutely vital to the success of both Live & Silent Auctions. In my opinion, revenues at this Auction fell thousands of dollars short of where they should have been, because no Auction Listing was provided to the guests.
If bidders are not perfectly clear on what is being sold, including both the item’s specifics, benefits, and restrictions, they will not bid.
When you have a committee of volunteers, especially volunteers having full time jobs and/or very busy schedules, the services of a professional Fundraising Auctioneer can help to keep the committee on track.
And once you retain the services of a professional Fundraising Auctioneer… use the services that you are paying for.
6 Advantages of Pay Per Click Advertising
What are the main advantages to be had from marketing your business online via pay per click advertising?
1. Anything from a local to global audience at the touch of a button
The first top advantage of pay per click advertising is that worth nothing is the fact that you can easily select the focus and scale of your target audience at the click of a button in your account.
If you want to focus your online advertising on a small, localized area, within a few square miles of your business or store, you can choose to do so. If you want to advertise your products or services across more than one continent, you can choose to do so thanks to the technical advantages of PPC.
Being able to geographically target your audience is a huge pay per click advertising advantage, particularly because the boundaries that you set can be changed at any time. There are also lots of other ways to continue targeting your audience, such as their social or cultural preferences which can be gleaned from your audience’s social networking activities for example.
When using print advertising or other forms of online advertising, it is very difficult to get this kind of control over your target audience. The advantage is in the control and freedom that you have regarding geographical targeting.
2. Online advertising that is financially accessible to all
The second main advantage is the fact that you can advertise via pay per click regardless of your budget.
PPC is an effective form of online advertising that can be run on anything from a few dollars a month to millions of dollars a month. Regardless of the amount of money that you spend on your pay per click advertising, it can also still be highly successful, which is another advantage to bear in mind.
It is not how much money you spend that counts. It is how that money which you invest is spent which will start to bring in new clients and new customers to your business.
The advantage of paid search advertising as opposed to other kinds of online advertising or print advertising is the fact that you can achieve fantastic results from that advertising on any budget whatsoever.
3. Making changes is quick and easy
If you use print advertising to market your business, it is very difficult, expensive and time-consuming when you want to make changes to that advertising campaign. When you advertise, the third advantage is the fact that making changes to your campaign costs nothing (unless you are changing how much you are spending) and can be done at the click of a mouse.
You can make changes to the advertisement text within your advertisements, you can make changes to the times of day when your advertisements are shown, you can make changes to the landing pages on your website that your advertisements lead to. All of these changes can be made within a few minutes. It is that simple.
The list of what you can change is endless and therefore the advantage lies in the ease and speed at which you can market your business via this medium.
4. Development and improvement using advertising tools is never ending
The fourth advantage comes in the form of ppc tools which are under constant development and designed to make your pay per click advertising campaigns even more successful every time.
For example, if you need help optimizing your campaigns, you can use Google Analytics to make sure that you make informed decisions. You can also use other pay per click advertising tools to run a second campaign in secret for a period of time. In this way you can test out theories for that campaign to see what kind of results you might get from that campaign. All of this can be done as a test run without actually running the campaign for real and having to invest money into it.
Paid search experts are developing and improving these tools every day. These developments are never ending. The constant development behind the scenes is another clear advantage for all the advertisers who market their businesses using this medium.
Feeling constantly supported is nothing but a clear advantage to be had from marketing via this kind of advertising.
5. Online advertising that can be managed by advertising experts
In addition to all the advantages outlined above, one of the most important advantages is that you can outsource your needs to experts in the field. This then frees up your time to concentrate fully on running your business and you can also be safe in the knowledge that the best of the best are in control of your campaign from the very beginning.
People choose to outsource their pay per click advertising needs to our firm because they know that with our help their advertising is going to be more successful. We are trained, experienced and knowledgeable so that you don’t have to be.
6. Google AdWords campaigns and Google AdWords marketing
It is highly recommended that you choose to advertise your business via Google AdWords for the following reasons.
One of the advantages of Google AdWords relates to the fact that Google is the largest search engine in the world. Therefore if you want to make sure that your advertising is seen by your target audience, you have the best possible chance of doing so via Google.
Through AdWords the advantage is that you can either market your business via text-based advertisements or advertisements too. The Google Display Network is huge and full of effective image advertisements run by a whole host of advertisers all over the world.