The Definitive Guide To Choosing The Right Home Based Business - Part 5 of 6

The definite guide to choosing the right home based business opportunity simply boils down to the questions you ask yourself before you start your search. Understanding your goals for success, and how your perceive a home based business to get you there, will have a profound impact on your decision making process. In fact, knowing what you need ahead of time will make the process go much more smoothly, allowing you to weed out unsatisfactory business opportunities rapidly.

Note: There are no specific businesses listed in this article so your use of this guide is not hindered by a constant sales pitch. If you would like to discuss specific ideas, please contact the author within the profile area where you read this article.

The following lists distinctive aspects of a home based business that you should consider:

1. Primary Prospecting Source: Internet, Phone, or Direct Mail
2. Prospect Application Process: Free, Paid, Non-Existent
3. Commission Structure: Up-Front and Residual
4. System: Organization, Support, Accessibility, and Content
5. Leveraging Time, Capital, and Experience       <-- This Article
6. Marketing Style: Anonymous Sales vs. Personal Branding

5. Leveraging Time, Finances, and Experience

You hear and read the word "leveraging" a lot in the home based business community, but do you really know what it means? Would you be able to explain it to someone? Do you know how and why it is so important to you? I know I struggled with this term when I first started in my home business ventures. I thought it was a cool phrase to say to prospects to make myself look and sound smart, but I would undoubtedly freeze up when they would ask me to elaborate. I do not want you to go through that so this part of the "The Definitive Guide To Choosing The Right Home Based Business" will not only explain leveraging in terms of home business, but will also show you how to look for specific leveraging features when searching for the right home based business for you.

Leveraging is defined in TheFreeDictionary.com as "investing with borrowed money as a way to amplify potential gains (at the risk of greater losses)". Breaking it down to its root, leveraging is when you use borrowed resources in a way that will amplify that resource within you. For a home based business, there are three (3) main resources that encompass leveraging. Each of these resources are important, and business models that effectively leverage all three are idea, though not as common as we would like to see.

The 3 leveraging resources are:

1. Time
2. Capital
3. Experience

The first resource to be leveraged effectively by a home based business is "Time". Think about it using the following example. For my home based businesses, for every hour I spend both "on" (brainstorming new ideas) and "in" (day-to-day work) my business, I need to be able to measure an increased amount of unique visitors to my web sites, leads opting in to my system from the lead capture page, leads submitting an application, and applicants converting to full members. For the example of my home based businesses, I need to make sure that the actions I perform effectively increase all my measurable goals, so that over time, I can decrease the amount of time spent "in" my business so I can do the entrepreneur work "on" my business and also be able to spend more time with family and friends.

Business models to avoid are ones that only show an increase in these visitor, lead, applicant, and member metrics if you increase the time you put into your business. Conversely, businesses to avoid are those that drastically reduce those metrics as you decrease the time put in to your business. Remember, one of the benefits of a home based business is to increase the amount of time you can spend with family and friends. You surely do not want a business that takes 10 hours a day everyday to run.

The home business you choose should provide some or all of the following to leverage your time.

• Training on social media marketing specifically pertaining to your business model. This includes articles, press releases, videos, Twitter (with automated tools and APIs), Facebook (profile and pages), forum marketing, and so on. There are tons of information about how to market effectively with these social media, but your business back office system should have training specific to your business model so that your time is leveraged writing effective articles and press releases and producing relevant videos that drive traffic to your web site.

• A full suite of auto-responders (AWeber is best in my opinion, but I have friends in the business who use Constant Contact effectively). This is a great time leveraging tool. Auto-responders send scheduled emails to your opt-in leads. Your business should have an entire campaign set up for you to plug into your auto-responder account (or set of campaigns - one for leads and one for applicants if they use an application). Auto-responders send different emails continuously on a schedule (every few days, every week, every month, etc.) so your leads are being exposed to your business message even when you are not working on your business.

• Complete internet sales funnel, including lead capture page with video support, "thank you" page with video support, application submission page (optional if it fits your business model), business overview page with video support and final membership purchase instructions. Sales funnels are necessary in order for your business to do the "selling" for you. Any amount of time spent personally "selling" anything is a drain on your time.

• Google AdWords campaign that you can plug right in to your business once you are able to spend money to advertise and once you have enough articles, press releases, videos, and other social media published to keep you seen as an expert in your field.

• Training on time management so you are not spending hours rifling through email and doing Twitter and Facebook activity that is not for the purpose of promoting your business.

• Live business overview calls and a library of recorded webinars that are available to the public so you can send them to your leads without you having to spend time explaining your business system to hundreds of people every week.

• Call center that personally calls all your applicants so you only talk to those that are serious about your business and about being a successful entrepreneur. Let your business's call center close the deals while you do other things.

The second resource to be leveraged by a home business is "Capital", including both setup and marketing. Leveraging capital in a home based business refers to spending what you can comfortably afford on marketing tools and advertising that generates the most visitors, leads, applicants, and members. An effective home based business should provide services and tools that help you market more effectively.

The home business you choose should provide you with some or all of the following services to leverage your marketing capital.

• If you have a few thousand to spend on start-up, then your home business should provide services beyond the initial setup, including social media account setup, author services for your first few articles, a press release to get you started, and customized sales funnel headlines and text.

• Google AdWords campaign setup and activation. If using Google AdWords, be sure your lead capture page has enough unique content (custom headline and sales text) so Google does not shut your AdWords campaign down (know as the "Google Slap"). Google does not like affiliate landing pages that all look the same since they are a content relevancy based search engine. Before you start griping, this is a good thing. You want to stand out from your peers and target a specific niche effectively.

• Multiple income streams that vary greatly in scope as in quantity. You want multiple streams with actual metrics to show the business-wide average percentage of leads that turn into applications that turn into members that purchase the different products or membership upgrade levels at the source of your multiple income streams. With metrics, you can accurately track costs per lead and average revenue per lead and make your marketing adjustments accordingly.

• You can also reinvest all your business income in the first 3 to 6 months back into the automated portion of your business marketing, such as google AdWords, so your business starts to run for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week with little personal intervention.

• Personal coaching and not just mentoring through articles and videos, though those are helpful as well as a supplement to good hands-on coaching. Even if the coach is in the US and you are in Australia, if you are spending hundreds and maybe thousands of dollars on a home based business system, then you should expect a coach to use email, chat, and at least Skype to make connections and provide a business plan and marketing checklist and hold you accountable to it.

The third resource to be leveraged by a home based business is "Experience", mainly marketing experience. Unlike time and capital, where your own resources are leveraged, in the case of experience, it is the marketing experience of proven successful entrepreneurs in your specific business that is leveraged. This is a powerful way to go from marketing novice to master in as short as 3 to 6 months. Basically, expert marketers promote your business for you while you build your own experience on their backs to begin to personally brand yourself and seamlessly transition from borrowed expert entrepreneur branding to personal branding with you as the expert.

Home based businesses worth your time should have a handful of top producers willing to lend their name and image to your sales funnel, from lead capture page to business or product purchase page. Their videos are on your web sites. Their quotes are in your web pages. All your marketing is centered on their success in the system you chose. If your home based business is for serious entrepreneurs, they should have a system in place where you pick pre-arranged web site sales funnels based on expert successful marketers in your business model. This is especially invaluable for internet business owners who are new to the computer let alone the internet.

Remember that leveraging simply means to borrow a resource and apply it in a way that will amplify that resource within you. Use your "time" and borrow from your system's vast resources of guerrilla marketing training, templates and scripts to publish effective social marketing in a much shorter period of time than if you had no resources within your business system. Use your "capital" to position yourself well in your business to earn the highest profits from the most income streams and invest in marketing automation. Use the borrowed "experience" from the successful elite marketers in your business system to promote your product, service, and/or opportunity while you learn the ropes and can start transitioning to personal branding. The more resources you can leverage, the more resources are available to you to help you reach your goals financial freedom can provide.