Could your home based business use some help? A little jolt to make you jump for joy?

We thought so.

Here it is, all free and all organized. Start clicking!

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How to Start a Home Based Business

10 Signs that You are Ready to Start a Home Based Business – How to know if it’s truly time to hang up those shiny work shoes and trade them for your favorite flip flops.

Top 10 Internet Home Business Ideas You Can Start and Run in Your Underwear – Our all-time most popular article here at Sparkplugging, and with good reason. It’s a starter list of ideas anyone can use to get up and running in a home biz.

10 More Work at Home Internet Business Ideas You Can Do in Your Fuzzy Bunny Slippers – In case you prefer the mental imagery of cute rabbit feet over scratchy long johns (or whatever usually snuggles your undercarriage).

The Truth about Starting a Home Based Business – And the truth shall set you free!

Find the Right Home-Based Business to Start – With so many ideas floating around in your noggin, how will you know which one is the best? This guide will get you started on the right track.

How to Quit Your Job to Run a Home Based Business

10 Signs that You Should Quit Your Job to Work at Home – Wondering whether you should stick it to your boss? This article will help you decide.

How to Leave Your Job & Take the Freelance Plunge in 6 Months – A great mid- to long-term strategy to get you out of the cubicle and onto your living room couch.

How to Achieve Home Based Business Success

Top Ten Key Success Ingredients for Home Based Businesses – What really goes into making up a successful business for work at home folks.

10 Free Resources to Start or Grow a Home Based Business – Because this list can’t possibly hold them all. Hop on over to that post for even more helpful links.

A Productive and Organized Home Office – How to create a work space that actually helps you work.

Why do Entrepreneurs Need Inspiration? – Thoughts on the power of inspiration in determining your level of professional success.

The Virtual Assistant A Team: The Helpers to Business Success – How and where to assemble an awe-inspiring team of VAs to help you automate as much of your own business processes as possible.

Marketing Your Home Based Business

Free Market Research for Your Home Based Business – How to conduct research and find out what people truly want that matches what you can offer.

Free Market Research, Part II: Demographics – How to discover more about your prospective customers.

How to Save Money in Your Home Based Business

Energy Efficiency Saves Home Business Owners Valuable Dollars – How to take advantage of special rules that reward energy-efficient home businesses.

5 Strategic Ways to Lower Your Business Taxes – And keep more cash in your wallet.

How to Overcome Stress and Failure in Home Based Business

10 Questions to Ask Yourself When You Feel Your Home Based Business is Failing – We all struggle with feelings of failure at some point. Here are 10 great questions to ask yourself to help you respond to and overcome those feelings.

Work From Home? Don’t Sweat It – How to not go crazy while working from home.

Top Ten Working from Home Mistakes – Do you make any of these errors in your work at home business?

More Tips for Home Based Businesses

18 Amazing Articles to Help You Work at Home – Yes, even more articles to help you out! We’re pulling out all the stops with this article.

How to Show Up in the Google Local Business Directory – This can be a great way to strengthen your brand, increase traffic to your business website, and grow your business.

When we think Calendars, we often think our personal calendars, using it to manage our promotional calendar or share with our virtual assistants or project partners. But it doesn’t always have to be that ‘dry’. Many marketers online use PDF’s, videos and audios to get their message out, hope they turn viral which eventually brings traffic back to their web sites and their name in front of others. This method works and works well. Guess what? Content can be in other formats too like calendars.

Here are a few example ideas I came up with that you can use a shared Google Calendar to help promote your web site or business.

• If you are a speaker, publish a speaking schedule. You are probably already doing that through Google Calendar already. Maybe you are publishing the calendar to your website. If you are, people can also subscribe to the calendar via Google Calendars or iCal. Promote and publish those links too.
• Is your site or blog all about soccer? Create a calendar around the different soccer matches either around the world or the locality that your readers are most interested in. Let them know how they can subscribe to that calendar.
• Maybe your visitors are mostly business people or marketers. How about creating a calendar that shows when quarterly taxes are due, a reminder when to start their holiday marketing planning and when to start promoting? Enter the dates and weeks of holidays and observances they can use for promotions.
• Similarly, if your visitors are moms, how about a calendar with suggestions of places to visit, things to do, seasonal reminders or shopping and menu plans.
• If you are a coach. Create a calendar around a program let’s say, a 60 day organizing program that users can subscribe to and they be reminded or things they need to do each day or each week to help them move along.

Use your imagination. Think of the calendar as a free reminder tool for your visitors. Remember that you can enter a link in Google Calendar entries. This can encourage subscribed users to click through to visit your site, an offer or simply lead people to read old but timely posts.

Don’t think it would work? This is the third year I am creating a calendar for bloggers of the many blogging opportunities throughout the year. It is very popular and I get people asking when it will be updated each year. Great tool to keep you in front of your audience at all times through the year as well. You can get a PDF copy of this calendar as an example for your own project. This year, I will be creating both PDF and a online ‘live’ version using Google Calendar.

Image courtesy of yalcin Eren

Lynette enjoys discovering new ways to use technology or new technologies to use in a business and in turn help her clients apply them. You can find also Lynette at her blog, Twitter and Facebook

It has been so many years since I’ve used Excel. These days, OpenOffice Calc is used exclusively around here. Still, I can’t deny there are some pretty cool things about Excel. Not saying Calc is not a good tool, there are just a lot of cool features and functions that I miss. Also, documentation and help is a little sparse with Ooo. I’m far from a spreadsheet guru. I can create formulas in spreadsheets and use it to help tabulate a bunch of stuff – my household budget is run on a spreadsheet, but that’s about it. Guess I just never found the reason to chart stuff until today…

After paying a visit to Pointy Haired Dilbert’s blog. WHOA! Now this guy can chart! From cool management dashboards to project management to creating a Twitter client with Excel? Now that is something interesting.

He’s also got a bunch of downloadable templates you can grab and utilize for your business. Kinda want to make me finally break down and get a copy of Excel. Well… maybe I’ll just go make a dashboard. That’s something I’ve found that I need to keep me on track lately.

Lynette enjoys discovering new ways to use technology or new technologies to use in a business and in turn help her clients apply them. You can find also Lynette at her blog, Twitter and Facebook

This is a guest post by Scott Tousignant

Would you like to get more done in less time with your work-at-home business so you can spend more time with your family doing the things that you enjoy most in life? Do you often dream of a balanced lifestyle that brings you success in wealth, health, and your relationships?

It’s time to make those dreams a reality so you can get on living the life that you deserve. The best part… it’s easier than you may think.

The key to increased productivity is to optimize your brain function. The more focused, alert, and efficient your brain operates, the quicker you will be able to get through your daily tasks.

The most effective tool that you can use to optimize your brain is exercise. But you don’t need to spend hours in the gym in order to boost your brain-power and increase your productivity. You only need 10 minutes.

Let’s put it to the test. I challenge you to take a 10-minute quickie break from the computer. Come on now… I know that you’ve got 10-minutes. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.

Here’s a fast and fun home office cardio workout that you can do right now. No excuses! It doesn’t require any equipment, it doesn’t require much space, and it doesn’t require much time.

OK, so how did it feel? Were your legs burning? Was your heart racing? Awesome!

Now it’s time to get back to work, feeling more energized and focused. You needed that break didn’t you? You feel pretty darn good about yourself to… right?

Please do me a favor and take mental notes on how this quickie 10-minute cardio session impacts the rest of your day. How it improves your productivity, quality of work, and time management.

Aside from your home business, I would love for you to share how the quickie home office cardio impacts your family. Did you have more energy to play with your kids or grandchildren?

The benefits of incorporating home office fitness into your workday are nearly limitless. This is a balanced lifestyle approach. You are using quick fitness to improve your business and quality time with your family. You really can have it all, and you deserve it! Begin today and experience a transformation in your business, fitness, and life.

You ROCK! Enjoy the experience!

Scott Tousignant, BHK has been helping busy work-at-home-moms and dads improve their #1 asset (HEALTH) for over a decade. Scott’s balanced and practical approach to fitness helps busy homepreneurs get more done in less time so you can spend more time doing what you enjoy most in life.

Backed by years of experience and the application of his education in human kinetics, Scott created Fat Loss Quickie, the fast fun home office fitness experience that will quickly transform you into the super-focused, highly productive, beautiful person you really are!

Now it doesn’t matter how busy you are… You’ll never have to neglect your health again!

Don’t you just hate it when someone sends you a file you cannot open? Lately, one of the annoying file formats that has popped up for me is .docx. Thankfully, Gmail does that. I love the fact that I can open most files directly in Gmail without downloading but that’s another post altogether. So you have a file on your hands you can’t open and just don’t want to install a clunky piece of software just to open it. What can you do?

If get these type of files often, you might want to have the OpenIT plugin for Firefox or Internet Explorer. It helps you open and edit documents without installing the software.

Give Zamzar a go. This is one of my favorites. Converts a boat load of file types. The list is huge. It’s also super easy to use, Upload the file, choose the output format, they’ll email you the converted document. It is free and they also have premium options that allow you to store the files and also use secure connection.

I’ve also discovered YouConvertIt. The converting online video option is cool.

Ever lost the original Word document to your PDF file? Or maybe a client wants to update a very old PDF and do not have access to the Word document anymore? Try PDFtoWord.

Hope they help and you can finally uninstall that pesky software you hardly use but ‘keep around’ just so you can open certain files.

Lynette enjoys discovering new ways to use technology or new technologies to use in a business and in turn help her clients apply them. You can find also Lynette at her blog, Twitter and Facebook

Tonight (Tuesday the 15th) at 9pm I’m kicking off a six week group coaching program that will lead a group of bloggers and new internet marketers through the steps to develop, promote and sell an entry level information product.

The program is my 42 Day Launch Incubator.  I created the curriculum last year, led my first group to great success and then made the whole thing available as a self study course.  The group coaching option is only available two or three times a year and I would love to have you join me for this session.

I know that there are literally hundreds of you reading this who have been thinking hard about creating an info product.  I don’t normally put a lot of pressure on you – but I want to apply some right now – fall is a great time to create a new product.

Maybe you want to create something like…

• A Beginner’s Guide to a Frugal Holiday Season
• Ten Simple Steps to Total Computer Security
• Sixteen Homeschool Science Projects Under $10 Each
• Top Blogging Secrets: How The Pros Get More Readers
• Five Videos You Should Star In This Fall And How It Will Help You Promote Your ________.
• Common Social Media Blunders And How To Come Back From Them
• Web Time Wasters: Tips for Getting More Done Online
• Turning a Wipeout into a Win!
• Top Guest Blogging Strategies For Traffic & Profits

Whatever it is that you’ve been thinking about sharing with others, I can help you chunk up the process and get it done at last.

Come check it out.

If you think “Direct Sales” means “One of Those Home Party Deals” think again. Home parties is only one of a plethora of platforms in which direct sales performs best.

Before I proceed, the caveat here is that if youre considering starting a direct sales business or are already in DS, please consultant with individual company policies and procedures to determine what methods are permissible for you.

I represent Scentsy and my private website is Thriving Candle Business. Our company is extremely forward thinking when it comes to innovation and ingenuity.  I know there are other direct selling companies who also embrace this philosophy.

My claim to fame (one of them, anyway) is that I have never done a home party or a book party since I started with Scentsy in 2006.  Thusly I know of what I speak when I say that there are plenty of home party alternatives that direct sellers can employ and still be very successful.

Whether you cant seem to get home party bookings or you simply dont have the desire for them, here are some suggestions on other ways you may be able to succeed in your direct sales business.

1. Internet Marketing. If you’re an Internet Marketer, you know of all the various techniques you can use.  The same holds true for direct sales.  If you’re not terribly experienced with Internet marketing but would love to learn, I highly recommend The Complete Internet Marketing Moms Start Up Guide!
2. Vendor Events. Vendor events could consist of a $10 table at a three-hour event or it could be a multiple-day event that could come with a financial investment of hundreds of dollars for a booth.
3. Displays. Set up a small display at a salon, apartment complex, office building, or other location that gets a great deal of foot traffic. We are not permitted to retail out of said locations but are allowed to set up a candle warmer, candle bar, room spray, car candle, scent samples and business cards.  The business owner may want to act as the hostess and collect orders or perhaps customers will just enjoy your products, take a business card and order online.
4. Fundraisers. Ensure it is a win/win situation.  If you can also make enough profit (not just break even) to cover your time and expenses, fundraisers can be a great way to gain additional exposure.  Too often though I see consultants give away the farm to a point where it actually is costing her money to put on a fundraiser with her company  – all in the name of acquiring new potential customers.
5. Advertising and PR. The former comes with a financial investment and the latter is generally free but requires something newsworthy to get noticed.  Both can provide a wonderful boost to your business if targeted properly.
6. One at a time. Most direct sellers will agree that home parties still afford you the opportunity to sell to many in a short amount of time.  If, however, that doesn’t work for you, remember how to eat an elephant  – one bite at a time!

As you see, Direct Sales doesn’t always have to mean One of Those Home Party Deals. Hopefully that will give you a little food for thought and perhaps cause you to take a second look at one of the fastest growing industries today!