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There are so many marketing opportunities for SOHO business owners. Technology has provided the SOHO business owners with new avenues to inform existing and new customers about products and services through e-mail, e-newsletters and web-sites. This has opened the door to doing business with corporations, especially the biggest corporation of all, the United States Government.

The United States Government are the biggest buyers of goods and services in the whole world! There are so many branches of government that buy items from aircrafts to pencils; from glue to CD players. The U.S.Government is one big shopper with millions of items and money.

You can obtain clients for your goods and services through the U.S. Small Business Administrations web-site by signing up on Pro-Net, the automated notification system that informs a business owner on government contracting opportunities.

The first step is to obtain your Duns and Bradstreet number which acts as a corporate social security number. The Duns number will assist you in establishing business credit with various suppliers and businesses. After obtaining your Duns number, you can go to the U.S Small Admistration to register your company information on line such as, the name of business, tax identification code address, type of business and Duns number. Just a note of caution, you cannot register in Pro-Net without a Duns Identification Number.

The automated Pro-Net form will ask you for certain items, such as NAIC codes. NAIC codes are codes that tell government buyers what kind of products and services you provide. The NAIC Codes are layered in table so that they are easily readable and selected. After you input your NAIC codes, the rest of the form asks for basic information. You can be notified by email of contracting opportunities or bookmark their web-site daily to see if you are interested on any project in your business field that the procurement system may have.

In your marketing plan, you should include all levels of government procurement systems. The government can help your business grow.

All states have created business and economic initiatives to grow their economies which add to the overall economic health and well being of their communities.

During the past twenty years, the Federal Government through the Small Business Administration (SBA) has created opportunities for small business owners to get assistance in developing their business. This plan has been extended the last seven years to include SOHO’s.

The way that the process works is that the SBA works with the State and Local offices of economic development in your city to establish various programs to help your business or SOHO. This is not given to anyone in the form of free grant money, which is really an illusion! By the way, don’t fall for those things that you hear on television about free grant money from the government to start your business! The money goes to the state or local agency to develop educational programs or incubators for you to get your training in areas of business and most times, you still have to pay a fee.

This is how the system works:

1. Each year, Congress appropriates the amount of money for small business development in the form of state or community block grants.

2. The money is then divided up at the state level and administered at the local level. Many municipalities merge their economic and business development efforts to maximize their resources.

3. Existing programs (such as SBA seminars on small business development) are funded. Much of the money is towards administrative costs and setting up training programs for businesses in the community.

4. Some great programs are established, such as, loan pool programs for people that don’t have sufficient credit. Those programs start by providing loans at $500.00 dollars providing that the person attends a financial course in business money management.

5. Other local programs are funded that benefit small businesses and SOHO’s. For example, counselors are made available and some cities have consultants on staff (legal, accounting, administration, contract management) that will assist you in the area that you need help in for a small fee that is very reasonable.

The best bet is to call the local SBA office or state economic development office to find the resources available for you to use and add them to your SOHO operations plan.

SOHO business owners have more power than business owners that started their businesses ten years ago. People that are starting small businesses at home have access to more technology that is Windows based, making it easier to learn applications with a small learning curve.

It’s important that you understand that you must market your services using the internet. Let’s discuss marketing to existing clients by using a tool that is very good in gauging client response, the e-Newsletter.

In the old days B.I. (Before Internet), a small business owner had to hire a graphics designer to layout a newsletter or mini catalog for their existing customer base. The cost of creating a paper newsletter were staggering because the graphic artist had to layout the template, add color and put graphics in the newsletter.

Then, the small business owner had to pay postage to send the newsletter to clients or existing customers. This basically was a hit or miss scenario and cost a lot of money. Small business owners usually groaned about the costs associated with creating newsletters and some owners dropped their newsletters.

Thanks to the internet, you can keep in contact with your existing customers and gain new customers. You can “capture” your customers’ information on your web-site and ask them to “opt-in” to receive your newsletter via email. The customer has a choice to say yes or no and if they say yes, there are several packages that you can use to create an online newsletter to send to them about your product or service all with the press of a button!

You don’t need to be a design expert because some of these templates come pre-designed! You can find basic templates at www.templatesbox.com . They have free web templates for e-newsletters or if you want to search finding free newsletters, just go to www.google.com or www.ask.com and type in the phrase “Free E-Newsletters”. There are a bunch of sites that offer these newsletters. Pick a design and see how simple it is!

You can highlight new products or services using e-newsletters. Why pay for paper newsletters when everyone is practically corresponding by email. Using e-newsletters is a more efficient way to reach your existing customers, expand your customer base and cut down publishing costs.

SOHO business entrepreneurs can use the internet to their advantage in areas of advertising, marketing and e-commerce. There is another area that needs to be mentioned and it’s an area that’s titled “Secure E-Commerce Transactions”.

It’s true that people are spending mass amounts of money online like never before! That means that there is profitability for you in whatever your goods or services are but people will feel more comfortable shopping on the internet knowing that their credit or debit card information won’t be compromised or stolen.

Secure system transactions have improved over the last five years making it safe for people to shop online at their favorite store or internet portal. It is your responsibility, as a business owner, to ensure your customer that their transactions are safe when they visit your web-site to shop for goods or services. E-Commerce security should be integrated your customer service plan.

When you select an e-commerce system, make sure the system is certified and has a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate. This program encrypts customer data and uses a private key to read it. In other words, if you have an SSL Certificate in your e-commerce system and your customer makes a transaction; their transaction is scrambled and encrypted so only that the server that has the private key can understand it. No outside sources can hack or break the encryption key.

You can buy an encryption certificate for a year and use it to protect all your customers’ e-commerce transactions. You should ask your host provider if their server support SSL Certificates at the server level which is where your web-site resides.

Verisign has the best SSL encryption services for financial transactions, e-commerce systems and data and voice infrastructure. All e-commerce web sites that are viable usually pick Verisign as their provider for site encryption.

You want your customer’s transactions to be safe. After all, it’s a big part of your business and your customer service operation.

Considering incorporation for your business. Business incorporation has its pros and cons but to make sure that the business incorporation goes smoothly, it is always smart to hire an attorney to assure yourself that the paperwork is filled out correctly and everything goes to plan.

The forms for business incorporation include articles of incorporation that conform to the state law. They must be filed with the correct state authorities, with the filing fees, initial franchise taxes and other initial fees. There are many advantages to going through the business incorporation process. One of the primary advantages is the limited liability the corporate entity affords its shareholders. With the shareholders not being liable for the debts of the corporation, shareholders are free of obligation to the company. Another advantage to incorporating your business is the fact that ownership of the corporation is easily transferable. If you decide after a year or two that you don’t want to have full responsibility for the corporation any more, you can sell it or have someone take over very easily.

While there are many benefits to business incorporation, there are also the downsides you have to face. The primary downside you will notice with a corporation is double taxation. Profits of a corporation are taxed twice when distributed to the shareholders; once as income to the corporation and another time as income to the shareholder. Other disadvantages to incorporating your business include the increase of paperwork and extensive record keeping that is required.

There are many different forms of corporation such as S and C but you should get an attorney to assist you in figuring out the best type of legal structure for your corporation. You should look at the tax bracket that you would be putting yourself in and take that under consideration.

For any SOHO business, accounting and keeping track of financial data is important. Many of your financial accounting packages are easy to use because of Graphical Interface User (GUI) technology. In other words, point at the picture in the program and it will basically prompt you on what the module does.

There are two programs that are leaders in the small business technology industry that SOHO business owners need to be familiar with. Let’s do a review of QuickBooks and Peachtree Accounting.

QuickBooks is the most common package that SOHO’s use. There are many different configurations for QuickBooks. There are versions for non-profits, versions for small office networks and versions that come with software that integrates into cash registers but we’ll talk about the basic small business version.

QuickBooks has an easy company setup. It provides you a list of company templates to use to set your company up. For example, if you are a consulting company, just pick the consulting company setup in QuickBooks and as quick as you can cook two minute grits, it’s done! No problem!

You can create extra accounts in the general ledger, load customers and vendors into databases within QuickBooks. QuickBooks has automated numbering for invoice and purchase orders so it’s easy to go back into the history files and see what’s going on. The report functions are pre-made and you can basically create custom reports from drop down modules in the reporting function.

Where QuickBooks falls short in the basic small business version, is the inventory feature. The inventory feature is good in the other QuickBooks package that supports small business terminals and inventory control.

Peachtree is the opposite. It’s a little more involved to setup up than QuickBooks but it has a dynamic inventory feature that allows you to create stock numbers and sub-part numbers if you’re a business that operates in any type of stock or manufacturing. It’s good for handling more advanced features of inventory control.

When you pick an accountant or bookkeeper, they will probably ask what type of system that you are using. There are certified QuickBooks and Peachtree Accountants so the choice is yours.

I recommended that SOHO owners take a basic automated accounting class through their local business development office or chamber to get familiar with these packages and then decide, based on their operations, which is the best package to get.

Many people are starting their SOHO businesses without having the proper legal structure in place which can come back to haunt them in the long run.

Most business owners that operate out of their home forget that they are a viable business entity and might need insurance to cover property and liability concerning their business. Most owners don’t take into consideration damages that could happen to equipment or data if disasters, such as fire, water or theft happens.You may need to update your insurance policy to include a rider that will cover business operations so that if anything happens, the business is covered, especially when it comes to data processing and storing a customer’s data at your home. If you have confidential files, you might want to create the extra security methods to store those files so that if something happens, the insurance will cover you and not hold you negligent in a court of law.

Another issue is tax deductions. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has changed several laws regarding tax deductions for a business which makes it harder to get tax deductions. To claim a business deduction on your taxes, you must designate a part of your home exclusively as your main location of business. The IRS changes this rule frequently so you should go to the www.irs.gov site to get current information. There are exceptions under the “exclusive rule” use. If you are storing inventory in your place of business, the IRS ruling is that space is a perpetual and common use for the business.

To take advantage of the business deductions, you must be in business between the years of two to five years. Within that time frame, you can deduct your common expenses such as office supplies, journals (professionals) and a car. The best bet is to check the latest IRS laws because they change from year to year.

The current IRS laws states that if you use your home for business purposes, the organization will look at it as an annexed piece of property. This means that you have to have separate filing systems for business and personal items.

Tax issues can be complex to understand at times regarding SOHO’s. For more information, you can contact your local SBA office or go to the Internal Revenue Web-site at www.irs.gov .

It Takes Discipline!

Working from home is no easy task at all. Many people admire others that run their business from the basement or upstairs in their bedroom. Psychologically, it’s a hard thing to do and as a SOHO business, you must take into consideration many factors while doing the best service that you can give to a person.

There is no supervision. SOHO owners don’t have bosses telling them what to do or looking over their shoulder. This is a shock for most SOHO owners because when they start their business, they are expecting a partner to come along and boost their mentality.
This calls for having the discipline to work by yourself and being accountable to yourself.

Many times, you will feel like you’re on an island with no one to turn or talk to. The work days can be long and as you go past the bathroom, you notice that the bed you just got out of you is beckoning you back into it but you’ve got eight assessments that you have to do! Now that’s tempting!

Then there is the issue of pets. Most pets, such as dogs, love major attention and sometimes you have to stop and provide your dog or cat with attention which could cut into your work period. You also have other “unpleasant” activities, such as the urge to see Judge Judy, Judge Mathis or a rerun of the Avengers on the A&E channel.

But you must put all of this aside and think about the clients needs first. I think it’s a good idea to designate an extra bedroom or room as the official office. At 5:00pm, lock that office and continue on with your life. Make yourself have great work hours (9:00am – 5:00PM). After work, you can do whatever you want to do until it’s time to go to bed.

You have to be very disciplined when you work from home. It’s tougher to work from home than it is an office because you’re mostly by yourself but look at your office as a major player in the economy. It’s a place that people can come to find solutions and answers in the realm of small business.

If you don’t have a ton of upfront money and you really want to work for yourself – no partnership, no franchising, your work from home Internet business can still thrive in many freelance ventures.

The primary advantage to a freelance work at home Internet business, as opposed to affiliation with any other person or firm is that you are your own boss. The additional advantage is that you can generally keep your costs considerably less. Speed is another important ingredient in freelance work. If you freelance, you can start your business quickly, and start making money quickly.

The first thing to do in order to start your freelance work from home Internet business is to decide on what business you will offer. You need to know your skills, your experience, your strengths and your interests. If you consider skills, experience and strength without consider interest you’ve lost the point of working for yourself. You’ll left drudgery behind and headed to more drudgery. What are you passionate about? What makes you happy?

These are the things that should be part of your work from home Internet business. Of course, it has to make marketing sense too. If you love scuba diving but your market area is the desert you might want to consider another business, market exclusively on the Internet to expand your market, or move.

The personal questions you need to ask yourself before you decide on the right work from home Internet business, or even if you’re a good candidate for a work at home Internet business, are the following:

* Am I self-motivated?
* Am I self-disciplined?
* Am I organized or can I learn organization skills?
* Can I maintain focus for an extended period of time even in the face of distractions and adversity?
* Do I have confidence in myself and my skills in the business area I have chosen?
* Will I be miserable working alone, without the camaraderie and affirmation of my work colleagues and supervisors?
* Is my skill or product marketable?
* How will my life and my family’s life be affected by my having a work from home Internet business?
* Am I financially ready for this – able to live for six months to a year before showing a profit?

If you’ve answered these questions in a positive way, a freelance work from home Internet business is probably for you. The most prominent freelance work from home Internet business ventures are jobs for: writers; editors; copywriters; designers; virtual call center reps offering inbound or outbound sales, customer service or technical support services; and computer professionals such as programmers, designers and Webmasters. Hundreds of other freelance work from home Internet business types exist, however, in dozens of varying industries. If you want to work from home at your very own Internet business an opportunity awaits you somewhere

Denise’s Floral Arrangements is a home based business that provides silk floral arrangements for weddings, corporate events and banquets. Denise is thinking about a web-site to promote her products and services.

Denise also makes floral arrangements for shipment and she wants to feature this service and product on her web site. She has made the decision that she can make the arrangement and ship the product in specialized boxes to customers around the world. She has heard that the customers can pay for the items online and once she gets notification of payment received, she can ship the item.

What Denise needs is an e-commerce shopping cart function that will assist her in selling her items and services online to people around the world. This would really complete her web-site and turn it into a virtual silk floral arrangement store that people can also purchase items from!

So how would a shopping cart benefit Denise web presence?

A customer visits her site. On the front end of her site, she has a few special floral arrangements on the home page for sale. This entices the customer to look or shop further. On her web-site, she categorizes the arrangements depending on the type of function the arrangement is for. One link would have wedding arrangements; another would have banquet or hotel arrangements.

When the customer browses through the site, they are really going up and down the aisle of a store. They may find a secondary item that they need and might add that to their basket. Each item in the store has a description, with the price tag and a picture of what it looks like. This beats going down the aisle at your local shopping mall without all the people hassling you or running you off the aisles with grocery carts!

The customer can put the item in their “virtual cart” and once they are finished, proceed to the checkout area which allows them to pay for the item. The shopping cart program walks them through the process, provides them with an online receipt and Denise gets a confirmation to ship the individuals order!