Every Saturday, we´ll be taking a look at a step towards building your own home business. I know there are a lot of moms out there who would like to be work at home moms, but just aren´t sure how to go about it, so this From Work to Home series is designed to take you from developing a business idea to leaving your outside job. You can see a list of all articles in this series, with links to the articles as they are written, here.

Taking Your Business Idea to the Next Level

In our first step, you chose a business idea. Now it´s time to expand that idea a bit and see where it takes you and if it can be turned into a valid business. This is where your ideas become great or fade to nothing at all.

First of all, get a pad of paper. While working on the computer is nice, there are times when an old-fashioned pen and paper have no equal.

Step One: What Will Your Business Do?

Write down all your thoughts on what your business will offer. Is it service related? Product related? Just write down everything you can think of, even if you feel that some of the items are too big to start with. Let´s take a look at an example.

Since I´m a freelance writer, that´s the example I´ll be using, as it is the one I know best. Here is what my pad of paper might look like:

• Provides a service, rather than a product
• Offer custom rewrites of PLR materials
• Offer unique articles,
• SEO articles, with keywords
• Website content
• Blogging
• Ebook writing services
• Submit articles to websites like Constant Content
• Write own ebooks to sell or give away with links

As you can see, some of the ideas could be implemented immediately, while others would be better to wait a bit. In my case, I actually started out doing just unique and SEO articles.

Step Two: Who is Your Target Market?

Deciding who you will be targeting as a market is extremely important. Knowing who will be buying your products or services will help you create your publicity and find clients. You´ll need to go to where your clients are.

My example:

•  Websites that need content
• Online businesses looking for backlinks (via article directories)
• Businesses wanting short articles for their email newsletters
• Blog owners who can´t or don´t want to write their own blogs

Step Three: How Will You Market Your Business?

Each business will require different methods of promotion. You can find plenty of idea for promoting and marketing your business right here on this blog, just check out the Promotion category.  You may want a combination of techniques, such as flyers and a newspaper ad, plus a website.

With the freelance writing example, I actually just applied for most of my jobs, but you could also put up a resume on places like Elance, Guru and other writer´s job boards. Having a website to show examples of your work is also a very good idea if you are a freelancer.

Step Four: What Is Your Next Step?

Now that you have a clear idea of what you will offer with your business, how to market it and to who, you need to determine what your next step will be. What can you do to start towards the goal of running your own home business?

In our example, I could start now by writing some sample articles, doing up a simple website with my samples on it and contact information. This would be used later to show potential clients what I´m capable of and is something that I did use at the beginning of my freelance writing career. Now I point potential clients to my blogs to show them examples of my work.

You can see a list of all articles in this series, with links to the articles as they are written, here.

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