Best Home Based Business Tips

Congratulations! You have decided to start your Small Home Office Business.

It's a big step to financial and personal freedom but, the first steps come with responsibility.

The hardest step for any entrepreneur that wants to work from home is to create an organized plan of action or action plan. This action plan include instructions on operating your SOHO on a daily basis, resources that are used and needed for structure of your company, personnel requirements (if needed) and various other concepts.

The action plan is part of your administrative setup and should consist of the following four areas:

Executive Plans of Action - The executive part of the action plan explains what you must do and achieve to register your business, set up business accounts and develop networks to support your business.

Even though it is called the Executive Plan, it is really the plan of the owner and what the owner must do and consider getting the business off and running.

Mission Statement - Your mission statement is simply what the business does and how you are going to carry out the objective of your business. Whether you are a SOHO or a big corporation, you must have a mission statement to keep focused on the vision that you see and are going to establish.

Operational Plans of Action - This area of your plan should define how you are going to operate your business each day. Includes listing the kind of resources that you need to operate (contracts, procedures, statement of work for customers, software and equipment).

Financial Goals and Objectives

Every business needs to know financially where it stands, Financial goals and objectives will assist you in developing your marketing plan, seek new customers, create new products or services of modify existing products and services.

For any business to be effective, you must have these four areas at least defined. They don't have to be formal like a 50 million dollar corporation but this is a good area to start in if you are going to be serious about growing and expanding your business later.

Many entrepreneurs stumble at this initial phase because they are so excited about starting a business into they rush head in and don't think about these elements that are sorely needed.

In each of those areas, you should set at least 10 goals for the year and work towards those goals. Just write them out on a sheet of paper and have it handy so that you can follow your goals and make the proper adjustments.

The importance of the visual presentation of the information on your site cannot be underestimated. The first impression to your audience is strong and memorable whether it is good or not.

Unattractive websites can be a turn off. Many people think that if you didn't place any effort in making your business look good, chances are you won't care much about servicing your clients. Even more important, your website appearance can be utilized to evoke certain emotions in people; help building trust, emphasize on your marketing message, and as a result affect your sales.

Have you ever gone to a website where the information seemed to relate to your needs, visually was very appealing, but it was impossible to figure out how to get what you went there for at the first place?

Front end usability plays an important role in the effectiveness of your site to generate leads. Consumed by today's busy life most people simply do not have time to search for the information that they need. Information should be displayed in clear type, normal size letters and in contrast to the design. Most significantly important marketing messages must be prominent and clear.

Navigation must be easy to understand. The user should be able to get to any area of your site in no more then 2-3 mouse clicks. For complex and multi level navigation it is a good idea to use a "bread crumb" indicator displaying the current position on the website.

For example, when a website visitor is on your contact page, instead of displaying just a page titled "Contact Us" you may want to display:
Home > About the company > CONTACT US

This visually represents that visitor at the "Contact Us" page located in "About the company" section.

When a visitor is inclined to make a purchase you need to provide tools to fulfill users' request. Whether it is a complex shopping cart solution or a simple contact form it is necessary to have fool proof systems in place.

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.

As a business owner, you must understand the basics of the American tax system or you might run into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

If you don't understand how your taxes should be paid, it would be a good idea to consult a tax accountant that knows the IRS laws concerning payment of taxes and shelters. Tax accountants can also tell you what can or cannot be deducted.

The tax code differs according to the type of structure that you have determined your business to be. There are several structures that will determine how your taxes are handled. Those structures are Sole Proprietorship, Limited Liability Partnerships, S and C Corporations and Limited Liability Corporation.

Sole Proprietorship - This is probably the oldest form of business ownership dating back to pre-historic man and it's a simple one. There are no partners, investors or stockholders. It's just a person running and owning their business with the all the responsibility and liability in their hands.

The business stops when the sole proprietor dies. That's it unless he or she has in their will that a certain person can come along and run the business assuming the assets and liabilities. Sole proprietors usually pay higher taxes than the other business structures that are discussed here.

Limited Liability Partnership - A Limited Liability Partnership is just what it says. It has the formation of a basic partnership agreement, kind of like a handshake on paper but the difference is that the LLP can be responsible for the debts ran up within the business and the partners not be held accountable. The tax liability is different in an LLP and the partners have a right to manage the business directly.

S or C- Corporations - The difference between S and corporation is that a C corporation is taxed by Federal Corporate Income tax standards. The amount of shareholders you can have in an S corporation is unlimited and you can have foreign shareholders having stock within the corporation.

An S-Corporation is not taxed by the Federal Corporate Income tax standards.S Corporations are taxed according gto the rules and regulations in Subchapter S of the Internal Revenue Code. An S-Corporation pays no corporate income tax on any profits that the company makes and the shareholders bear the brunt of paying taxes on their shares. Taxes are still paid whether the shareholders or S-corporation is making money or not.

Limited Liability Corporation - This is the newest form of corporation to come along within the past fifteen to twenty years and this is what the majority of SOHO owners and business people set their business structure with. The Limited Liability Corporation is a hybrid structure that has the flexibility of a sole proprietorship and the management of a partnership.

A manager or owner in a limited liability corporation as treated as the entity and a limited liability corporation with multiple managers is treated the same way as as Limited Liability Partnership. A Limited Liabilitity Corporation can defeat the concept of double taxation for your business.

These are the structures that you should study and incorporate into your SOHO strategic plan.