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Finding Home-based Business Success!
The 7-Personalities of Home-based Business
Know Yourself
There are seven major classes of player on the Web in the home-based business space. We will treat them individually but in the real world they interlink and many businesses get started in one personality and then hire others as suppliers or partners. They are:
1. The Producers typically have a background in traditional business or a passion for something concrete that they want to share with the world. That passion could be for gambling strategies, gardening, business strategy, and history - literally anything. The test is they tend to think about it in idle moments or find themselves returning to it as a way of passing spare time. Their passion is for the underlying product or the idea; not for the selling of it. This they see mainly as a way of exploiting their passion, indeed they may despise or fear involvement with the selling process – to their own cost.
Producers create and sell an offering that ranges from e-books (pure information and electronic) through software, to entertainment (gambling, games, even pornography), to ‘hard’ goods (everything from vitamin pills to billiard tables.)
Producers can create financial success from home without an organization if they treat their offerings professionally.
The Consultants are observers. They actually run very high risk businesses in the sense that their skills are continually eroding and every project is always finishing leaving them unemployed. The successful consulting business is based on relationship building and high degrees of trust. In the end they are coaches if they don’t degrade into being an extra pair of hands. To be a successful consultant, full time and from home, requires nerves of steel and very conservative financial habits to survive the droughts.
Consultants are a menagerie of self-professed experts in some aspect that supports the other players – web design, marketing plans, investment advice and so on. Consultants have a tough time making big money working from home if they don’t build an organization as they are restricted by the product they sell – time. In many respects, consultants are more of an offline business than online and are really suppliers. However, we have included them as many people retiring from work and many young people seeking income from their computer skills try this area
The Marketers are fascinated by the shifts and tides of the market place. They love the idea of pulling levers and seeing remote actions that lead to sales. They gravitate to the analytical aspects of business. Rarely are they in love with a particular product. The true marketer will be absorbing trend and shifts in the market often subconsciously.
Marketers focus on ‘traffic’; creating or buying it, concentrating it then selling it in various ways; often to ‘producers’ directly or indirectly through the medium of ‘affiliate marketing.’
Marketers are well placed to win financially on the web as they focus on the key issue – traffic building.
The Networkers (the best) are in love with people and helping them. They see people as the key to the sales process and they devote themselves to finding those people and nurturing them.
Networkers are typically involved with MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) schemes. They may be selling something legitimate and ‘hard’ (like nutrition products) for a well established company or they may get involved in pyramids that border on the illegal when the underlying product supply runs out.
Networkers often have to invest more time and energy than the others but they can be very successful particularly if they are focused on building residual income.
The Traders are in love with the transaction. Finding products that others want then enjoying the adrenalin rush of instant success or failure. On the web there is little or no face-to-face haggling (a poker-skill not all possess) opening the door to those who love the thrill and instant gratification of the ‘gamble’.
Traders are the devotees of eBay; classics of this kind. They may sell something they produce or buy from suppliers to resell or they may simply use the infrastructure created by eBay to open a ‘traditional’ storefront.
There are lots of stories of people making it big on eBay but the bulk find it tough. I suspect the big home-business winners are those who write books about it!!
The Investors are into analysis and making money in ways that are essentially rational and remote from people. Some simply love the gamble. Others at the shady end of web-investing simply see a way of profiting from the naïve greed of others.
Investors range from the genuine investor using the power of the web (e.g. day-traders) to the individuals who are attracted by (often sophisticated) ‘money-down-for-extraordinary-returns’ deals. These deals are often illegal Ponzi-schemes where the naïve are sucked in to enrich the early members.
The Commentators are the people who fill in surveys – by the thousand! They sell their views of the world for a few dollars or some free product. You really have to be fascinated by the tides of current issues to want to do that. Some merely feel important being asked (or stick with it for the easy income) but the best enjoy the ‘immediacy’ of the request of information.
Commentators are the least likely to make handsome returns on the web because of the nature of their activity – filling in forms and restricted by time available. There is no leverage in Commentator businesses.
Which group you fall into typically depends on what attracts you. But it also determines the scams that you have to survive. For example:
- If you are an Investor looking to ‘get-rich-quick’ you are easy meat for the Ponzi-scheme operator.
- If you are a Networker you can get sucked into pyramid MLMs and find yourself losing your life savings
- If you are a Trader you can find yourself holding garage sales to get rid of your failed inventory
Whichever group you chose to join you’ll have to develop the unique skills that will allow you to be successful. Simply turning up with your wallet open and your hand out is not good enough now – if it ever was, even in the early days of the web
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