Home Business Magazine Spring 2020

Your biggest challenge as a home-based entrepreneur is to reach the people who purchase your products or services. This hurdle used to be a lot easier, before the internet and social media saturated everything. Against all this background noise, it’s tougher than ever to make a meaningful connection with the lifeblood of your business. It’s no longer just enough to send your marketing message out. You must take decisive steps to ensure you are heard loud and clear in the world of “Marketing 2020.” With that in mind, our cover story for this Spring 2020 issue “Reach Your Customers” will help you to get more top of mind with those customers. Within our feature story, we cover marketing plans; marketing tactics; smart pricing; key elements for your website; deciding if you need…

Whether your target audience for your home-based business are called customers, clients, patients, or prospects, you need to determine who they are and how you’ll connect with them to sell your products or services. To paraphrase a line from Field of Dreams: just because you built it doesn’t mean they’ll come. You have to be proactive and systematic in reaching out to customers and you have to be smart with your marketing dollars. Making a Marketing Plan A marketing plan is a formal document describing your advertising and marketing efforts. Like a business plan, you don’t need a well written print copy of your ideas. You do need to think through each and every aspect of marketing so you can have a blueprint for your actions going forward. You’ve already done some…

Nowadays, managing a popular YouTube channel can be much more than just a hobby. For countless business-savvy YouTubers, it has become a lucrative, full-time profession. One such YouTube “vlogger”, Rachel Levin, has made a major name for herself in YouTube’s beauty arena. Her channel, RCLBeauty101, has amassed an enormous following of over 14 million loyal subscribers! Home Business Magazine recently caught up with Levin and got the inside scoop on her journey with her über-popular YouTube channel. She went on to share helpful tips for aspiring vloggers, exclusive insight on her exciting new musical endeavors (including a just-released single!) and more! Question (Q): You are known worldwide for your YouTube channel, RCLBeauty101. Tell us all about it! Rachel Levin (RL): “I’ve been doing You-Tube for 10 years! Which is crazy to think about.…

Spring is a time for renewal. The long winter has come and gone, replacing blustering winds, leafless trees and frosty mornings with newborn lambs and the first rays of summer. Flowers aren’t the only things that start to sprout up in spring though; it’s the perfect opportunity for a new small business to make its mark. Whether temporary or the start of a beautiful adventure, there are loads of small businesses you can start to make spring a more exciting, profitable season. 1. Easter-themed gifts What’s more spring than an Easter celebration? Launching an Easter-themed company is a great way to get some seasonal business and avoid the stress of having to think long-term. Selling Easter baskets is just one excellent money-maker at this time of year that arty types should absolutely look…

For Dr. Wei-Shin Lai, helping people live happy and healthy lives has always been her #1 goal. Pursuing a career in family medicine helped her fulfill this goal, but also came with some unintended side effects. One of the requirements of the job was that she would receive phone calls at all hours of the night from patients needing anything from prescription refills to advice and guidance. In time, Dr. Lai found that after taking these calls it was extremely difficult to fall back to sleep, leaving her foggy and making it hard to focus in the office the next day. As a solution to this problem, Dr. Lai’s husband, video game developer Jason Wolfe suggested she listen to calming, meditative music to help her relax. Unfortunately for her, headphones were…

After many years working for large corporations, Nathan Kelsey decided enough was enough. Tired of the ‘one size fits all’ approach often taken by larger companies, Nathan decided to pursue his passion of helping small and medium-sized businesses in a way he felt they deserved, and give something back to the community where he has lived his whole life. Nathan’s previous role as a Regional Manager for a global internet marketing company rewarded him with an incredible insight into how website design and SEO can be leveraged to help local businesses. Fortunate enough to be trained via experts from one of the world’s best-known online search organizations, Nathan had the confidence and knowledge to make the leap he sought into starting his own business. Some inheritance given to him from his…