Yes, it is true that operating a home based business can be challenging yet rewarding in the same instance. Even though it can at times be utter chaos running your own business, there are some tools which you can use to make your life easier. For instance, if you operate a home based business in which you need to constantly ship packages to your customers, it makes sense to set yourself up with a digital scale and a method to print off shipping labels from your computer. Such a step can save several hours over the course of a month.To understand what I am talking about, let us look at two different scenarios. The first scenario is one which requires that you pile your packages into the car, drive to the post office or wherever you ship out of, stand in line, have your packages weighed, purchase labels, get back into your car, and drive back home. The second scenario is one which requires that you turn on your digital scale, weigh the packages that you plan to ship, print off the shipping labels from your computer, and have these packages picked up at your house by your shipping company. Which scenario do you think is more time efficient? Of course, the second scenario. Saving this much time per week is the equivalent to hiring a part-time employee. Except, you do not have the expense.The key to running a successful home based business is efficiency. Having everything that you need within your grasp in an important aspect of efficiency and optimal time management. Thus, you should always take the time to keep an inventory of the supplies which you use on a daily basis so that you do not have to constantly interrupt your work when you run out. A good idea is to purchase your supplies in bulk. Not only does purchasing supplies in bulk minimize trips to the store, it also enables you to cut cost. Some supply companies will even deliver your products straight to your door, saving you even more time.You should also take steps to identify what adds value to your home based business, and what does not. For instance, if you find that you are taking a great deal of time and effort to send a weekly newsletter to your customers, and very few customers are subscribing to this newsletter, it might be a good time to re-evaluate. Perhaps your customers do not want such frequent contact. Maybe it is a good idea to go with a monthly newsletter, rather than weekly. No only will this afford you more time, it may lead to more subscribers.Above all, make sure that you are offering stellar customer service and solid products to the customers of your home based business. This will lead to their ultimate satisfaction with your company. Keep in mind that your customers are the only reason why you remain in business. By taking the time to make your home based business more efficient, you can spend more time catering to the needs of your customers.

Marketing includes matters such as pricing and packaging of the product and creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns. There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely secondary to the above.

If you take the freelance route, it is important to ensure that all rights to profit from the final product, or any materials produced in its making, remain yours. Bookkeeping, physical product creation or delivery of goods can be done better with specialized help. Determining the purpose of the product is vital in niche product creation.

Implementation of Methodology – The choice of implementation of Six Sigma methodology depends on whether development is required on existing processes (DMAIC) or on new process/product design creation (DMADV). Determining what you really want to sell, something that you can be relaxed selling is the first step at the creation of a niche product. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts; to complete turnkey solutions, there is no excessive need to worry about spending time on the actual product sold to the customer.

For instance, you should be prepared to either perform yourself or to subcontract the completion of the following tasks:- Product idea research (are there any existing products or patents already existing for this idea)- Product specification document training (what it will do, how it will look, how will it be powered, and how the user will interface with it)- Marketing study (what it will be named, who would buy this, how much would they pay, how will we get customers to purchase the product)- Schematic or electronic circuit design process- Creation of a bill of material or BOM and an approved vendor’s list or AVL for each component in the design, preferably with multiple sources identified, with a BOM and AVL for each assembly level in the product- Printed circuit board layout design process (single sided board, double sided board, or multilayer board; size of the PCB; board material)- Mechanical packaging design with user interfaces (displays, buttons, switches, key. This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer.

No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. Your chosen niche should allow for the creation of more than one product or service.

There are several marketing strategies that are necessary in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site – Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers – Effective use of auto responders (generate automatic email messages) – Online Newsletter – Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect’s email address – Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product) – Advertisement (Ad) Tracking – Back End Sales – Affiliate program etc.

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.