In recent times there has been a sudden increase in the number of home-based business opportunities. In fact, nearly 50% of all small business owners work from home. According to a study, the home business industry is expanding and the revenue generated from this industry will increase by 17% yearly through the year 2008. Growth by such leaps and bounds has seen its share of scamsters along the way, claiming lots of unsuspecting victims. They succeed by typically playing on the inexperience and gullibility of wanna-be entrepreneurs, and roping them into participating in dubious ventures. If youre planning to start one, and have to choose between several proposals, first of all make sure that all the ideas are for a legitimate home based business.

To begin with, you might have trouble looking for the right business option but nevertheless, exercising few precautions can go a long way in making sure you choose the best program. So, how do you find a legitimate home based business in an ocean of fraudulent schemes?

Before you rush into something that might burn your fingers, take time to evaluate the business ideas. Some safety measures are:

Look for established businesses: Look for tried and tested business ideas that have been successful over a period of time. See if theres a good buzz around the business, or better still, try to talk to others who have a stake in it. If the business has been around for a bit, chances are that it is a genuine opportunity.

Keep a cut-off date for success: Sometimes, a proposal which might seem like a legitimate home based business on the surface may actually be a smokescreen for something more sinister. If youre already into it, but havent seen any returns so far, theres not much point pouring good money after bad. Most businesses that have a leg to stand on turn in a profit within a couple of years. Its wise to work to a deadline for success, failing which opt out of the business.

Get real: While consider competing offers, remember that the other parties will glorify their programs, so do remember to discount the hype. For example, a home business that promises you millions of dollars in next to no time is likely to be a get-rich-quick chimera. A legitimate home based business proposal will not offer implausible guarantees.

Check for reliability: Check the credibility of the business before you buy-in. Organizations like the Better Business Bureau can help you check a companys pedigree. Ask whether the business enjoys a good reputation among existing and prior members. Interact with customers or vendors to get some true feedback.

Try it out: A great way to suss out a legitimate home based business is to try out the product or service that is being offered. If the product is delivered as promised, and works satisfactorily, youre probably onto a good thing. If its one of those businesses where youre asked to send a check of $20 in the mail, and thats the last you hear of it, thank your lucky stars that you got away easily!

Today, advertising has become a medium for marketing a particular brand, product, service, event, business or even movies. Advertising has influenced our day to day lives and has so far provided a great impact upon our lifestyle as well. Whether it is about entertainment, festival, consumer goods, advertising has become the sole medium for promotion. With various forms, tools, techniques and mediums of advertising it has become easier for brands to get instant recognition in the market. Especially for consumer goods market advertising holds the sole responsibility of creating a buzz or reminder message about the brand to its target group.

If you look around and study you will realize how advertising has become an important factor for creating a brand experience in our mind. Every single business, brand or service holder advertises. Various movie makers even take huge help of advertising tools to promote their film in the market. And for political leaders, advertising is one effective tool to promote their political ideas among the masses. To sum up, it is already an open secret about how advertising has created a huge impact upon our lives.

Innovation is the key to success in any field of expertise. Be it any sector or organization, an innovative idea or strategy always takes the business to the forefront thereby creating a boom to the overall revenue of the particular organization or company. In brand advertising business, innovation plays a significant role. In fact, it is an innovative idea which is required to communicate to the target customers, influence their buying behaviours and finally convince them to adopt the product or brand. Besides innovation, there is one more factor which is again a key to successful brand advertising.

Any brand advertiser is aware of the fact that the first and foremost purpose of a brand advertising campaign is to capture the attention of customers by making them feel and think about the product. For this, the advertisers need to frame the brand message in such a way that it probes into the minds of the customers no sooner than they read it. But how is it possible? Creativity is the answer. An insightful creativity is also required to frame the brand communication in order to tickle the attention of the target customers.

Customers always seek to find something new in the brand message for which creativity is the only solution. But as mentioned above it should be insightful creativity, not some ordinary or complex one which will confuse the customers.

An innovative idea and an insightful creativity (in terms of design, message, approach) – these are two keys to successful advertising widely adopted by famous advertisers. Its quite a challenge (especially for existing brands) to convey the brand message to the same customers again and again. However, an innovative idea conveyed through a creative approach makes it easier for the brand advertiser to talk at ease about the brand to his target groups. Like leaves to the trees, like water to the ocean, innovation and creativity are to brand advertising. Cheers!

Thinking that you can achieve online business success with a plain website that simply displays your product is a big mistake you should remedy as early as now. With technology continuously evolving, consumers are expecting more and more from online shops.

They want the convenience of shopping from home yet an experience close to that when shopping at a local store. One of the things they look for is the assistance they get from staff.

They usually have questions and they want answers. One way to meet this need is to get a live chat for website.

THE CONVENIENCE OF LIVE CHAT

Live chat is convenient for consumers. Even when shopping online, many consumers want to get help (when they need it) from a real person. What is surprising is that most of them would choose live chat support over assistance via phone or email.

Live chat is just more convenient than dialing a toll free number or composing a long email that contains all their concerns. Moreover, live chat for website usually involves a shorter wait time than call centers.

Emails are usually answered within 24 to 48 hours. Consumers want prompt answers.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF CONSUMERS LOVE FOR LIVE CHAT

Take advantage of live chat support. With a live chat box on your website and a high number of consumers using it, you can double your sales and build or improve your customer base. It is best to have a team that can answer live chat queries 24/7.

While you can be offline, wont it be great for you and your potential customers if there is a communication channel available round the clock?

SAVE ON LIVE CHAT SOFTWARE

Live chat for website has become cheaper than ever with several companies that offer similar programs. You can find an affordable live chat software and get all the necessary features. Just do your part conduct research before making a purchase.

Compared with phone support, live chat offers big savings to business owners. For instance, when the line is breaking up, callers tend to hang up and businesses would have to make a callback, which costs a few bucks, to salvage the sale.

With live chat for website, costs are reduced because the average interaction cost is also reduced.Save on Payroll with livechat

Moreover, you can reduce payroll expenses. Skilled live chat support representatives can handle several chat sessions simultaneously. Some live chat programs offer canned responses, making answering frequently asked questions fast.

Whether you have just started your online business or have been online for quite a while and want to boost your conversion rate, getting live chat for website is definitely a wise thing to do.

Provide consumers a convenient way to reach you. While phone and email work, adding a live chat box to your website can help a lot, especially in establishing your involvement.

Take advantage of consumers love for live chat support by meeting their expectations in terms of the quality and speed of customer service. Save on customer service expenses and see your conversion rates and sales soar.

The 500 in 15 Live is a course designed specifically for the brand new Internet Marketer by Alex Malave. This domain was registered on July 13th 2009. His attempt with this video course he released is to teach people the common thread to online business and what all successful Internet Marketing and Entrepreneurs have in common. He believes that every successful Internet Marketer has their own product, a page that converts and lots of traffic.

The objective of 500 in 15 Live is to teach you these dynamics via video is the simplest way possible. He proved in his video via Google Analytics that he was able to generate over 12,000 visitors per month to just one of his websites. This is the first video I’ve ever watched that had a long list of criteria weeding out people that weren’t suited to become involved with Alex Malave’s program.

For example, if you have a list, website, can drive lots of traffic, like to reinvent the wheel or are in debt from purchasing lots of other IM products and are looking for a quick way out, he recommends you don’t purchase his course. He recommends going through the courses you already bought, applying those principles and start seeing results so you won’t end up suffering from Analysis Psoralysis.

His goal is to teach you how to have your first website up within 10 minutes with 500 In 15 Live. He believes a website is required in order to have any chance of success online. He’s also passionate about pointing out that once you learn the skills in this course, you will have a skill that will last you the rest of your life all by yourself by putting up a WordPress Blog.

Alex also believes that if you can drive targeted traffic to a webpage, that you will always be able to make sales online no matter how crappy your offer is. Lets say for example you drive 1000 visitors per month to a sales letter that converts at just 1% on a product you get paid $100.00 for. That’s an extra grand per month in your bank account.

He straight up says his plan is fail proof and newbie style, and that his videos will walk you through each step of the process, he was very clear on this too. He emphasizes the importance of following these steps closely when you are new. Being creative is not what this course is all about. It’s about following predefined simple action steps.

Alex Malave mentions that you can implement the steps in these videos inside of 20 minutes per day. He also mentions that there is software that will do all of the work for you instead of you doing it all yourself. You are really leveraging your time with the software so it’s no problem doing this if you are a full time student or work and support a family. You can get started with this system for $10.00 per month.

One of the other benefits of his program is he’s already done the niche research for you, so this course includes your own product and converting sales letter so you don’t have to worry about choosing your own niche market to get started in. His cost for getting started is only $10.00, and his current guarantee as of the time of this writing is that if you don’t get your first sale within 10 days he will paypal you $10.00, which is double what you spent with him.

So you are wondering if ACN is a scam huh? Well you are in the right place because I am going to give you a third party perspective about ACN.

Just so you know, I am not affiliated with ACN in any way whatsoever.

Is ACN A Scam?

This question is actually asked about almost every company in the network marketing industry. There are over 1,500 different network marketing companies and just about every single one of them face this same question.

WHY?

The reason network marketing companies like ACN go through so much scrutiny is because there are so many people who have negative feelings toward the company after their expectations were not met.

A lot of people will join ACN with the wrong expectations. They may join thinking that they will be rich in the next few months because it appears to be such a good company.

When these people pay their hard earned money to join ACN (or any other company), and their expectations are not met they tend to call ACN a scam.

Is ACN Really A Scam?

I guess it depends on who you ask? If you asked one of the top earners if ACN is a scam their answer would be much different than someone who tried and failed.

People have a natural tendency to blame outside circumstances when they fail. I am no different either. When I started in network marketing, I failed my butt off!

I spend thousands of dollars only to bang my head against the wall with marketing strategies that didnt work for me.

The truth is that ACN is not really a scam. It is a legitimate company with a great track record of success. This doesnt necessarily mean it will be the right opportunity for you, but it will provide you with the opportunity to achieve your goals if you work hard.

I bet you could ask any top earner in ACN or any network marketing company about their failures and they would have a long list of failure before they became successful.

I just about lost all of my friends when I started network marketing because I wouldnt stop harassing them about my opportunity. Luckily, I discovered that you can actually market your network marketing business online.

Can You Imagine Having More Leads Than You Could Even Talk To?

Back when I was making a list of my friends and family, I could have never imagined that the day would come when I would have more leads coming into my email inbox than I could possibly even follow up with.

Well it is possible and MUCH better than trying to talk my friends into the business. If you do decide to join ACN, you should definitely investigate the Empower Network. The Empower network is a viral blogging platform that will help you generate leads and upfront income for your business.

If you still think that ACN is a scam, then find an opportunity that you feel better about and learn to use the internet to market that opportunity.

About a month ago a friend of mine approached me with a business opportunity, it was with a company called Adzoo. Now this particular friend is not internet savvy to say the least. To be honest I don’t even think he owns a computer. He told me that the company affiliated of Google and even went so far as to refer to them as “Google’s little brother.” Now I knew something was wrong, I could smell it from a mile away. If this company was in any way affiliated with Google I would have surely heard about it.

Maybe around a week later I was invited to a conference being held by a large insurance company that had decided to go into business with Adzoo. I only went out of curiosity and I have to admit, I was not impressed.

Now I myself have never been into MLM (multi-level-marketing) not to say that there’s anything wrong with people who are, but it is just not my preferred business model. I have learned through experience that for the most part MLM businesses can’t afford to provide a very good service and pay everyone in the down line to, but there are maybe a few exceptions.

The service that Adzoo provides is referred to as SEO when dealing with their customers. What the customers do NOT know is that Adzoo is merely over charging them for ad cost on some very poor ppc campaigns. They promise customers that they will get them on the first page of Google for the key words that they want to rank for within a 7 to 14 day period. This is done mostly on a local scale, and pricing is based on the radius that the person or company want’s to cover. Their targeted consumers are small business owners who are having a hard time with sales due to the emergence of internet shopping.

Now I do agree with one thing that Adzoo has to say in their pitch, and that is that any business that want’s to succeed in today’s market needs to have a strong presence online. However, that is all I agree with. Needless to say, I declined the “business offer” as I was not interested in promoting the organization in any way. I mean after all, if I wanted to make a couple buck overcharging people for adwords I could do it on my own couldn’t I.

So to answer the question, is Adzoo a reputable company? In my personal opinion; no! I checked out some of there work and realized that the businesses that have paid them for services are on the first page of Google, in the ad section! And not for any good keywords related to the industry at that, but the cheaper keywords and the actual company’s name!

If you are a business owner and you are interested in gaining more income via an online presence, I would have to advise you not to do business with this company but rather pay a real SEO consultant. It will probably cost you more upfront but it will definitely be cheaper in the long run (especially seeing as how Adzoo charges some pretty high monthly rates. If you want the true long term benefits that come with having your business online the only way is to get targeted, and organic traffic directed to your business, trust me you’ll be glad you did.