Any good book on marketing that you might read will tell you that for a starting business to take wing it is important that it is unique in some way. So whether you are going to start a language course online or open a drop ship store, you will need to offer something that none of your competitors offer to stay afloat and thrive.

These unique features can be in the form of a different size or shape of the product you sell. For example, if you are a dropshipper you can diversify your packaging and order some pyramid-shaped boxes to thrill and attract the customer. If you are the master of freelancing services, you can offer a free sample or a discount when you do your first bit of work for the customer.

Another way to offer a unique product or service is to combine it with other products or services. For example, if you sell juices you can think about selling juice-making machines that can mix different types of juice concentrates. And then your advertisement will go – with this machine you can get 25 different kinds of juices. That counts as a new and unique experience.

Or your service can be unique in its own right. I have just watched “Broken Flowers” by Jim Jarmusch and one of the characters (played by Sharon Stone) had a job as a closet organizer. She went to people’s homes to organize their closets and drawers an d put labels on them and get paid for it! What a wonderful idea and no competition (at least during some time)!

Another character was an animal communicator, she could talk to pets. Though it may seem a bit of fiction, but she did have clients on a regular basis. So make it unique and you are one step closer to a successful home-based career.

[tag] home jobs, home-based career, drop ship business [/tag]

Customer service is a vital part of any business, you know that. Let us have a closer look at how interaction with clients and good (or bad) customer service can make your business prospering or on the contrary affect it.

Customer service: How much does a customer cost?

Suppose you own a hairstyling salon and suppose that you charge $15 per hairstyling procedure, either male or female. How much do you think a customer costs you? If you think that it is $15 and if you think that one dissatisfied or unhappy customer is a mere $15, you are dead wrong.

First of all, if a person comes to you for a haircut and becomes your permanent customer, then you are likely to get the cost of the service multiplied by the number of times s/he visits you a year and an average number of years. For example, the average number of visits is 6 and the number of years is 20. Then the final figure is $15 x  6 x 20 =  $1,800. So, a dissatisfied or unattended customer that leaves your door costs you about this amount. Time to think.

Second, there is a very interesting and useful observation that marketing specialists often refer to. As you know, one of the best and most efficient types of advertising is by word of mouth. And a greatly performed job or service is the best advertisement. However, it is a proven fact that a customer who is happy with the service is likely to tell about it to 2 or 3 people – friends or relatives – while a displeased client will make you lose about a dozen. Bad news flies fast. Think twice before letting it out.

Treat your clients with respect and attention, get them talking about how they like or dislike your product/service. Treat the best of them with a dinner or award them with gift certificates. Start with a simple “Thank you,” that would do at first. Because some of them are worth two of your sales persons.

[tag] home jobs, home-based, home-based jobs, home-based ideas, customer service, advertising [/tag]

In our attempt to build an exhaustive list of resources to explore in search of a home based job today we review SimplyHired.com  – Job Search Made Simple. It is a comparatively new service (started back in 2005) compared to its well known competitors on the market of job sites.

SimplyHired has millions of jobs from thousands of job boards, classifieds, and company sites. The database is the heart of the service – the company claims they list more jobs than any other similar service. SimplyHired can become your one stop destination in your long search of places to secure a home job – no need to browse hundreds of job sites checking their listings of home jobs. Also using one interface you save time on getting rid of duplicate postings that are often listed on numerous sites.

You can browse the jobs by locations, industries and occupations. But the feature that is of more value and interest to us is ‘Advanced Search’ as we would like to make a targeted search of available home, freelance and that kind of jobs.

You can create a free account to keep track of your job search, save jobs, research salary, subscribe to the option to get job notices by e-mail, etc.

My search of freelance jobs returned 5276 matches. Who is wanted?

-    Freelance Photographers,
-    Freelance Writers,
-    Freelance Editors,
-    Freelance Developers,
-    Freelance Designers,
-    Freelance Proofreading,
-    Freelance Publicists,
-    Freelance Illustrators,
-    Freelance Copywriters,
-    Freelance Bookkeepers,
-    Freelance Technicians,
-    Freelance Art Buyers,
-    Freelance Video Journalists,
-    Freelance Interactive Media Planners,
-    Freelance Media Research Supervisors,
-    Freelance Makeup Artists,
-    Freelance Research Managers,
-    Freelance Dv Camera Operators,
-    etc, etc, etc…

Do the companies outsource all work now? I could not imagine some of the above could be outsourced.

My search of home jobs returned 171297 matches. But many returned results are irrelevant (from our point of view as we are interested in ‘home based job’). For instance, Home Depot Inc. has 5932 positions that are listed as ‘home jobs’.

Your solution? Either browse through these numerous irrelevant results searching for the opportunities you need or refine your search. As soon as I changed the keyword phrase to ‘home based job’ results went down to 36622 matches and I have got more relevant listings.

Summary
SimplyHired.com is a huge job market that definitely deserves to be on your list. You can research many opportunities using one website, keep track and arrange the job search process properly. ‘Search’ function and other extra options (i.e., you see the job site the position was originally posted on; you also see the age of each job listing) make it a real pleasure to work with the service.

[tag]job site, job, employment, home job, self-employed, home business, business opportunity, employment[/tag]