Are you thinking about opening a home-based business? Will it actually be a business or will you “just be working at home?” It’s important how you think of your business if you are working at home because of the traps you can fall into that can cause your endeavor to fail.First of all, consider whether you are you a good work-at-home type person. This is something that has to be taken into consideration. It doesn’t matter that you are a self-starter. It takes more than that. It’s a state of mind.1. Are You Going To Be A Business? For those of us who work at home, do we have a business, or are we sub-contractors, consultants, or what? Are you going to have a business or are you “just someone who works at home.”Of course you can be all of the above and still be a business. But it’s important for you to decide what you’re going to be. If you do not consider yourself a business, you may fall into the trap of “just working at home.” And many times when this happens, you are doomed for failure from the beginning.One of the problems of being “just someone who works at home” is that some of your friends may not be aware that they should pay if they ask you to do something that is related to your business. Making it clear that you are a business will make it more evident that you charge for the work that you do.2. Discipline: Operating a home-based business takes lots of self-discipline. Not only must you must be a self-starter, you must be able to set a schedule and stick to it. Even though you don’t have a boss tapping their foot if you are late in the morning, you have to have that mental image of someone waiting for you to begin your workday.I have set my office hours between 10:00 and 6:00. But I have set the time that I work from 6:00 to 6:00. I choose to do that because I like to take time off during the day. I feel as if I am late for work if I’m not at my desk by 6:00 every morning, and I don’t accomplish as much that day.3. Work on a schedule. Whatever you set your office hours to be, work on that schedule. You may only want to work part-time. That’s okay but decide what hours you’re going to work and be consistent.4. Family Responsibilities. If you let them, friends and family will be your worst enemies as far as getting anything done. It’s hard for other people to understand that we really do have a job or run a business. They think that because we work at home we have plenty of time to do other things-babysit for a friend, have long conversations on the phone, volunteer to chair a committee, take care of a friend’s, dog, etc.You have to make it clear to family and friends is that this is your job. If you don’t work it, you won’t make any money. They won’t treat it as a job if you don’t.As a home based business, I never say that I’m working at home. I say that I’m at the office. If I take a phone call on my cell phone when I’m outside the office, I don’t say that I’m not home now. I say I’m not at my office right now.Working at home can be both a joy and a curse. You have to work it and have other people understand that this is your business.

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

According to a recent Forbes.com article, over a half a million small businesses get started each month while more shut down than start-up. With this statistic, it’s not a surprise that some would be leery in joining the almost 30 million small businesses in the United States. It may also come as a surprise that over half of the working population works in a small business and that most small businesses are home-based. Why then do people start small businesses with these kinds of odds? Because many of us are still deciding what we want to be when we grow up. And once we’ve learned that, we choose to make a go of it on our own.Starting a small business or a home-based business is not something that should be entered into lightly. More often than not you’ll go through a long period languishing while trying to make your business viable. As with many big decisions in life, starting a business is a very big risk. There’s never an assurance of success. Rather, it is expected and statistically likely that you’ll fail. However, if you’re willing to work at beating the odds and fulfill a professional goal, this may still be the route for you.I’d worked in libraries for over a decade. I spent the majority of that time in library administration. I knew a good deal about how to run a small business because I’d essentially been doing so for quite some time. However, when you go out on your own there are many pitfalls that can be made in your businesses’ infancy. Contrary to the popular song lyrics, the best things in life aren’t free. Shortcuts will likely come back to haunt you and so too will not putting in the sweat equity needed to not only financially succeed, but to also feel emotionally and psychologically empowered.If you want to start a small business it has to be a deliberate process. However, it doesn’t have to be an expensive one. It doesn’t hurt for you to do some research. The Small Business Administration is a great free resource. So too are the books. Really, there are any number of tools to help you start-up or navigate the waters of small business. If you’re like the almost 75% of all U.S. business who are non-employers (self-employed with no additional payroll or employees), then you can be sure that there is plenty of information to help you achieve your goals.Running a small home-based business can be inexpensive, not cheap. Don’t scrimp on the stuff that can really make you appear more professional without breaking the budget. Here are a few startup tips for your business:1. Get a domain name.You may not need to register your business’s name with the state. The fact is, that process may be unnecessary and It can be costly depending on the nature of your business. However, it helps if you have a domain name so that you can have a traditional online storefront and presence. That isn’t to say that you need to sell products through your site, it just means that you have a place that you can send people to online to find out more information about you and your products and services.2. Use social media.No longer can people lament about how they don’t use Facebook or Twitter, being on social media also lends an air of credibility and savviness to your business. Using social media is inexpensive and easy. There are plenty of online tutorials on how to use social media and by getting yourself out there by using the social media networks, it opens you up to more clients and the ability to interact in real-time with them as well. Also, don’t simply have a presence on social media, depending on your demographic, there are still some people who simply aren’t using social media. Thus, you must also have an easily accessible webpage as well.3. It doesn’t hurt to use old school marketing tools.Professional business cards as well as marketing items are now nominal in cost. Don’t just settle for free cards, pay that little extra to brand your items. This way you can be fully in charge of the message you’re putting out there. Think about it, what did you think of the person who handed you a business card that were clearly free ones?!4. Use accounting software.Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Nutcache and the list goes on. You can even use Excel if you’re so inclined. Regardless, it’s imperative that you start consistent and accurate record keeping from the very start. Make sure that all of your transactions, big and small, are in a place that will make it easy for you come tax time.5. Work in the cloud and back it up.Cloud-based software is available for everything. It also doesn’t hurt to use free ones in this case. Google is the gold standard when it comes to free. However, document creation and retention aren’t the only things you can do in the cloud. Accounting software, website administration, almost anything you can think of can be done in the cloud. Plus, it makes your data accessible anywhere that has an Internet connection. And don’t forget to backup your work. If you’re saving your work to your computer or saving it to a virtual drive in the cloud, be sure that you have a backup. Redundancy is key and it can also be very economical. A good rule of thumb is to have a physical and virtual off-site backup because Murphy’s Law always happens.6. Be virtual.Depending on the type of services you offer, there are companies out there that can assist you in getting jobs/projects. Companies like Upwork provide you with a place to offer your services to others and provides you with an online workplace. Being a freelancer has never been so easy. As a freelancer, you don’t have to limit how and how many clients you have.7. You have to pay some to get some.Yes, you can start a new business with no cost, however, by investing just a little money upfront you’ll almost ensure a return on your investment. Pay for a virtual fax service, marketing materials and other little things that will go a long way in ensuring that your business isn’t like every other “mom and pop” business. Just be careful not to go all in too fast. Recurring costs, though small, can add up fast. If you have recurring costs it means that you have to earn at least that much money per month.8. Be tax savvy.You must be cognizant of what kind of tax impact there will be as a result of your business. It’s common, depending on the type of business you have and if you don’t have employees, for you to not withhold any taxes during your first year. Getting a baseline for what your business will be like is important, just don’t forget that Uncle Sam may hit you with a large tax bill at tax time. Visit the IRS website or speak to a tax professional to help you with getting this sorted out before it becomes a very expensive mistake.9. Make time for yourself.When you commit to owning a small business the one thing you’re guaranteed is that it’s going to be hard. Despite how challenging it is, you have to take time for yourself. It’s easy to work long hours and to forget that we aren’t machines. Even if it’s just a 15-minute walk each day or something else that will break up your workday, you must not forget that sometimes it’s best to literally walk away to clear your head. This will do wonders for your mood and your process.10. Be disciplined.Sure, we all think that working for ourselves would be the best job in the world. But it’s not until you’re actually doing it that you realize just how easy it is to be trapped by the pitfalls of having no other boss than yourself. That quick television break inevitably turns into a television marathon, sleeping in one day turns into not setting the right habits you need to be successful. It’s easy to say that you’re going be disciplined and fully devoted to the success of your business, but old habits do die hard.Each day brings challenges and uncertainties. You have to be willing to fail spectacularly. But you also have to be willing to love and nurture your business even on the days when you just don’t feel like it. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Despite that, the sky’s the limit and your earning potential is limitless when you’ve devoted yourself to doing what it is that you are passionate about. It’s important to remember that you’re not to give up when it gets hard. Those are the times you have to really dig in and remember why it is that you’re doing it in the first place.