The way you position things around your sitting or standing area for your home based business can spell success or failure in the total performance of your work. Your output is usually affected in small portions either for good or bad simply due to the way things are arranged around your work space. You need to create an intelligent working space around yourself when doing your home based business and it can be a breeze getting it done.Some of the strain that people experience while working at home on their business can usually be traced back to how they have decided to set everything they use on a day to day basis around their work space. Do you know that your stapling machine or simply put stapler may be a big cause of stress and pain for your home business? Even the writing pen or materials you constantly use can be a source of distress if not properly managed and planned.For example, if you are someone who always ship products and services to your customers on a specific day of the month. You may discover that you always work with a schedule that involve the use of calendars and time. Think about a situation where you have three or four calendars in your home based business dedicated working space or room and three different wall clocks plus two other table clocks and one wrist watch. Can you smell the confusion already? That is the whole point.You must be organized so much that you have only what you need around you and not more than you need. To have your brain trained in such a way that it knows where to find some specific things and how often they will probably be needed, you must have a structure that is very simple and easy for your brain to grasp to work with.Using the example above, can you imagine a situation where there is even not a single calendar in your room, and the clock that helps you to know the time for the post man showing up at your door is in the sitting room of your house. So, for you to know how many days you have to get your shipment together and get ready on the day of the shipment, you need to check your calendar each time on the calendar in your phone or from your calendar – you know how tasking that can be in itself, and for the appropriate time to expect the door bell ring, you have to always go to the sitting room to check the time. How distracting can that be in your home based business work space? Very distracting indeed. You said it!Underestimating the importance of making everything you need stand out in their own right within your work space and to make sure the space you called your work space is properly planned will be a high cost you definitely need to avoid. It conclusively mean that, to have a good home based business that you will enjoy and become effective and efficient at, you must set aside a well planned and organized work space that is created solely for the purpose of those basic and fundamental things you do within the work space.There are a whole lot more ideas that can be put to use to make creating your home based business work space a breeze and effective but we will have to save some for other time. You may however be in touch with us for many more ideas and tips before next time. Hope you make a change in your home based business work space today.Thank you for your most precious time for reading and learning through this.
Five Tips for Selling at Live Auctions
Ah, the old-fashioned country auction! The idea of a country auction conjures up certain images for people. The image of a fast-talking auctioneer offering up an antique table or chair is a popular example.
People who are buying household goods or collectibles are looking to get their items at the lowest price possible. However, the people who are selling their items at auction are hoping for the highest price!
Unless a person is in the business of buying and selling antiques or other items, not a lot of thought goes into how goods are prepared for sale via the auction process. However, if you are one of the growing number of people using auction venues to sell your collectibles or other inventory, there are a few things to learn first about how to sell at auction before you bring a truckload of stuff over to the next event.
Tip 1: Make sure the things you want to sell are a good “fit” for the auction house you’ll be using.
Never bring a load to an auction house without actually having been to one of the previous auctions. It’s important to get a feel for the type of goods that the house sells. For example, at one very rural country auction it was common for the owners to sell live chickens, pots and pans, car parts, and farm equipment.
After close investigation, this would not be the right venue for selling your daughter’s “Hello Kitty” collection. On the other hand, the spare John Deere parts that you bought at last week’s yard sale might be just the right thing for the buying crowd at this auction.
Tip 2: Be sure you clearly understand the terms and policies of the auction house.
Visit with the auctioneer ahead of time. Call to find out what the best days and times are to visit. One of the worst possible times to drop in for an informational visit with an auctioneer is the day of the auction. Call ahead and ask. While you’re at it, find out what are the best days and times to drop your stuff off.
Once you have a little time with the auctioneer, you’ll be able to find out what type of commission he or she takes from consigners (which is you), and what type of paperwork might be needed. Some auction houses send out Form 1099 tax forms at the end of the year. An auctioneer may need to see your identification and have you fill out a W-9. Be prepared.
Find out what happens to your items if they don’t sell. For example, some auctioneers may have a minimum starting bid. If, for some reason, one of your items does not sell, it may be grouped with another one of your pieces. Know the auctioneer’s strategy beforehand so that you aren’t surprised on pay day.
Tip 3: Make sure the auctioneer knows what you’re selling.
It might be perfectly obvious to you that the signed print you are consigning is a rare and valuable piece of art. However, the auctioneer may not know this particular artist. Make a note of anything particularly special about your items, and leave the note with the piece. Be sure to tell the auctioneer about it as well. He or she might determine that this is something to highlight on the company website or in the newspaper listing.
Tip 4: Present your items neatly.
No one likes to have to dig through a box full of grimy and greasy car parts to see what treasures might be in there. Separate the parts and lay them out on a flat, or use more than one box to de-clutter the lot.
There is no need to buy fancy display boxes. It’s easy enough to go to the local convenience store or supermarket and ask if you can have the emptied boxes or flats that they are discarding.
While it’s good to present clean items, take care not to ruin the value of anything by over cleaning. For example, if you find some old cast iron cookware, clean the obvious dirt and grime, but don’t scrub it to its original finish. For many people, this ruins the value of the item. So, clean and tidy and organized is the key here.
Tip 5: Don’t complain to the auctioneer if your stuff doesn’t sell for as much as you’d like.
The phrase to remember here is, “You win some; you lose some.” That’s just the way it is. There are some days where an auction house is loaded with people who all seem to want what you’re selling. There will be other days where the crowd is sparse, and the bidding is simply not competitive.
Remember that it’s in the auctioneer’s best interest to sell your things for the highest possible hammer price. But sometimes, it’s just not going to be a stellar sale. The auctioneer is only human, and is also disappointed if a sale doesn’t go as well as planned.
If you notice that every time you bring a bunch of goods to sell that you’re not realizing as much as you think you honestly should, try another auction venue and compare apples to apples. That is, bring the same types of items to the new auctioneer and compare the results.
Unless the auctioneer is particularly disagreeable or inconsiderate to you or buyers, there is no reason to confront him or her about a sale. If you find you just don’t care for an auctioneer’s style or methods, find another one. Believe me, there are plenty of them out there!
The primary thing to remember as you learn how to sell at auction is that the business is unpredictable at best. You will have good days, some not-so-good days, some great days. The more you sell, the more experience you will gain, and the more enjoyable the business will be.
Online Businesses – One Of The Best Low Cost Home Based Businesses
If you are looking for low cost home based businesses that will allow you to create a substantial income for yourself and to meet your financial needs, whether they be to create an additional stream of income for you, quit your current job or to dramatically improve your current lifestyle.You do not have to look any further than the internet to be able to find plenty of low cost home based businesses that will allow you to meet all of your financial goals.Prior to the invention and development of the internet, for someone to start their own business often meant that they had to save and wait for years until they had enough capital to put down as collateral.Or they had to borrow money from friends, family and other investors or get a bank loan, which was very difficult to do unless you used your home as collateral. And it would often require hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get the business started.In addition you often had to quit any other job you may have had that was proving you with regular income and take a leap of total faith that your business idea would work the very first time and with out fail. Well the sad truth is that rarely did things go as well as those new startup business owners may have expected.And unfortunately because they had everything that they owned and often borrowed money tied up in their failed business venture, they were unable to ever recover and try again with the benefit of hindsight or learning from their mistakes. Fortunately now with the growth of the internet, all of that has change.A person with a good idea or even just a strong enough desire to want to learn and do what it takes to create a successful online business can do so at a friction of what it would have costed in the past.And because your startup cost can often be well under $100.00 there is no need to mortgage your home, take out a small business loan or worry about borrowing money from your friends or family.In addition, because you can often start these low cost home based businesses in your spare time, there is no need for you to quit your current job, until you have reached the point where it is costing you money to keep that job.Some of the best low cost home based businesses also provide you with some of the same benefits as a traditional business and often with a lot less hassle. For example with an online business idea and a small investment of less than $10.00 a year you can a domain, which is considered your online real estate and as such it’s value can increase over time just like real property does.There are many people who make a full time online income just by purchasing the right kind of domains at the right price and then selling them to others. In some cases no additional changes or improvements are needed or made to the domain and it is sold as is.In other cases the content on the domain may need to be updated or replaced and the domain is then re-purposed and sold at a higher price.This is a pretty specialized online business model and does require more specialized knowledge, however here are some low cost home based businesses that almost anyone can start and operate with a budget of $25.00 or even less:1.) Affiliate Marketing – This is seen by many as one of the best first time business owner opportunities because it has such a low startup cost and such a high upside potential. In many cases you can get started by investing less than $10.00 per year to purchase a domain and then another $10.00 or less per month for hosting and you can start a business that has the potential to make you hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.2.) Freelancing Your Expertise – If you already have a skill or ability that you are good at or would like to be good at then you can get your own domain to host a blog or website and promote your services to others. This can be a very profitable and cost effect way to operate one of the best low cost home based businesses for you.3.) Fill A Gap In The Market Place – If you know of some product or service that people would love and that you could make money with, then getting your own website and promoting that product or service could lead to you making a lot of money in a very short period of time.These are just a few of the endless possibilities that are available to you as a result of investing in online low cost home based businesses. The best thing to do is to start by investing in one idea and keep learning and growing as you progress.