Oh, Yeah, Gourmet Applesauce.

Posted on by blogger

Applesauce? Really?

Rudys Fruity Applesauce, an endeavor that caters to gift basket stores and gourmet niche foods, almost never happened. In an odd way, we had to thank a tanking stock market for our success.

Several years ago I had been working at mutual fund investment firm and the stock market was doing its typical volatility thing (anyone remember Y2K?) and things were looking fairly bleak for the investment industry. The dot com boom had just busted and many investors were literally frozen with fear about trying to make any more decisions as to where or how to invest their funds. Many had great losses (albeit on paper) and were sitting deathly still.

Now, an applesauce business was nowhere on my radar, but, I had managed to save a little bit of cash and discussed with my wife the idea of doing some type of business for ourselves. With a high probability of a layoff looming in the not too distant future we decided to start looking around as well as brainstorm for ideas. It was the fall season and here in New Hampshire that means many things, but, one especially: apple picking.

Making Applesauce

One day I had gone to a local orchard and bought some apples, took them home, found my favorite applesauce recipe and started churning out my favorite food. I had cooked enough of it that I was giving some of it away to relatives and my sister-in-law, who LOVES our homemade applesauce, joking said that we ought to consider selling our applesauce to local gourmet stores.

It was one of those “Sweet Baby Jesus!” moments. Thank goodness we had never owned a business before that time!! We began a very arduous, but, ultimately, rewarding process of trying to establish a home based business. It took us to places and people we never thought wed ever go or meet. The research alone was brutal. Government licenses, cooking processes, jars, recipe trials and errors, creating a logo, marketing, safety procedures, sales, internet presence, etc. The list now seems HUGE looking back.

The Applesauce Name

But, we were successful! The name for our gourmet applesauce business, Rudys Fruity Applesauce, is a homage to my father-in-law who passed away while we were in the early stages of establishing the business. The flavors came about through extensive family food tastings to see which combinations of fruit worked with our apples.

Some of our greatest times have come from the many trade shows and product samplings at stores that weve been able to do around New England. Weve been honored with doing a tasting/presentation at an inauguration for one of New Hampshires governors, at the State House! That was a hoot AND we were named as The Best of New Hampshire by New Hampshire magazine a few years ago.

Weve seen folks use our gourmet applesauces in cookies, oatmeal, bread, with granola and warmed up served on ice cream! Applesauce is loaded with fiber and nutrition so ranks as a top health food.

Were still a small business. Weve had a few set-backs. But, weve revamped our website, taken a few more deep breaths and continue to march forward. Ya gotta love this country!!

Tomorrow I’ll write about trying different fruit combinations. Kiwi/Pear? Coconut? Who knows!

Have an applesauce day!

Important Considerations For Your Home Business With Drop Shipping

Posted on by blogger

It is the easiest and the fastest way to start a home-based business using drop shipping as your backend to supply and deliver your customers’ order and eBay as your storefront interface. Although drop shipping brings a lot of benefits and make easy for your home-based business, it may jeopardy your business if you are not carefully select reliable and responsible drop shippers. Here are 5 important considerations that you must take when comes to selecting your drop shippers for your home-based business.

Consideration #1: Are Your Selected Drop Shippers Really Offers Wholesale Prices?

There are many drop shipping companies on the internet claim that they offer best wholesale price, unfortunately, only a few products offer at good prices just to attract you and most of their products’ prices are just a bit lower than the normal retail price, you won’t be able to make sufficient profits out of these products.

Hence, before searching for drop shippers for you home-based business, you need to know the normal retail prices of the products you intend to sell. Then, compare those prices with the wholesale prices offered by drop shippers.

Consideration #2: What Availability Guarantees Are They Claiming & Are They Proven

You do not want to waste your time and effort promoting drop shipping products and later when you have received orders but found out that the products are out of stock and you have to turn down your customers’ order. Hence, the product availability guarantees are among the important consideration when selecting your drop-shippers for you home-based business.

Most drop shippers allow you to access online on their stock lists and you can see what they have in stock. There are drop shippers’ online systems that can allow you to set an alert warning level on their stock level for your selected products and you will receive an alert message if their stock level is lower that the pre-set value. This feature will keep you alert on the stock level and help you to avoid promoting products which are out of stock.

Consideration #3: What Is The Committed Delivery Lead Time

You definitely want to keep your customers happy with their order being delivered fast. If your drop shippers are going to take 2 to 3 weeks to ship then you may not going to have many happy customers who will repeat purchase from you in the future. Hence, you must consider the delivery lead time as one of your consideration factors when selecting your preferred drop shippers. Many drop shippers are able to ship with in 3 days and some of them even can ship in next day once receive order from you.

Consideration #4: Do They Ship Internationally?

Unless you just want to do business within your own country, then this is not an important consideration for you. But, selecting drop shippers who can ship internationally can open many market opportunities for your business expansion in the future.

Consideration #5: Is The Return & Refund Policy Meeting Your Requirement?

You cannot success in online business that sell physical goods without a return and refund policy. Customers may want to get refund if they found their purchased products are not meeting their expectation. What are your warranties to your customers if products they received are not in good shape? Hence, it is important you mentioned your return and refund policy at your online store. It is important that your return and refund policy must in line with the return and refund policy of your drop shippers because they are the one who going to ship your orders to your customers and process the return of goods from your customers. Carefully review the drop shippers’ return and refund policy to ensure the stated policies meet your commitment that you offer to your customers.

Summary

Reliable and responsible drop shippers will ease your online business without the need to worry about product stock and delivery. You need to carefully select the drop shippers that you can trust in order to make your online business a success and keeping your customers happy.

How Do You Operate Profitable Home Based Businesses

Posted on by blogger

Hundreds of millions of people start each day hating what they do for a living. Some of these dissatisfied workers are professionals, supervisors, service workers or administrators. Operating profitable home based businesses could be the answer to anyone who can keep a job and pay his or her own bills.

Too many dissatisfied workers wish there was way to quit the jobs they hate for the promise of becoming their own boss and having profitable home based businesses. Quitting your job, for most, their only source of income and relative security, can be a decision everyone they know will regret for a very long time.

I dont know of anyone that quits their job and plans, if the business isn’t successful, to borrow operating capital and money for living expenses from friends and family. No one wants this to happen, everyone wants to have profitable home based businesses. But this is what happens way too frequently.

Half of all business ventures fail in the first five years of operation or sooner. Why? Their businesses failed because they didnt have enough money to operate their business and to take care of themselves and their families. What can be done to prevent this? Money must be saved and a realistic business plan must be written and followed. A business plan and investment capital are essential to profitable home based businesses. A business plan tells you where it is you are going and how you plan to get there, while the money is the vehicle to actually get you there. You cannot operate profitable home based businesses without both of these cornerstones in place.

There are no profitable home based businesses that will produce enough income to support your family without significant time investment. Even profitable home based businesses that are Internet based require an investment of your time. A business is a business, regardless of where it is the business is located. It must be treated like a business and not a hobby. Businesses require time and money to operate successfully and profitably, and anyone that tells you differently is not being honest with you.

A typical rule of thumb – if a home-based business opportunity sounds too good to be true, it probably is. When considering a basic formula to having profitable home based businesses, any home based business venture requires an investment of your time. One of the first steps to consider when dealing with time is to pay close attention to your schedule and to manage your time effectively. There are too many things to be distracted by when taking on a home business. Profitable home based businesses have a similar approach to time management. Prudent time management makes operating profitable home based businesses easier. It helps you to remain clear and focused on your goals, and it helps you stay away from those very appealing distractions.

Home Based Business Data Entry Scams

Posted on by blogger

Be careful and don’t get caught up by a home based business scam! Within this article I’m going to go over the various home based businesses and work at home scams. Also I’ll explain how these scams work to rip off unsuspecting newbie.

The first rule of thumb says that if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. That’s a great rule to follow when looking at ways to earn money from home. Many of the scams discussed within this article offer large sums of money for very easy work. If money was this easy to earn wouldn’t everybody be doing it? Don’t think for a minute that you’re the only one lucky enough to find their site or ad.

The top of the list are data entry scams. ALL advertised data entry opportunities that charge fees are scams! They are deceptive in their offer. A person signs up for paid data entry and what they get is a ponzi scheme.

The way this works is that they suck you in with the promise of easy money. After the person joins they tell you to promote the same data entry job to others or they guide you to Clickbank and suggest that you spend hundreds to thousands of dollars weekly on Google Adwords.

Just because a home business requires a start up fee doesn’t make it a scam. There are legitimate businesses that require a start up fee. The difference is that data entry opportunities use deception to draw people in who need home income.

Data entry schemes are not the only culprit of presenting and selling internet scams as real jobs. The other scams you might run into on the internet are processing refunds, stuffing envelopes, assembly, making arts and crafts and I’m sure there are new schemes popping up everyday.

If you feel that you have been ripped off contact your attorney general. You’ll need to report the companies name, how you found the company and lodge your complaint.

Another great way to get your money back is to do a chargeback. Many people don’t know that it’s as simple as calling their bank or credit card company and requesting that the transaction be reversed. There is a little red tape and a service charge of about $30.00, but it’s worth it. This way the scam company won’t profit from ripping you off.

In closing, be careful where you spend your money and time. Do your due diligence and research any opportunity that requires a fee, especially if the opportunity presents itself to be a traditional job such as data entry. The best option for those looking for a wage or salary based job is to not pay anything to work for someone else.

Starting An Online Home Business – Planning Is Key To Staying Focused

Posted on by blogger

Organise Yourself For Home Business Success

Planning is necessary, especially when starting a home business, because it gets you organized. If you have never ‘multi-tasked’ – that is doing more than one important thing at a time, then it will help you if you can write down a plan of action so you always know what needs to be done and any deadlines.

Keep Track Of Progress

You may have for example 10 steps that you need to do to accomplish one thing. Perhaps you can’t do all 10 at once, so you do as much as you have time to do, or have the necessary resources to complete. You can put it aside and go on to do something else that is pressing and make a note to remind yourself that you have not completed this item or that it is pending something that you are waiting for and when you can expect it. You need to keep the wheels of your home business in motion.

Make Lots Of Notes

In any case, if you can organize a plan and make your plan like a ‘to do’ list, it will help you to stay on track. If you have a day planner or a good calendar with lots of space for each day, this will help you. Actually to spare the expense of buying a day planner, you could just take some plain paper and make yourself a calendar of sorts, ideally having a whole page for each day.

The way some planners work you would have space to put a list of things you want to do and then a lot of space below or beside it to make comments and keep track of what you did do and what still needs to be done. If you make these a week at a time you can then for example take something that you started Monday and make a note on Friday to check up on the status of this task. Remember, your home business is your responsibility so it is up to you to stay on top of all the details.

Being Organised Is A Good Habit When Running A Home Business

If you are not organized as a rule, this activity will help you to become organized. Usually when you are starting anything new there are lots of different details – some purely informational and some that are tasks you need to do that are associated. A home based business generally has a multitude of things to do, and you need to be on top of it all. It is good to have it all in one place so if you are making the planner yourself, you could get a few file folders to keep things in.

Your Home Business Will Thank You

When starting an online home business, you will have lots of different link addresses and associated usernames and passwords. Keeping these organized will save you lots of confusion, failed login attempts, tickets to helpdesks, and most importantly, time and frustration. If you start right out from the beginning by organizing your emails and etc into online folders that are labelled by company name, and keeping up your system every time you get something you need to save, it will be a lot easier to find things, especially 6 months from now.

Your Home Business Might Only Be Part Of Your Day

Planning is the key to staying organized. If you are not organized, you can forget things, lose things and generally lose control of what you are doing. Many people starting to work from home also have ‘day jobs’ and so their time online to work on their business may be sporadic – for example a few hours a night, a few times a week, on weekends, or etc. This makes it particularly challenging to stay on top of everything. If you are not organised you will waste time and your home business will suffer.

A Bit Of Planning Leads To A Lot More Productive Time Spent On Your Home Business

Lists, calendars and logs (notes) really can help you not to waste any time or effort and prevent you from forgetting to do something that is important. It may seem like you are making more work for yourself by keeping your plan up-to-date, but it is necessary, at least until you get your home business up and running.