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Free Resources when Starting a Home Business

For many people starting a home-based business requires being

creative, ingenious and smart in how the businesses startup

funds get used. With so many opportunities that will come your

way, the question to answer is; which businesses get a crack at

the available funds and which will have to wait another day?

These are tough choices especially when someone is just starting

out and does not know how to decipher the true and valuable

opportunities from those disguised as good opportunities but are

simply weak.

Along with the many opportunities that exist that require you to

pay for their services, there seem to be just as many and if not

more free resource opportunities that should be investigated

before committing yourself to any particular group or company.

In my experience, the first thing to do is research your

competitor's websites. Do your own marketing research, find the

websites that have been around for a few years and see who they

are doing business with; they will have already weeded out the

pretenders from the pack. See if you can track any trends in the

businesses other website owners are working with. If a trend

emerges then there probably is consensus between the website

owners.

The next step is to signup for some of the free newsletters that

many internet-marketing companies publish, especially the Search

Engine Optimization ("SEO") companies. These newsletters will

have many terrific ideas to help you on the internet and at the

same time will provide you with an internet commerce education.

Just type "SEO" into any search engine and you will find

hundreds of websites to get you started.

Besides these free resource opportunities that have already been

mentioned, here are a few more that you should look into;

* The Federal Citizen Information Center promotes and

distributes useful consumer information to the public. As an

example, the small business offering has for $1.00 a "Virtual

Small Business Workshop CD-ROM". The CD covers a variety of

small business tax issues including payroll, taxes, electronic

filing, and record keeping. * Free financial spreadsheet

templates are available from Microsoft. These templates include

budgeting, cash flow statements and small business startup

checklists. * Free message board software to include on your

website, phpbb.com open-source bulletin board software is free

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to download and install on your web site. * Free small business

startup assistance through the Small Business Administration,

SBA.gov.

Working on the internet from home does not have to be expensive

if you are patient and willing to take your time researching the

alternatives. There is only one paying service that I fully

recommend that you do not compromise on and that is the company

that provides your hosting service. Make sure that you signup

for a top domain hosting service such as yahoo.com. Many of the

search engines such as Google do not like the free hosting

service companies and this can hurt you in the web site rankings

within the search engines.

Good luck in starting your home-based business, and I look

forward to hearing from you.

About the author:

Peter Engelbrecht is President of Diagonal Street Business

Services which operates the web site www.BestBusinesses4u.com.

The site offers practical home business ideas to stay at home

moms.