The following is a guest post by Shaun Connell. If you would like to write for this blog, please checkout the guidelines here.

I’ve been working from home for three years now. It’s been a bumpy ride, lot’s of stress, lot’s of fun, and lot’s of work — and it’s been worth it. But like most work-from-homers, looking back, I see many things I didn’t know when I first got started that I desperately wish I did know.

That’s what this post is about — the stuff I wish I knew when I first started.

1. How Much Work It Takes

When I first started, I was convinced that within 6 months I’d be in the Bahamas. I was bitten by the “get-rich-easy” bug. After all, how much effort can clicking and typing be? A heck of a lot — and more mental work than actual physical work. The mental work of studying, creating original strategies, and being a trailblazer for my own business is more than I originally was prepared for. Not that it’s a bad thing — it’s extremely good. But knowing what to expect would have made the first year a much better experience.

2. How Important Copywriting Is

Few things are as important to someone with a home business as copywriting. Every time I send an email, I now know how lucrative it can be — regardless of how few people read the email. Converting 1% of the readers to purchase a product might not seem like much, but understanding copywriting makes it all but inevitable. This, mixed with a strong email marketing campaign, is an extremely important income tool. I didn’t realize this until about a year ago — now over 75% of my income comes from copywriting and email marketing. I wish I knew sooner.

3. How Important Personal Branding Is

For the first year of blogging, I essentially played it by ear. I had no personal brand in mind, no coherent point, and no underlying “message” or “story” behind any of my websites. It wasn’t until late 2009 and early 2010 I realize that trust is built through narratives — that is, people trust you when they understand your brand, or your story. I started building a personal brand based on cautious investing and anti-inflation, and my conversions started to pick way up. Personal branding isn’t just classy — it’s extremely effective at increasing conversion rates for sales and signups. I wish I knew this when first starting.

4. How Fleeting Google Rankings Can Be

I’m a reformed gray-hat SEO marketer. I did everything under the book several years ago, and had achieved top 3 results for everything from dividend investing to debt consolidation. And I’ve seen those same rankings disappear after just a few months. Focusing on search engines isn’t safe. It’s volatile, and engineers in a cubicle somewhere determine the future of my business. Here today, gone tomorrow type business models aren’t good for the long haul. Personal branding and newsletter writing are great for the long haul. I’d give just about anything to have understood this back then.

5. Why Long-Term Business Is All That Matters

The short-run is soon over. The long-run is here to stay. That’s an obvious point, but if I’d known this when first starting it would have saved me a lot of sweat, blood, and stress.

Pretty much nothing is as important as building a long-term personal brand, writing quality content, and managing a strong newsletter. When it comes to working from home with an info-publishing model, everything else comes second.

About the Author:

Shaun Connell is a writer and investor who works from home. He writes and edits Live Gold Prices and Stock Pick Review, where he discusses investing in gold and picking high-yield stocks.

The following is a guest post by Bill Post. If you would like to write for this blog, please check out the guidelines here.

Business cards have been around for as long as business itself. Some historians trace the origins of modern-day business cards to 15th century China. By the 17th century, “visiting cards” or “calling cards” became a staple among European aristocrats as a way of announcing the arrival of a distinguished guest or introducing visitors. In the 18th and 19th centuries, guests were expected to present small, attractive cards to their hosts as a means of identification and as a sign of respect. Although the popularity of these formal greeting cards began to wane with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the need to exchange personal information for business purposes increased exponentially by the turn of the 20th century. As a result, for several generations, the ritual of swapping business cards has emerged as the most common sign that a connection has been made between professionals.

As one of the mainstays of modern business, the practice of exchanging business cards is likely around to stay. After all, business cards provide useful information, including contact numbers, email addresses, physical addresses and web addresses, and they’re often a means of making a first impression with a business contact. However, advances in technology are increasingly providing us with numerous electronic ways to supplement the use of traditional paper business cards. But fear not. Although social conventions now dictate that we communicate electronically, many of these ways of supplementing the traditional business card cost little or nothing, they have little or no impact on the environment, and you won’t have to place a new order to restock on these.

Let’s take a look at them.

Modern Business Card Alternatives

Email

One of the easiest ways to distribute your professional information is via email. No professional should ever send an email without ensuring that a signature appears at the end of the message. Those signatures should detail your business or company’s name, your address, contact numbers, and website (much like the standard information that appears on a traditional business card).

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites provide an invaluable forum for providing detailed professional information that won’t easily fit onto a conventional business card. For example, although Facebook wasn’t originally conceived of as a place to advertise or make professional connections, savvy users create Facebook profiles and fan pages for their businesses at no cost. LinkedIn, a site catering to those specifically interested in exchanging professional information, also provides a virtual path to communicating with colleagues and connecting with people you’ve met in the past. In addition, although the information available to be shared on Google Profile is comparatively basic, that service represents one more opportunity to construct a professional online image for yourself or your business.

Cell Phones

These days, everyone you meet will have a cell phone handy, so it makes sense to take advantage of the amazing things our handhelds can do for us. Numerous different services, including Contxts, TextID DropCard and DUB, allow you to share an electronic version of a business card to anyone with SMS messaging. And several iPhone apps, including beamME, ShareCard and SnapDat, also allow users to electronically distribute professional contact information.

Organizing the Information

While traditional business cards aren’t a thing of the past, the old school rolodexes may have passed their prime. However, several varieties of card scanners enable users to convert paper business cards so they can be organized and stored digitally. In addition, CloudContacts can scan and organize information on paper into electronic form. And profile aggregators, such as MyNameIsE, REtaggr and Chi.mp, can collect your information from various social networking profiles into a single electronic card.

Striking a Balance

Although the trend may be shifting to making and nurturing business connections virtually, a complete shift to exchanging professional information digitally may be premature. Instead, with increased competition in our rich business culture, establishing a clear business identity and conveying it in an effective, interesting way through all forms of communication, including the traditional business card and these electronic forms discussed above, is imperative.

About the Author

Bill Post, Small Business Research Analyst, provides research on issues of concern to small businesses for 123Print.com Custom Business Cards. Prior to his involvement with 123Print, Bill was a small business owner himself, providing marketing and branding services to other small businesses in the Washington, DC metro area. Before working with 123Print on Business Cards, Bill also spent several years after receiving his degree in the fast-paced corporate world. It was there that Bill not only honed the skills he uses to help small businesses get ahead, but where he realized that he’d rather help the little guy prosper than make huge corporations money.

Social media is a great way to get the word out about what you do. It helps build your brand and bring awareness to your online business, products and services. I’m a member of various social networking sites, and I want to invite all of you to join me. There’s some you may not have ever heard of before.

The site that I spend the most time on is Facebook. I’m a huge fan of the site. There’s many networking aspects of the site that you can use to bring awareness to your business, so that’s a huge plus. I use my account for both personal and business. This allows you to see who I really am and helps me to be more transparent and open to everyone. Become my friend on Facebook and get a peek into my personal life and also get to know more about me.

Follow me on Twitter. I don’t spend a whole lot of time on Twitter, but I do find it useful to find resources from others that I follow. If you follow me, I’ll follow you back, assuming you’re not a spammer. Also, I never reply or even read my Direct Messages (DM’s), so if you want to get my attention on Twitter, @ reply me, and I’ll get back to you.

If you like making useful videos, then hit me up on YouTube. I don’t have much time to make a lot of videos, but I’ll slowly be getting more out eventually. I like watching videos that provide real and useful content that I can learn from. If you subscribe to my channel, I’ll subscribe back.

Here’s some other sites you can find me at:

Sokule – Just like Twitter, but you can make money.

DirectMatches – The largest business networking site. You can also make a good bit of money from this site.

LinkedIn

I’d love to have you network with me on these sites, so if you’re a member or want to become a member, just sign up and send a friend request to me.

I’ve been wanting to be a guest blogger for quite some time now but just haven’t gotten around to it. While I was browsing the CYN forums I had responded to a question that someone was asking about how to build up a list of subscribers.

That response prompted another member to ask if I would be interested in doing a guest post for their blog. I’ve been putting off, so since I was asked about it, I decided to finally take action. I wrote up the article yesterday, and after realizing how long it was turning out to be, decided to chop it up into three parts.

If you’d like to check out part one of my article on how to build up your newsletter list, then head on over to Michael Burke’s Project Little Fish blog and read my article titled: Ways To Build Your Email Mailing List – Using a Lead Capture Form.

Michael has a good thing going on, and I’m excited to be a part of it. So head on over and show Michael some love, and be sure to leave a comment or two.

You’ll notice that there will be two more parts to the article that you don’t want to miss. You’ll have to stay tuned to Michael’s blog in order to catch them.

Guest posting on other blogs is a great way to get yourself noticed and build up your online brand. I highly recommend you go out and find other blogs in your niche that have built up a large readership. Most bloggers allow others to post articles to their blog, or you can contact them directly and ask.

This is just the beginning of my guest blog posting quest. I’ll keep you informed of any and all new guest posts in the future, but make sure you’re subscribed to my RSS feed so you don’t miss out.

Oh… I almost forgot. For any of you interested in being a guest post on this blog, just contact me, and I’d be happy to have your article on here. Just make sure it’s relevant to my blog.

I’ve decided to start doing a roundup of all of last month’s posts. This is in case you happened to miss one along the way for whatever reason, and it never hurts to refresh your memory with an idea.

I’ll start from the beginning of the month and move to the most recent. So here goes…

Twitter TweetMe Plugin Installed – ReTweet My Posts

This cool Twitter plugin is for all my readers to share my posts with their followers if they feel what I have to say is worthy of being ReTweeted.

Free Traffic Getting SEO Blog Software from Jeff Johnson

If you’re starting up a new blog, or you have a blog that could use more traffic, then you have to get this plugin. It’s free to download and will optimize your blog for the search engines and pull in laster targeted traffic.

List of 31 High Quality Article Directores to Submit Your Articles To

Here’s my personal list of article directories I use. There’s certainly more out there, so don’t feel that this is an all-inclusive list.

HostGator – Cheap CPanel Web Hosting – Host Unlimited Domains

Learn about my experience of switching web hosts and why Host Gator was my preferred choice. If you’re looking for reliable hosting at a super affordable rate, then this is a post you don’t want to miss.

Advertise Your Website on Leading Make Money Online Blog

If you’re looking for big-time exposure for your make money online site, then you must check this out. Learn how to get your site seen by thousands of targeted visitors and make more sales.

GetResponse – My Preferred Email Autoresponder Service

An online marketer knows the importance of using an autoresponder. It’s necessary if you’re going to use email marketing to bring in more sales, and you should be. Learn more about GetResponse and why I chose them.

Need Help with Web Site Promotion & Internet Marketing?

If you’re struggling to do all the necessary tasks of marketing your website or just don’t have the time, leave it up to professionals. Learn more about my partnership with a proven company that can handle all of your internet marketing needs.

Free Directory Submission – Obtain High PR Backlinks

A huge source of high PR web directories that you can submit your site to for free. Get more backlinks, higher search engine rankings and more sales.

Online Branding

Branding is essential in the online world. Learn more about you and your business and why it’s beneficial.

That concludes the month of June posts. Feel free to browse older posts by clicking on a particular month in the Archives section on the left sidebar.

Also, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date with all of my latest posts.

When it comes to online branding, one must make the decision whether to brand the business or brand him/her self. In the online business world, it’s hard to be transparent with site visitors. You don’t have that personal connection as you do with a traditional offline business.

One question that gets asked many times is, “Should I brand myself or my business?” This would depend on what kind of business you have or plan to have. If you’re marketing a specific product or service, you may want to brand that product/service. If you’re an affiliate marketer and promote many different programs, you’ll definitely want to brand yourself.

When it comes to online branding, it’s all about trust. People want to trust you, so you need to give them a reason to trust you or your product/service. Without that trust and personal connection established, your potential clients/customers will go somewhere else where they feel more safe.

I must say, it’s a lot harder to brand yourself online. I’ve made my best effort to make myself known to my site visitors, utilizing a picture of myself and having contact information available. This Work From Home Blog is probably the best way for visitors to see who I really am and learn more about me. That’s important for me, and it helps me build trust in my readers.

While online branding can be difficult, it’s not impossible by any means. Here’s some tips on how you can brand yourself online with social network sites:

• Use a picture whenever possible
• Complete your profile
• Network with others with the same interests

If your branding a specific product/service, you want to make sure you talk about it within your profile. You could even use the product as the picture. Anything to get your product/service or yourself out there and known.

While I was planning this post on branding, I came across a video about Tony Hawk talking about how to brand a business. I thought it was quite interesting, so if you have some time, check it out.

No matter what business you’re in, branding is essential to success. Want more tips on how to brand yourself or your business online? Check out this insightful post on the Even Carmichael Forums about Personal Branding.

Do you have any other online branding tips? Share your thoughts below…