Gone are the days of secretaries being tied to desks outside the boss’s office. With the advancement of technology, a new online home based business is developing along with it – the virtual assistant. This online home based business allows someone to do almost all of the administrative tasks necessary for a business from home, which benefits both the employer and the virtual assistant. By not having to pay for benefits, an online home based business as a virtual assistant becomes appealing especially to smaller companies on a smaller budget.For many employers, hiring a virtual assistant is much more cost effective. This online home based business allows employers to hire someone to do simple administrative tasks outside of their office, saving space. Also, since this online home based business means that the individual is a contracted employee, usually the employer does not have to pay for training, healthcare, or vacation time.Still, if you are considering starting your own online home based business as a virtual assistant, you need to realize that it is still work. You will first need to determine what type of virtual assistant you want to be, and you will need to gear your online home based business toward that niche. Then you will need to decide how much time you want to devote to your online home based business so that you can set appropriate limits as a virtual assistant.Yet, you need to understand that the first days of your online home based business will probably require you to work more hours than you originally wanted to work. After all, you are still in the building phase of your online home based business as a virtual assistant, and you will want to establish solid practices to gain clientele. During this time of building your online home based business as a virtual assistant you will need to remain flexible.Also, creating an effective marketing strategy is essential to starting your own online home based business as a virtual assistant. You know your niche, and now you need to market your online home based business to those that will use it the most. Remember, you are trying to build your online home based business, so it is good to market yourself as a virtual assistant wherever you go. Even joining a networking group is effective if you want to build your home based business as a virtual assistant, as many companies are often looking for help with administrative tasks.Read the rest of the article here: Online Home Based Business.

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.

Product creation could be a frightening subject for a lot of Internet marketers to face. Some folks who get in the game with the intention of making a full time income are completely ignorant as to how an online business operates. One of the most profitable ways to create online cash is by creating a product that others are happy to pay for.

Product creation is legitimate method of generating money through internet marketing but many entrepreneurs get it wrong. They start by imitating their Internet marketing gurus by creating information products on Internet marketing in hopes of getting rich the way their heroes did. The problem is that they usually don’t know what they are doing and enter a highly competitive niche with very little marketing experience or connections.

Here are a few tips for effective product creation that may help you get on the right track:
Start by finding a profitable niche with low to moderate competition. If you conduct some rudimentary market research and keyword research, you’ll find many opportunities in areas that will surprise you. Amazon and eBay are two great places to brainstorm for product ideas.

Developing Your Product does not have to be a difficult project. You can find experts in the right field for your niche and pay them to write the material while an artist designs the packaging and website or blog. You can outsource the entire product creation part of the project after you conduct the research and testing to ensure profitability.

Sales and marketing strategies should be created while developing the product and learning about the market. Some experienced marketers use pay per click to drive traffic to their offer page; some folks outsource the entire marketing campaign to affiliates through ClickBank or other affiliate programs.

Product creation does not need to be hard, particularly when the merchandise is electronic. E-books, videos, audio and multi-media products sell very well. They are distributed immediately to customers electronically. Once you have a good feel for a niche market, try to service your customers with associated products and upgrades. If you want to earn money online through product creation, you must understand supply and demand. The majority of new online marketers fail miserably because they go after highly competitive markets or forget to research their chosen niche properly. You have to create your products according to the needs, wants and desires of the prospective customers.