IT Consulting: Providing Services to Large/Small Businesses
In IT consulting, you can provide your services to many different sized businesses. In this article, you'll learn about how you can fit in with the IT consulting needs of large/small businesses.Pick 2 or 3 of the networking skill sets that you need for the sweet spot. For example, you might pick advanced virus protection, firewall intrusion detection, VPNs and routers. So you are going to focus on security and border access kinds of things and that would be your IT consulting specialty. That's all you'd do.In Large/Small Business IT Consulting, It's All About SpecializingYou would get extremely deep and specialize by product platform. At

Make Money Selling Other People's Products: Affiliate Marketing
You can make so much money selling and promoting other people’s products and services. Affiliate marketing is becoming more popular everyday. My success as an affiliate marketer has been centered in the online poker field. In 2005 I was one of the top affiliates for PacificPoker.com. I am also an affiliate for eBay and several poker product websites. PacificPoker.com offered a generous affiliate payout. Most online poker rooms and online casinos have affiliate programs. PacificPoker.com paid me $200.00 for every person I sent through their online doors that made a minimum deposit of $50.00. I made over $100,000 last year from this affiliate program alone.In issue # 28 (see http://www.home-business-network.com/profiles28.html) we profiled a brand-new internet startup called AllPiercings.com. A couple (Erik & Dawn Olsen) were launching their first venture selling "physical products" online, and allowed us a glimpse into their thoughts and challenges involved in starting such a business on a shoestring. This is a follow-up roughly six months later...

Tiffany: Well Erik, how are things going at www.AllPiercings.com ?

Erik: Much better than I anticipated! The last 6 months or so have been a real learning experience, and we've made a few mistakes here and there, not to mention wasting some time and money with suppliers that couldn't deliver, but I think we've now begun building a real head of steam, and each month is exceeding the previous month in terms of overall sales.

Tiffany: That's great! You mentioned that you made a few mistakes and "wasted some time and money". What kind of mistakes did you make?

Erik: One of the biggest mistakes was in terms of some of the suppliers we were using. When you spend $1000-$2000 on an initial order with an overseas supplier (which many of the larger ones require as a minimum buy), and that supplier doesn't deliver (in terms of quality and sometimes even the actual stuff we ordered), most of the time you're left holding the bag. It was hit and miss for awhile in terms of finding suppliers that delivered the kind of quality goods we're comfortable selling. All in all, our "quest" to find good suppliers resulted in about $7000-$8000 in unsellable merchandise we essentially had to throw away. At this point, I kind of chalked that up to the "cost of doing business", and I'm simply glad that we finally found 4-5 suppliers that can deliver consistently high-quality goods.

Tiffany: WOW....$8000 is an expensive "lesson" indeed. Is that your only mistake?

Erik: Ha! Far from it

g such a business on a shoestring. This is a follow-up roughly six months later...

Tiffany: Well Erik, how are things going at www.AllPiercings.com ?

Erik: Much better than I anticipated! The last 6 months or so have been a real learning experience, and we've made a few mistakes here and there, not to mention wasting some time and money with suppliers that couldn't deliver, but I think we've now begun building a real head of steam, and each month is exceeding the previous month in terms of overall sales.

Tiffany: That's great! You mentioned that you made a few mistakes and "wasted some time and money". What kind of mistakes did you make?

Erik: One of the biggest mistakes was in terms of some of the suppliers we were using. When you spend $1000-$2000 on an initial order with an overseas supplier (which many of the larger ones require as a minimum buy), and that supplier doesn't deliver (in terms of quality and sometimes even the actual stuff we ordered), most of the time you're left holding the bag. It was hit and miss for awhile in terms of finding suppliers that delivered the kind of quality goods we're comfortable selling. All in all, our "quest" to find good suppliers resulted in about $7000-$8000 in unsellable merchandise we essentially had to throw away. At this point, I kind of chalked that up to the "cost of doing business", and I'm simply glad that we finally found 4-5 suppliers that can deliver consistently high-quality goods.

Tiffany: WOW....$8000 is an expensive "lesson" indeed. Is that your only mistake?

Erik: Ha! Far from i

we've now begun building a real head of steam, and each month is exceeding the previous month in terms of overall sales.

Tiffany: That's great! You mentioned that you made a few mistakes and "wasted some time and money". What kind of mistakes did you make?

Erik: One of the biggest mistakes was in terms of some of the suppliers we were using. When you spend $1000-$2000 on an initial order with an overseas supplier (which many of the larger ones require as a minimum buy), and that supplier doesn't deliver (in terms of quality and sometimes even the actual stuff we ordered), most of the time you're left holding the bag. It was hit and miss for awhile in terms of finding suppliers that delivered the kind of quality goods we're comfortable selling. All in all, our "quest" to find good suppliers resulted in about $7000-$8000 in unsellable merchandise we essentially had to throw away. At this point, I kind of chalked that up to the "cost of doing business", and I'm simply glad that we finally found 4-5 suppliers that can deliver consistently high-quality goods.

Tiffany: WOW....$8000 is an expensive "lesson" indeed. Is that your only mistake?

Erik: Ha! Far from i

rder with an overseas supplier (which many of the larger ones require as a minimum buy), and that supplier doesn't deliver (in terms of quality and sometimes even the actual stuff we ordered), most of the time you're left holding the bag. It was hit and miss for awhile in terms of finding suppliers that delivered the kind of quality goods we're comfortable selling. All in all, our "quest" to find good suppliers resulted in about $7000-$8000 in unsellable merchandise we essentially had to throw away. At this point, I kind of chalked that up to the "cost of doing business", and I'm simply glad that we finally found 4-5 suppliers that can deliver consistently high-quality goods.

Tiffany: WOW....$8000 is an expensive "lesson" indeed. Is that your only mistake?

Erik: Ha! Far from i

good suppliers resulted in about $7000-$8000 in unsellable merchandise we essentially had to throw away. At this point, I kind of chalked that up to the "cost of doing business", and I'm simply glad that we finally found 4-5 suppliers that can deliver consistently high-quality goods.

Tiffany: WOW....$8000 is an expensive "lesson" indeed. Is that your only mistake?

Erik: Ha! Far from it! No, that's just the one that actually "cost" us the most in terms of actual definable dollars. Other mistakes included poorly "optimized" pages, streamlining our product photography (a HUGELY time consuming process for an amateur), among dozens of other small "tweaks" that have needed to be done over the last 6 months or so. Having said that, I think we've finally got all the major kinks worked out within the last 7-8 weeks, and things have really begun to roll!

Tiffany: "Begun to Roll", huh? Ok mister, let's hear some numbers!

Erik: Ok...not to be too specific, but...Between direct sales, repeat customers, and affiliate referrals, we're now averaging (for the last 3 months) roughly $400 per day in sales.

Tiffany: $400 a day? That's great!

Erik: Yeah, we're pretty happy. But there's a great deal of room for improvement, and we've sunk every last cent we've earned right back into it, and probably will for the next 2-3 years or so.

Tiffany: You mentioned "affiliate referrals" as part of your sales numbers. What are those?

Erik: Basically, I included an "affiliate program" in our system that allows other website owners/operators to sign up with us and earn 20% commission on any sales they refer to us. As of today, we have just over 400 affiliates. I'll probably be closing the program to new affiliates soon though.

Tiffany: Why would you close it? If 400 affiliates is good, wouldn't 4000 be even better?

Erik: Maybe for some programs in other markets, but I don't think so for ours. We're pretty picky about the affiliates we app