Contrary to what everybody thinks, especially W2 employees, the IRS is your friend. The IRS tax code is designed and set up for promoting small business and home based business. Only five percent of the IRS code is really written about bringing in income for the IRS. The rest is all about expenses and deductions. So 95% is dedicated to reduce your taxes!It is awesome!There are a few things that you need to provide the IRS to qualify your home based business, but they are mainly looking for profit intent, consistency and record keeping.1. Profit Intent is relatively easy to prove. If it’s a hobby, like if you’re trying to turn your Saturday golf game into a business, that’s going to a bit tougher. Home-based businesses like network marketing, setting up a paint company or wedding planner or something, should be pretty easy to prove it’s a “for profit” business.2. Secondly, you need to work your business on a regular and consistent basis. There’s no specifics on that but, even four to six hours a week, every single week should be sufficient. Of course, I recommend more than that if you are going to be serious about your business.3. Lastly, you’ll want to keep accurate records to prove that you have income and expenses.If you keep accurate records of expenses, you can offset other income that you have. The expenses you have from RUNNING your business, such as expenses from your office in your home based business or money spent building your business, doesn’t go to waste. You get to write it off. Your marketing, your business cards, your flyers, brochures or anything like that. If you want to RUN a business, you need to use all legal write-offs in your business and that’s what will help you, not so much to get profitable right away, but make it worthwhile so that you’re not losing money.My Two Favorite Legal DeductionsMy first Favorite legal deduction is the home based business office deduction, which is huge!For example, if you have a 1,000 square foot house and you have a 100 square foot office, this gives you a ten percent write-off. It doesn’t matter whether you’re renting or you own your home and have a home mortgage. If your rent or mortgage is one thousand dollars, you get to write off, 100 dollars every month. If you need a new computer for your business, a video camera, software or anything that you use to promote and market your business, it can be written off.My second favorite deduction may be even bigger. It’s your automobile. Currently the business use mileage rate is 55.5 cents per mile. Always check the IRS website or with your accounting professionals, for updates.Let’s look at how this works.Let’s say you need to drive to go meet a prospect or you have to go to the office supplies store. You’re going to keep track of all your “business” mileage to and from your business stops. You track ten miles in each direction for twenty miles total. That’s $11 that you will deduct at year’s end. As long as the initial reason for the trip was business, you can write it off. It will be between you and me if you just happened to stop at the grocery store on the way home. Oh yeah, the food you ate at your business meeting;50% of that can be written of as well!Other Legal Deductions
If you have a child over the age of 6, they can be employed in your business. You can deduct their wages and they don’t have to claim it up to $5,450. Double whammy! It must be a business related activity and not just taking out the trash. They could do filing or database management. Face it, your 6-year-old probably knows how to use the computer better than you anyway!
With the proper planning you can deduct part or all of your vacations. Let’s say I am going to New York to meet with a client or prospect. We are going to have a few business meetings and talk about ways to grow our business. I can take my wife and we can do some tourist stuff while we are there. Travel can be written off with the proper planning.
All of your health costs may be able to be deducted.
Again, 50% of all food and entertainment that is “business” related can be deducted.These are just the tip of the iceberg folks. You need to learn this stuff! If you know what you can deduct, it will help offset the cost of getting your home based business up and running and put you in a NO LOSE, situation. Once you are profitable, you will still need to track your deductions, but it will have become second nature by that point.There are many books on this subject and your tax professional can help as well. You need to have the right tax person because some will fight you on certain deductions. If they are LEGAL, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be taking them. It’s all in black and white on the IRS website, so get familiar with it.Using Your Money For The Monthly Expenses Of Your Home Based BusinessI hear people saying that they just can’t afford to start a business. GARBAGE! If you are currently employed, which you should be if you are trying to start a home based business, you can afford to get started. All you need to do is change the number of withholding on your w-4 and receive your tax refund in advance.Dangerous? Not even close. It’s your money! Getting a huge refund, once a year, is not a good thing. You are loaning your money to the government. Why not use it to create income for your family? Don’t get this money if you are going to be stupid and just buy stuff.Use it to start a home based business!I hope this helps show you how to make money with a home based business of your own. It’s not that scary and you can “learn as you earn.”

Ah, the old-fashioned country auction! The idea of a country auction conjures up certain images for people. The image of a fast-talking auctioneer offering up an antique table or chair is a popular example.

People who are buying household goods or collectibles are looking to get their items at the lowest price possible. However, the people who are selling their items at auction are hoping for the highest price!

Unless a person is in the business of buying and selling antiques or other items, not a lot of thought goes into how goods are prepared for sale via the auction process. However, if you are one of the growing number of people using auction venues to sell your collectibles or other inventory, there are a few things to learn first about how to sell at auction before you bring a truckload of stuff over to the next event.

Tip 1: Make sure the things you want to sell are a good “fit” for the auction house you’ll be using.

Never bring a load to an auction house without actually having been to one of the previous auctions. It’s important to get a feel for the type of goods that the house sells. For example, at one very rural country auction it was common for the owners to sell live chickens, pots and pans, car parts, and farm equipment.

After close investigation, this would not be the right venue for selling your daughter’s “Hello Kitty” collection. On the other hand, the spare John Deere parts that you bought at last week’s yard sale might be just the right thing for the buying crowd at this auction.

Tip 2: Be sure you clearly understand the terms and policies of the auction house.

Visit with the auctioneer ahead of time. Call to find out what the best days and times are to visit. One of the worst possible times to drop in for an informational visit with an auctioneer is the day of the auction. Call ahead and ask. While you’re at it, find out what are the best days and times to drop your stuff off.

Once you have a little time with the auctioneer, you’ll be able to find out what type of commission he or she takes from consigners (which is you), and what type of paperwork might be needed. Some auction houses send out Form 1099 tax forms at the end of the year. An auctioneer may need to see your identification and have you fill out a W-9. Be prepared.

Find out what happens to your items if they don’t sell. For example, some auctioneers may have a minimum starting bid. If, for some reason, one of your items does not sell, it may be grouped with another one of your pieces. Know the auctioneer’s strategy beforehand so that you aren’t surprised on pay day.

Tip 3: Make sure the auctioneer knows what you’re selling.

It might be perfectly obvious to you that the signed print you are consigning is a rare and valuable piece of art. However, the auctioneer may not know this particular artist. Make a note of anything particularly special about your items, and leave the note with the piece. Be sure to tell the auctioneer about it as well. He or she might determine that this is something to highlight on the company website or in the newspaper listing.

Tip 4: Present your items neatly.

No one likes to have to dig through a box full of grimy and greasy car parts to see what treasures might be in there. Separate the parts and lay them out on a flat, or use more than one box to de-clutter the lot.

There is no need to buy fancy display boxes. It’s easy enough to go to the local convenience store or supermarket and ask if you can have the emptied boxes or flats that they are discarding.

While it’s good to present clean items, take care not to ruin the value of anything by over cleaning. For example, if you find some old cast iron cookware, clean the obvious dirt and grime, but don’t scrub it to its original finish. For many people, this ruins the value of the item. So, clean and tidy and organized is the key here.

Tip 5: Don’t complain to the auctioneer if your stuff doesn’t sell for as much as you’d like.

The phrase to remember here is, “You win some; you lose some.” That’s just the way it is. There are some days where an auction house is loaded with people who all seem to want what you’re selling. There will be other days where the crowd is sparse, and the bidding is simply not competitive.

Remember that it’s in the auctioneer’s best interest to sell your things for the highest possible hammer price. But sometimes, it’s just not going to be a stellar sale. The auctioneer is only human, and is also disappointed if a sale doesn’t go as well as planned.

If you notice that every time you bring a bunch of goods to sell that you’re not realizing as much as you think you honestly should, try another auction venue and compare apples to apples. That is, bring the same types of items to the new auctioneer and compare the results.

Unless the auctioneer is particularly disagreeable or inconsiderate to you or buyers, there is no reason to confront him or her about a sale. If you find you just don’t care for an auctioneer’s style or methods, find another one. Believe me, there are plenty of them out there!

The primary thing to remember as you learn how to sell at auction is that the business is unpredictable at best. You will have good days, some not-so-good days, some great days. The more you sell, the more experience you will gain, and the more enjoyable the business will be.

I know one business owner who hired a content marketing agency because he wanted to build his business.

The agency said it would bring in over a dozen inbound leads per month.

After four months of preparation and two months of releasing content, he ended up sacking the agency because it had not brought in a single lead.

Of course, he’d already spent several thousand pounds with them by then.

So how do you avoid this happening to you?

Tip #1: Understand what content marketing is

At its simplest, content marketing is a way of proving you are an authority in your field.

It makes you more credible: people are more likely to choose you before others.

This means giving people advice so that when they decide they need a product like yours, they’ll think of you first and get in touch.

For example, you might sell an IT system that helps companies comply with health and safety legislation.

If so, it makes sense to offer advice on how the latest legislation is likely to affect them, the trends in the industry, and so on.

In the old days, this was simple. You struck up a relationship with someone in your relevant trade press – or the local press – and wrote articles for them.

That’s still an option. But now you can also get your information out via a blog, downloadable reports on your website or an email subscriber list.

And that’s not even mentioning the various social media.

Then there’s the question of how often you need to create content.

This leads to some important questions:

Do you know your market well enough to write about it convincingly? If not, you need to hire someone to do it for you and they will not come cheap. Come to think of it, if you don’t know your market, you won’t survive long anyhow. And come to think of it again, many peoples’ idea of what their market is turns out to be spectacularly incorrect.

Do you have a clear idea of how best to reach your market? Yes you can write a blog, but if your customers prefer to read the trade press then blogging won’t help you. And if nobody reads your blog – often the case – you’re wasting time anyhow.

Do you know how often you need to put information out? Once a quarter? Once a month? Once a week? Once a day? There is no fixed rule. You need a feel for what will interest your customers – otherwise you can end up wasting a lot of time and money putting out useless content. And you need to be constantly thinking what will interest them. Every time you think of something, communicate.
Tip #2: Don’t believe the hype

Unfortunately, content marketing – indeed virtually all marketing today – is based on fallacies.

The biggest fallacy: that customers are fundamentally different today to how they used to be.

Well, after 54 years in marketing I can tell you that’s rubbish.

Customers today are no different to how they were when I started in this industry in the 1950s. All that’s changed is that there are far more media you can use to reach them.

Statistics are bandied about ‘proving’ that people now have fearfully short attention spans, when actually they always did. With advertising in a newspaper (for example) you only had split seconds to grab someone’s attention before they flipped the page.

If you don’t understand people, and realise that people have not fundamentally changed, you will lose money with your marketing. It’s that simple.

But from the idea that people now have the attention spans of goldfish, many agencies will point to studies showing that people don’t like to have their day disrupted by advertising. They find it annoying.

Let me assure you that people have always found bad advertising annoying. This also hasn’t changed.

Marketing people love easy answers. They yearn for a world where one particular approach – the one they specialise in – will solve all problems. And they are good at proving it to you.

If you don’t apply a little logic you can end up losing a lot of money.

An agency may show you that more money is now being spent on marketing to attract inbound leads rather than outbound leads.

They tout this as proof that inbound marketing is more successful.

However, what they won’t do is show you the revenues generated by inbound versus outbound; only how much is being spent.

As you’ll have worked out already, that’s like saying a Mercedes ad campaign is more effective than a Volkswagen one because Mercedes spent five times as much.

There is precious little proof that inbound marketing is more successful at generating leads or sales. And that should be all you care about.

Tip #3: Find out what works – and copy it

There is no doubt that content marketing does work if used correctly. Here are some examples.

Serial entrepreneur Neil Patel runs three blogs. Each one has over 100,000 regular readers and they are the number one source of customers for his various businesses.
Almost all of consulting coach Ian Brodie’s new customers now come to him as inbound leads.
US information publisher Agora runs a number of daily email newsletters to generate new business.
What do these three have in common?

Each uses the same technique as the cornerstone of their content marketing.

When you visit one of Neil Patel’s blogs, for example, you get a pop up offering you a free report in return for your email address.

If you choose to delete the pop up, you get taken to a page with another sign up box asking you to subscribe to his emails. Only once you get past that do you get to read the blog.

Similarly, at the top of Ian Brodie’s homepage is a sign up box offering you a free report in return for your email address.

And as I’ve already indicated, Agora’s content marketing model is based entirely on getting you to sign up for one or more of its email newsletters. It offers at least half a dozen different ones, depending on your interests.

Examples are all around you when you look for them – even from so-called social media experts.

Mari Smith is a renowned Facebook ‘guru’, yet when you go to her homepage what’s the first thing you see? An email sign up box.

It’s the same for Pinterest ‘guru’ Melanie Duncan. Go to her homepage and the first thing she asks you to do is not to find her on Pinterest – it’s to sign up for her regular email updates.

In fact, you have to negotiate three pop up boxes asking you to subscribe before you can get to the homepage itself.

Why do they all do this?

Because getting people to subscribe to your regular updates is a tried and tested method of increasing sales. Subscribers have opted in to receive your news and advice, so they are more likely to read the content.

And of course, for every few emails offering advice, they slip in one selling something. Or they get you to return to their website or go a landing page that tries to sell you something.

Pop up boxes are surely just as annoying as any other form of disruptive marketing.

I’ll bet that if you asked the visitors to these websites whether they found it annoying, they would say yes. And yet they work.

Tip #4: “Don’t forget the marketing in content marketing”

If you look up the Content Marketing Institute, it tells you that content marketing is “the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. Instead of pitching your products and services, you are delivering information that makes your buyers more intelligent.”

The italics are mine. Just think about what they’re saying here for a minute.

That you should be sending out information without actually asking people to buy? Does that really make sense?

From spending millions of my own money – and God alone knows how much of my clients’ – I can tell you it doesn’t.

Trying to sell without selling is just plain stupid.

People are not thinking when they get your stuff. Even if they are intelligent – which many aren’t in the first place.

The entire premise of this kind of content marketing is that people don’t like being sold to. In research they say they prefer articles and white papers and that stuff.

What they think they prefer and what they do have nothing to do with each other.

What works and what people like are two different things.

What they need and what they think they want are two different things.

The quote that forms the heading for this section comes from Neil Patel, who points out that producing content is not enough if you don’t promote it.

Bill Bonner, the founder of Agora, recently explained that, though it may not seem like it, a daily email in which you don’t sell anything is really just part of a bigger strategy to bring home a sale.

As Agora copywriter Glenn Fisher says, “People who like modern terms call this content marketing, but it’s not.

“Content marketing is just a buzz phrase to describe something that’s always existed: it’s just plain old long copy.”

The guys at Agora should know. While there are several estimates around of how much the company makes each year, the most conservative figure is $90 million.

If you try to sell without selling, then guess what?

You won’t sell anything.

Tip #5: Know what your customers need

I can’t stress this enough.

Most of the content marketing I see that fails does so because those producing the content do not know enough about the market they are writing for.

As a result, they get it wrong in two major ways:

They write content that’s too shallow, of the teaching-granny-to-suck-eggs variety. Telling your customers what they already know is not the way to look authoritative.
They write content that doesn’t speak to their customers’ or prospects’ concerns.
You must know what your customers are thinking and worrying about – and write about them. This means you need to do your research. Don’t just read reports on the state of the market, or articles in the trade press.

Speak to your customers directly – or at least some of them. And do so with an open mind. Otherwise your content will never move them to want to act.

If you’ve decided you want to launch your own content out into the market, here’s what you need to do.

Research any agency you consider taking on. You wouldn’t hire someone without checking their references, so do the same if with an agency. Talk to their clients about results – and also what it’s like working with them.

Think about hiring a specialist. Many companies hire trade journalists or copywriters with a specialist niche to write their content, whether in house or freelance. Just bear in mind that real specialists do not come cheap.

If you try to get them cheap, they won’t stay long enough to have an impact. Resist the lure of false economy.

Know your market – and make sure anyone writing for you does too. If you don’t, your content will fall flat. So take the time to research this first. Only if you know the market can you test whether any agency or copywriter knows enough to write good content.

Know what you want to achieve. Many companies jump into content marketing just because everyone else is. Resist this urge. You can do well without content marketing and focus on outbound marketing instead.