The basic Skype service is free and allows you to make voice and video calls with excellent call quality to any other Skype user, anywhere in the world.  Think of it as an interactive email or instant message.  Skype allows you to conduct conference calls with three or more Skype users for free as well.  There are more features available for those who are willing to pay a nominal fee.      

For a small fee each month ($2.95 USD as of this writing) you can get a Skype-In telephone number.  This will allow regular telephone users to dial a number and reach you via Skype.  Not only can you accept incoming calls from regular telephone numbers, but you can also make outgoing calls to regular telephone numbers as a Skype-In subscriber.  This could eliminate the need for you to get a dedicated telephone service for your home-based Internet business.  Telephone service through traditional providers can be expensive and come with contracts and early termination fees.  Skype is a no-hassle and inexpensive service as an alternative to traditional telephone service for your Internet-based business.  A great benefit of being a Skype-In subscriber is the availability of using your Skype number with various other services and devices.

As a Skype-In subscriber, you can forward your Google Voice number to your Skype number.  That way you can still take advantage of Google Voice’s features (i.e. voicemail transcription, SMS to email, conference calls, personalized greetings and more) while using Skype.   For those of you on the go, Skype has a killer iPhone app that makes free calls over a 3G network.  There are also apps available for Blackberry and Android devices that make it easier to do business remotely.  The Skype apps are definitely some of the best cloud apps available.

Home-based Internet businesses would greatly benefit from using Skype.  You can set up accounts for your employees, make international calls without worrying about the price per minute, enhance your conversations with video capability, integrate existing telecommunication services and mobile devices, perform conference calls, and more all for a nominal monthly fee. 

If you have not already, take a few moments and sign up for a Skype account to see how your business can benefit from its endless features.  You can do so by clicking on the Skype logo to the right. 

For those of you who do use Skype, what do think about it?  Do you use it for personal purposes, business purposes, or both?  How has your business been impacted by using Skype?  Have you used Skype with Google Voice or used any of the mobile apps?

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Sometimes it takes a good swift kick in the pants to get your attention…

…and that’s what I got this week while reading some of my favorite blogs. This site started as a journal of experiences I encountered while living and working in a connected world. Looking back over my last dozen or so posts, it has been anything but and I need to get back on track. So here goes. Let’s talk about…

Building My Online Business

For the first fifteen years or so of my professional career I worked in a wide variety of businesses; an international natural foods network marketing company, the second largest telecom company in the country, a printing company, even commercial software development. One of the reasons I was able to move from industry to industry so easily was because the underlying principles of technology were not dependent on what kind of widget was being pushed out the back door. A similar principle applies here.

Just because I have moved my business online doesn’t mean that those same underlying principles of good business practices and monetization don’t apply anymore, in spite of the way some online entrepreneurs act. Take the recent purchase of one mans goal dot com for instance. The buyer paid over $10,000 for a website with no organic product, no long tenured customers, no established monthly recurring revenue… just a name and a quasi-loyal following of readers. That’s like paying $10,000 for a convenience store that doesn’t sell anything but they have lots of people come in and look around everyday.

So How Do They Translate?

Good question. Off-line business principles make good online business principles. Things like keeping a low overhead, diversification, and return on investment still apply. Some are easier than others, take low overhead for example. It would be very easy to run a successful online business with a laptop and a digital camera. Neither are cheap but they are one time costs that will last for years. And even with a somewhat larger tech base than that, my overhead costs are very low…pretty much just the cost of Internet access.

Another of those principles that very few online business owners pay attention to is diversification, or having multiple streams of income. Why diversify? Oh, I don’t know. Lets say you are one of the eBay entrepreneurs and you’re making boatloads of cash off their affiliate program. That’s great. Now what if they pull the plug on it tomorrow, or at the end of the month? Would you be able to replace that income in 30 days?

Diversification of your online business simply ensures sustainability, another solid off-line business principle. If you had an off-line business selling widgets and you depended solely on one supplier for those widgets, what would you do if they went out of business? You have to bring the same mentality to your online business ventures.

How Am I Diversifying

Like most folks who decided they wanted to make money online, I threw up a blog and slapped some AdSense units on it, sat back and waited for my check! And waited…and waited…OH, A CLICK…for 2 cents. I got frustrated and moved on to something else. Now, with the help of the three wise men, I am working my way toward a better understand of AdSense and developing it into a significant stream of income…and it is quite a learning curve.

So while I’m working on that, I’ve recently taken a pretty large bite of the affiliate pie and added eBay to my online business portfolio. Now this is not really new for me, I’ve been signed up with the eBay affiliate program for several months…posting links and banners for them all over the place. But two things happened in the last month that have totally changed my outlook on eBay and their affiliate program and the part it plays in my online business.

The first is that eBay has brought management of their affiliate program in-house and out of the hands of Commission Junction. Now, I’ve never really had any beef with CJ, they’ve just never done anything for me…not one red cent. So I’m kinda happy that things are moving in-house with eBay. That said, they are experiencing some growing pains during the transition but hey, its eBay! Nuff said!

The second big development was my discovery of BANS or Build a Niche Store. BANS is a software designed to be loaded on your server to publish a “store like” website populated with products currently listed on eBay. Again, in the interest of full disclosure, I bought BANS back in March and built my one little store and sat back and waited for the money to start falling out of my PC. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened yet (but when it does you can bet I’ll shoot a vid and post it on Revver! lol). Anyway, back on April 7th, Vic over at BloggerUnleashed.com challenged us to build 100 BANS sites. That really got me thinking and I took the challenge!

The next day was my birthday so I made my present to myself everything it took to get the 100 sites built. I can now say that I have added 103 BANS sites to my online business and will be adding a few more each week.

So What’s Your Point?

The point is this. If those sites only average $1 a day each then that’s $103 per day and almost $3,100 / month or about $37,000 a year added into my online business coffers. Do I have your attention now?

Am I sitting back now with a bigger bucket waiting on money to start falling out of my PC? No, remember diversification? Now that I have the 100 BANS sites up, I’m working to improve my AdSense results, I’m looking for other affiliate programs, oh, and I’m getting links all over the freakin Internet!! And on the off chance that all of those options might not pay-out…I still have the bulk candy vending machines!

The bottom line is that an online business is still a business and you have to treat it that way. Its not a cool way to get to stay at home and work in your shorts, t-shirt, and flippies (but if you need any of those things, be sure to check out BloggerUniforms.info!) Seriously, you have to work like your next meal, or the light bill, or the cell phone bill depended on it.

Ok, I know this has been an epic post like you’d find on How To Make Money from Griz so I’ll go ahead and knock off here…but don’t stray too far because I have lots more online business tips to share. Things like getting a reseller account versus a regular hosting account, all the fun I had setting up BANS and at least one more post on some nifty little tools to help with all those sites.

Thanks for sticking with me this far and since you did I want to leave you with a challenge. If you are serious about having an online business, write down your goals for this year and three concrete steps you will take for each goal. And if you want to share them with the rest of us in the comments, we’ll all be pullin for you! It kinda works that way around here.

Peace.

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UVME.com (you vs me dot com) is ready for launch! Its a brand new on-line game platform that changes the way you will play games…forever!

UVME.com has been in beta for a little over a month now and they’re finally ready to launch the site into full production! I’ve been playing around with it for a couple of weeks and got in to do a little beta testing. The games are pretty similar to on-line games you’ve played before, with two big differences.

First, you can challenge your friends (or just find random players) to a game, even games like Arcade Ducks and Fruit Frenzy that you would normally think of as single player games. And now, for the really interesting part…

Of course you can always play for free but if you’re feeling really good about your skills, or just plain lucky, you can play for cash! That’s right! Challenge your opponent to a money game (as little as $1) and if you win, you’re in for some cash! How’s that for a deal, get paid to play games online!

Ok, so what are you waiting for? I don’t know…meet me over at UVME.com and let’s play!

Speaking of a good online MLM opportunity…

There are lots of ways to monetize your life and work at home with your homebased business. One of the best work at home jobs is network marketing and here is one to look at Aprenda Networkmarketing

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