Home Business Tips 2011

Well, we're almost at the end of the year. As of this article, there are only 13 days to go. Regardless of what level you might be at with your business, you probably have plans to expand it in 2011. Maybe you do but maybe you're not exactly sure how to do that. Hopefully, after reading this article for inspiration, you'll get a clue as to where you want to go.

First let me start off by saying that I have finally reached that point in my business where I have no desire to expand. The last thing I want is more work or more responsibility. Don't worry...you'll know when you've reached that point as well. But for now, where to go? How do you go about expanding?

You might want to think about moving away from a model where you're constantly creating products to one where you have one continuity membership program. This way, you're creating one thing and simply advertising for more members. With most continuity programs, it's no more work to cater to 10,000 members as it is to 10 members. Simply set up a support desk, hire some people to run it, and you're done.

But okay, maybe continuity programs are not your style and you prefer to just branch out into multiple products. The question becomes, how do you go...wide or deep? Well, there are advantages and disadvantages to both models. Let's take wide first.

By going wide, you're creating products in a number of different niches. The advantage of doing this is that you can create a number of low end products that are affordable enough so that you probably give yourself a decent chance of converting well, not that you can't sell higher priced products. They just require a little more effort on the creation and promotion ends. The biggest disadvantage of selling low end products in multiple niches is that you're constantly looking for new customers to sell to.

What about going deep? This is where you have a product line in one niche. The biggest advantage of doing this is that once you've made that first sale, you've got a customer for life if they're happy with the product. Selling a more expensive product to that customer won't be nearly as hard as converting a new customer. On the downside, once you start selling more expensive products, it does become a little harder to get people to open up their wallets...no matter how dedicated a customer they are. Conversion percentage WILL go down the more expensive a product gets. However, you don't have to sell as many to make the same profit.

These are a couple of ways to think about expanding your business for 2011. There are plenty more, but I'll let you chew on these ideas for a while.