4. Who does your business sell to? – This will help you define your market (if any) Try to describe personality of market and why they would want to buy your product. It may provide a starting point for your business’s marketing strategy.

5. How do you want prospects and customers to contact you in regards to product your business is selling? – You may decide that you don’t want prospects to call your home number and you may need a separate phone line or a toll free number. This is part of defining your daily operations and costs.

6. Does your business need a web site? – If answer is “Yes”, then you will want to think about what type of site you want and how you are going to build it.

7. How is business to receive money? – A very important question! Do you have a business checking account to receive checks? Does your business accept Credit Cards? Pay Pal?

8. How does your business make money? – You should know how you can make a profit on product you sell. You should know all of your costs to run business. This way you know how much product you need to sell each month.

9. How much money are you going to spend on marketing? – Marketing your business should be priority and you should realize that you will need a budget to market your product. You cannot sell your product if your market does not know about it. Also, you may want to start out with a very small amount and try different methods until you learn how to market your product correctly.

Asking yourself these basic questions may help you shed light on areas of your business that you may have not taken into account. After all, it can be overwhelming running a home based business. Asking basic but tough questions about your business can help you identify immediate and long term focus of your business and most of all sustain your business until it reaches profitability.

Worse Case Scenario

Everybody has a few really bad days in his or her life. You know, car breaks down, you spill coffee on your shirt while driving to work…you get notice of a full blown audit from IRS. The first step you take should not be drinking to excess or driving for border. You have rights when IRS comes calling and one of them is particularly important.

Representation

You have right to be represented by an accountant or attorney at your audit. Under no conditions should you even consider going to an audit by yourself. Doing so would be like throwing red meat to a lion. Instead, spend money to get representation and let them handle audit. In most cases, you won’t even have to go to audit.

Nightmarish tax audits are generally a thing of past. A letter from IRS should not cause you to faint. Usually, news isn’t that bad. If it is, hire representation and let them handle it.