I am often contacted by members of my business team with a tale of woe regarding a lack of response from their affiliates. It typically goes something like..."I send out lots of emails to all of them and I very rarely get any response. What am I doing wrong".

If your particular internet business involves selling well known branded items, personal feedback is not an issue. Visitors to your website (potential customers) are primarily interested in selection, availability, and price. If it is a returning customer, then you can also throw customer service into equation. Once desired item is selected, your mouse does all "talking" without any human interaction involved.

However, there are many types of internet-based home businesses where feedback and interaction are quite important and getting an affiliate or business team member to communicate with you is a definite objective. It's not at all surprising that this can be a challenge when you stop to think that what you are trying to do is initiate a dialog between two complete strangers who have never even seen each other.

Heavily branded websites like walmart.com or amazon.com are household names and carry an implied trust with visitors. However, vast majority of websites are not well known and are found and visited as a result of searches performed by search engines. In these instances, visitor is probably arriving at website for first time and human nature often dictates a sense of fear or suspicion of unknown which is manifested by a reluctance to respond to email messages from an unknown party.

1. What do you want this space to be able to accommodate? Are you planning on using this space to just get household bills paid in and maybe keep a few records, or are you starting up a small business and looking to run all of your office operations out of this space? Make a list of all of things you will need to do from your office space.

2. Develop a floor plan: Once you have made your list of all things you will need to be able to do from your new home office space develop a floor plan and begin to draw where all of your equipment will go.

3. Don't estimate space: Get out that measuring tape and measure where everything will go. Refer to your floor plan and using small pieces of masking tape mark out where you want everything to go. Then you can see if things fit in actual room as well as they did on your floor plan.

4. Don't forget to plug in: Check your office layout; are existing electrical plugs near space where you are gong to put your desk? Are phone jacks in a good location on plan or are they berried behind those file cabinets. Review floor plan, actual layout of room and where windows, electrical outlets and phone jacks are and revise plan accordingly. Now is a good time to have a few more outlets wired in or add that second phone line.