In fact, a well-planned, well-designed website can be a home based business owner’s best friend.

The first thing that you need to do is to start planning your home based business website as soon as possible. A mistake that many home based business owners make is in waiting until their company is already up and running. This can cause problems because domain name should be on all offline marketing materials. It costs a great deal of money to have new letterhead, business cards and other printed materials redone to add domain name. Also, having a website adds substance and credibility to your home based business. So you want to plan your home based business website strategy as early as possible.

You also want to put a great deal of thought into your home based business domain name. In many cases, it’s same as your business if name isn’t already taken. This may not be best way to choose a domain name, however. You want to make it easy for prospective customers to find you, so you may be better off choosing a domain name that describes your home based business product or service accurately. The reason for this is that people who are looking for lawn care services are going to do a search for lawn care services, so domain name should relate as closely to that as possible. A hot trend these days is to put hyphens between each word of your domain name, but stay away from periods and commas.

Plan for unexpected. It never fails that things are going along smoothly, then BAM, a home based business owner gets broad-sided with something they never dreamed would happen. It could be anything from a flooded basement where they have their home based business office to computer getting struck by lightening—or just an electrical outage at busiest time of day. So take time to make back up plans for every eventuality. This doesn’t mean you have to become pessimistic in your outlook, just that you have a backup plan for most any emergency that may come along. Having a plan means you’ll be prepared just in case.

Have money put aside. When your home based business profits are pouring in, it’s easy to let your spending get out of hand. Then when computer does get struck by lightening, you don’t have money for needed repairs. So you need to put aside some money each month while you’re growing your home based business to help you through any bad times you may have—and you will have them. Every business, home based or otherwise, has good times and bad. Having financial resources to see you through them is essential to keeping your home based business operating, and growing.

Use your time wisely. With a stay at home business, it’s easy to get distracted by television, telephone and family. It’s also easy to let paperwork slide. A lot of home based business owners become like Scarlet in Gone with Wind and think there’s always tomorrow. What happens is when things pile up, a home based business owner can easily get overwhelmed. After all, there’s no one else to take care of things. So make sure you organize your time, make a schedule—and stick with it.