Think about this for a minute... Which of these is worth more to you?

"The market" is correct answer. Keeping customer satisfied is way to riches. Knowing what customer wants and giving it to them.

The world is full of products - some make it and others don't. The ones that don't have poor demand and thus no one will push them to "the market".

Remember next time you get a great idea - if market doesn't want your product, you are going to make a loss!

Next time you buy inventory which sits on self you will make a loss. Instead of buying inventory - go and buy a market.

Not easy to do...but rather essential if you want to sell your ideas. You need a market that's hungry for what you've got.

List Building

If you have a product to sell

Now How does this fit into "list building"? I'm glad you asked. If buying a market is tough then building a list of prospects whom you want to become your customers is next best thing.

Offer to them a taste of what you've got and get them on to your list. Once you have an audience for your product you can educate them to buy from you.

If you have no product

The Internet is a powerful tool for home-based businesses. If used effectively, it can be your best friend; but if you don’t secure your computer, it can be your worst enemy. I’m sure you’ve had your fill of warnings about latest killer computer virus. So I’m not going to harp on about latest threat, or potential for damage. What I WILL do is provide some protection tips and links for layperson.

(And now for obligatory disclaimer: I’m no tech-head – I’m an advertising copywriter and website copywriter. So this article is certainly not definitive or exhaustive. It’s simply an overview of some useful and easy to use solutions which should meet most of your requirements. I have no affiliation with vendors or their distributors, and would encourage people to shop around before buying.)

When you run a home-based business – with one or two computers – main things you need to protect against are malicious hackers, worms, viruses, hijackers, trojans, spyware, and adware. For most people, following tools are all you need.

Firewall – e.g. Outpost Firewall Pro

Basically, a firewall stops unwanted stuff getting in. Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro is powerful and easy to use. You can get it from http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost/ for USD$39.95. It claims to provide following protection.

• Detects and blocks all intrusions by hackers
• Blocks data theft attempts
• Operates your computer into stealth mode, making it invisible to intruders
• Analyzes your inbox and Quarantines Internet worms and viruses
• Monitors network activity of your PC
• Protects your children from illegal, inappropriate web sites
• Provides full access to a thorough history of your connections
• Prevents data leak from your PC
• Averts invasions of your privacy through Internet
• Conceals your surfing habits when browsing Web

As a general note, your firewall will be hardest security software to use because it'll ask you a lot of questions, such as:

• Such and such program is trying to connect with such and such server on internet.
• Such and such server is trying to connect to your computer (these are ones you have to be very careful of, as they may be people trying to hack your computer).
• A particular application has changed in some way. Do you want to make changed components shared with all other applications which interact with it?
• A program is attempting to change a registry value. Is that ok?

You'll also get a lot of these sorts of questions when you first install firewall. Once you've set up a few rules, they'll go away because rules will handle most things.

You can also set firewall to block active content (javascript, activex, etc.) on websites you visit and emails you receive. If you normally visit only trusted websites and you don't get much spam, you don't really need this feature. But if anyone is visiting dubious sites, or if you get a lot of spam, or you're just very careful, it's a useful feature. TIP: If you do a lot of web surfing, configure Outpost so that whenever you visit a new site, it asks you if you want to allow or block active content (select Options | Plug-Ins Setup, then click Settings, then choose Exclusions tab and check box at bottom of screen “Add Web sites to exclusions list on first visit”).