7 Interesting Ways To Run Your Business From Home With The COVID-19 Pandemic
The fear of contracting the virus is a major factor hindering businesses from striving as they ordinarily would want to, this has brought a major setback for business owners and even those wanting to venture the entrepreneurial landscape.
But beyond that, there are several reasons why you need to start running your business even from the comfort of your home.
First is the cost of renting a shop, which in most cases can be equal in an amount as renting an apartment where you have to live and wake up every day to go to your shop or office.
You can agree with me that by the time you take a look at the total cost in a year, you would have been spending so much, yet what you probably would rake in as income or profit from your sales wouldn’t be enough to foot the bills.
For some people, the hurdle of going through the traffic without a sale a day is a devastating experience and nothing bites so much when in business as that as well.
Furthermore, this pandemic has placed in your hands the utmost responsibilities of catering for your kids since they are not in school for their teachers to look after them while you get busy at work or shop trying to make ends meet.
For those who are interested in running a business and have been thinking about the best opportunity to avail itself, I am certain it’s the time too.
And lastly are those currently employed but are looking for other income streams to beef up on their monthly take-home considering the huge monetary responsibilities that stare at you in the face each day.
Let me say that these 7 Ways will definitely bring succor to you if only you take to heart what I shall be revealing here.
Why Is This Important To You?
Yes, the question above is obvious and not farfetched.
I decided to talk about this today for many reasons but importantly…
Life must go on even in the midst of the coronavirus and other challenges
Responsibilities keep increasing without considering your paycheck
A lot of idle people wanting to get ahead in life especially as it bothers on finances
You may be running one and probably just using a method or two… But with these 7 ways, you can be certain that you have a bunch of ideas to explore.
So, let’s run through it……..
7 WAYS TO RUN YOUR BUSINESS FROM HOME:
1. Use of Telephones – Cold Calls – Support With Social Media Shops
This involves the use of your everyday phone. It simply requires that you make a list of prospective numbers and call at least 20 to 100 a day to introduce your products or services to them.
Now, the method here is what we refer to as “Cold-Call”. This approach is best taught and practiced over and over before you start exploring it.
It is one of the best ways I have used to claim more sales amidst competitions from the comfort of my office and home.
Keep a tab with me on my blog and social media platforms to get a true life training for this.
2. Use of WhatsApp Broadcast Technique
WhatsApp is another very useful tool for making unimaginable sales. I remember at a time when the value of our currency was so high… (Very high now too though).
I also couldn’t just change to Naira on Facebook because I was owing Facebook an outrageous dollar amount and I couldn’t just afford to pay it at the time.
So I explored this approach.
Got some numbers I purchased for the purpose of sending bulk SMS to.
Using Bulk SMS wasn’t getting me the needed results at the time. Knowing fully that to get results, you must engage your prospects in conversations designed to help or solve their problems first.
So, I adopted this approach.
I went on to create 22 Broadcast lists which would only accept a maximum of 250 contacts for each.
So in total, I had 5,500 contacts.
Each morning, I would create a conversational content and send as broadcast to all of them.
The result was unimaginable after a period of 30 days and doing it consistently each day.
That’s something you may want to consider if you are limited in your ads spend.
3. Use Facebook Business Page Shop
You don’t need an E-Commerce platform or to create one because Facebook in their drive towards becoming the No. 1 earth’s market place has included this application to their platform for your use.
You can go on and thank Facebook for this great impact.
Now, this platform is just like Jumia on your page.
Where you can create your various products and hang each one with its descriptions, prices, and other stuff to simply help you to communicate the product essence to your prospective clients.
Go ahead and use that and thank me for it later.
At the end of uploading it, just go and do an Ad for it and your shop will be running just like Jumia does too.
4. Use Instagram Business Shop
Of course, you know by now that Instagram is also owned by Facebook. And this platform seems to be taking over from Facebook with its huge user’s fan base.
That’s why most people target it for use today.
That notwithstanding, you can’t undermine the use of your Facebook page.
So, my advice is for you to use both.
This also has a shop and runs just like a Facebook shop.
You can explore it as well.
5. Sell On Other Local E-Commerce Platforms – Jumia, Konga, Jiji, OLX, Amazon
I explored the use of this platform too in selling for my customers and my product as well.
Just as same as you open up a shop on Facebook as discussed earlier, so also is this method.
Once you go on these platforms, you would be allowed to open your own shop and create your Shop ID which will be generated automatically while you give it your own name.
They will host your shop for you.
Now, if you are not based in Lagos to deliver your products to them to enable them do the dispatch for you. It may be very tough.
I don’t know if they’ve improved on that policy now though.
But for those in Lagos, this is where you take advantage.
Once your shop is opened, you can copy the link they give to you and start spreading it.
The advantage here is that Jumia and these other platforms have already built for themselves a Brand and have a whole lot of fan base or customers.
This allows for trust and you can be sure of people buying your great product easily.
Make sure you watch my video where I explained it further.
6. Use Online Market Group For Advertising
There are millions of Online Market Groups on Facebook, as well as other platforms including your WhatsApp platform.
These platforms have proven to be one of the easiest ways for those who are not tech-savvy.
The idea here is to join at least 100 of these groups and ensure to be conversant with their rules.
Connect also with the Admins of these groups by privately chatting them and giving them the opportunity to enjoy royalties (Commission) from you.
Your task will be to create engaging contents each day and post on those platforms
There are free online tools that allow you to do a one-click broadcast and all the 100 groups get your content at the same time.
I hope you can explore this today by joining at least 20 groups for a start.
7. Connect With Group Influencers/Affiliates Groups – Create Incentives
Now, this last one seems similar to the previous one.
But in this case, you won’t be doing the marketing…
There are certain influencers in groups that people listen to.
These guys have gone ahead to create their own groups.
These groups are in most cases closed groups and would require the permission of the influencers for you to join.
Now, your job will be to look for influencers and connect with them.
Offer them a juicy deal for each sale through them
Generate an affiliate code for each one of them and ensure they use it to sell your products.
Be honest with them and ensure you pay them each time they hit a sale.
Now, depending on how much margins they are making, do your best to encourage them even more.
You will be smiling to the bank each time as they will be doing the work for you while you work on your business or focus on other more interesting stuff.
Other Methods Include:
There are other methods you can explore as well depending on the country you are currently living.
These methods include Google Shop Listing – Yet To Be Released For Nigerians; YouTube Shopping, and WhatsApp Shopping.
Of course the use of WhatsApp Story, YouTube Photo is already ongoing.
But you probably have to dig in further to understand how this works.
You can also stay here as I work towards having a good understanding of it and exploring it too for my own businesses before I can share it with you.
Possible Problems To Deal With
All of these methods are super active and free ways to run your businesses from the comfort of your home.
However, you may be faced with problems like payment collections, deliveries, and all sorts if you are not using an already established platform.
So, in case you want to take care of these areas, then go on to create a merchant store on one of the Payment platforms otherwise known as gateways to allow for the collection of payments from your clients…
Some of these gateways include Paystack, Flutterwave, GTPay, Interswitch Webpay, eTtranzact, VoguePay, SimplePay, CashEnvoy, etc.
If you are an individual business owner, you may just need to send them a verified copy of your acceptable means of identification like National ID, Drivers’ License, or International Passport. And then other necessary documents like your Utility Bill bearing the details of your residential or business address.
For corporate businesses, you’ll be required to submit a scanned copy of your CAC Documents and once approval is given you can go ahead and start collections of payments from your numerous clients.
Another important thing here is creating a delivery method for the business if you are selling physical stocks.
I would suggest, that you go to motor parks and establish a relationship with the Union and then find local delivery companies who deliver within the town to take the responsibilities of delivering to the parks as well as delivering to internal customers.
On a final note, the success of your business will largely depend on your ability to stay on top of your content creation.
It, therefore, means that your customers must be well-fed with enough content as possible to keep them glued to your page.
For more on content, please go over to our YouTube page and watch my training on content creation.
So as you go to sleep tonight, and if you have read all of these threads, I would ask you these questions…..
And I want you to provide to yourself, very sincere answers please.
You don’t have to share it with me.
Just ask yourself…
– Is my current income enough for me and is meeting my dream life desires?
– Is my job giving me all the time to do the stuff I really want to do in life?
– Do I really have people looking up to me for their day-to-day livelihoods?
– Is my business bringing in the kind of sales I really want to have?
If you become really worried about these questions because it isn’t meeting your dreams, then I have just one word for you.
Change…
Join our 30 Days’ Challenge and begin to change you first.
That’s the most important thing right now.
I will see you again tomorrow if Jesus Tarries.
Be Great, Nothing Else Pays.
Best of Luck……
It’s Tim Abel.
