I have a confession to make. Much to my husband’s dismay I have been considering starting my own business. It’s a purely selfish venture. I want it only to feed my own addiction to books, but I keep telling myself it actually might be lucrative as well. Uh huh. I really only want it for the books.
On the other hand, most of the “what to do about money” books that I’ve read lately say the only way to have a booming income is to invest or own your own business. Even in these weird economic times if you’ve got a great home business you’re probably still better off than many people who are loosing their jobs left and right.
My weird compulsion to start a business and the thoughts that I’ve had on how to survive when your boss fires you made me very excited to review a new book by John McLain. How to Promote Your Home Business: Free, Easy & Low-Cost Ways to Market Any Enterprise is just the type of resource I’ve been looking for.
How to Promote Your Home Business is short, sweet and to the point. It gave me the “here’s what you need to know” and “here’s how to do it” information I like without a lot of fluff. Mr. McLain is also serious about the “low-cost” aspects of self-promotion. He means it when he says that. I found very few things in there that Mr. McLain recommended spending a lot of money on. Almost everything had a free or very minimal price tag. The only exception was his recommendation to pay for website design rather than trying to figure it all out yourself. Even then, he pointed you in directions that could help you do it yourself. He just also pointed out that this was one area that could get more “interesting” than you wanted it to.
How to Promote Your Home Business is useful for those who own a private business, need to start one, need to find a new career or anyone who has something that needs to be shared with others. Yes, I consider writing among those things. I learned a few things about promoting my books in Mr. McLain’s book as well.
This book talks about how to present yourself in almost any media form. It’s not totally comprehensive, but that’s good. It’s also not overwhelming. Mr. McLain doesn’t spend six chapters telling you how to write a press release, he breaks it down into the KISS method of reasoning. He pays more attention to how to grab someone’s attention than on how to format and phrase every paragraph. For me, that’s a good thing. I’m not so good at following rules if they get to complicated. The good thing though is he doesn’t leave you stranded. If you feel like you need more help or want to investigate things further, he gives you up-to-date resources for that as well.
It covers topics such as:
- Media lists
- Using emails
- Associations and networking
- Cold calling
- Radio, magazine and television ads
- Freebies and bill stuffers
- Extensive information on how to market yourself on the internet.
Another plus about what’s not in the book: It’s not filled up with lots of self-promoting fluff. A lot of times books like this carry an underlying message that says “we’re the experts and you can’t really expect to do things as well as we have so just give us your money and we’ll (sort of) go to work for you too!” How to Promote Your Home Business really does have you in mind.
It’s good stuff that doesn’t waste your time getting to what you need to know. Thanks John McLain for How to Promote Your Home Business. You made my home business idea seem doable on a limited budget. That scares my husband to death but it gets me pretty excited! Take a peak if you have a home business, a book to promote, or just an idea you’ve been tossing around. It might be more doable than you originally thought.
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