Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.

The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.

It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!

With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.

With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.

5 Property Management Tests for Commercial Real Estate Owners & Asset Managers

With current depressed real estate values and rents, capable property management is more important than it has ever been. It is the main contributor to value in stagnant real estate markets, because while there are prospects for rent growth on the horizon, rent increases could be two to five years off – depending on the market. Management focuses on conserving and building value NOW.

Most commercial real estate owners outsource the property management functions to a general brokerage firm that offers property management services or to a specialized property management company. Unfortunately, selection of the property management firm is often made with very little due diligence on the qualifications of a firm, the person who will actually be doing the managing, and the knowledge of the specific market where properties reside. Picture standing on a busy sidewalk and handing a stranger a suitcase stuffed with cash. In essence, that is the same as selecting a manager without due diligence, because you are handing the equity in the property to a mere passerby for care and custody.

How do you measure the job a management company is doing? This article attempts to help you figure that out, because it makes even less sense to settle for poor service from a sub-par management company then it does to blame all properties’ problems on th e management company.

Below are five tell-tale tests to check the performance level of your management (if your management service is in-house, this test can also apply).

Test #1 Few, if any, ideas for improvement come from the property manager for ways to improve the physical property or the leasing situation.

You hired a caretaker, not a manager. Managers understand the word “proactive”.

Test #2 Property management reports are irregular and hard to decipher.

There is no excuse for this and the situation is easy to fix. Have an Excel spreadsheet designed to supply only the information you want, or select one of several comprehensive and off the shelf software programs available. Examples of the latter are the MRI, Yardi, Quicken or Property Solutions software programs.

I prefer real-time, online file-sharing between the owner or asset manager and the property manager. This setup does double duty – you can access the information anytime you need it for a lender, partners, upper management, etc. Plus, real-time reporting will insure that the property manager won’t wait until the day before a property report is due to actually do something related to your real estate. A simple, inexpensive service like Go to My PC can set up a multiple user system and share management reports.

Test #3 The person you’d hired to manage the property seems to have disappeared and someone else is managing the asset.

You have experienced “bait and switch”, a situation where the well-rounded resume of an experienced manager lands the business for the firm but then it is it goes to an underling or trainee for handling. This happens in both very large national firms and in small local management firms. Protect yourself by putting a “Key Man” clause in the agreement that gives you an ‘out’ if the person you thought you’d hired isn’t actually on the job, or quits.

Test #4 The management firm location is some distance from the managed property and you are not certain how often the property is physically visited by a property manager.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, takes the place of property site visits. A property manager’s responsibility includes ongoing routine contact with tenants. That way, when lease renewal time comes up, there is no unnecessary re-negotiation or delay. Personally, I prefer hiring property managers who live and work in the same market as the property over a big- name firm in a nearby city. If there is not a qualified property manager in the local market and you must use someone in a nearby city, be very specific about requiring periodic on-site visits and what you want to know after each visit. Your manager needs to talk to the tenants face to face before problems arise, and emails, tweets or phone calls are no substitutes!

Test #5 You receive regular reports about the property, but no information about the real estate market where the property sits.

Your manager is doing half the job. To make educated decisions about assets, an owner or asset manager must understand how their property compares to others in the market and what factors are impacting the local scene. A market condition report is not a canned demographic service report from a subscription service – it is a first- hand, feet on the street report analysis.

A good property manager is invaluable and should receive incentives for peak performance. If the above tests indicate that your current management doesn’t measure up, it is time to have a heart-to-heart discussion. Incorporate the above requirements in to the management agreement. That way, if there is no improvement, you are free to look for other options among the competitive firms vying for business.

Obviously looking for and starting a home based business starts at your home, but what are the requirements for such a venture? First of all you need to decide what sort of a business you want to start. Then you need to decide how you are going to go about achieving your goals. And finally, you need to be successful in managing the business efficiently and produce the profits for which you have started your home business. Let us look at how to go about all these and be successful with your home based business opportunity.Look For A Good OptionStart with selecting the best option that interests you the most among the possibilities of a home based business. The internet is a great resource you can make use of. Try the various search engines to find out what options are available for you for a home business. Select the option that interests you the most and get on to doing more research on the topic.There are various online businesses you can engage yourself with, if you are familiar with the internet. Generally these require much less capital and investment and if you are good enough with them, you can earn very good money with the least amount of efforts required. Of course you can go for a number of other options for home based businesses as well. Select the one you are most comfortable with and that seems achievable by you.More Resources And Research WorkEquip yourself as much as you can with proper techniques and tools to successfully run the home based business. The more information you have on the topic, the better placed you will be to handle the issues you face with your business. It is a great idea to look at case studies to learn how to effectively run your business and generate the ROI (return on investment).Areas to Focus Your Research On

Company
Products/Services
Leadership
Ownership
Compensation Plans
Tools/Support
By focusing your research on the above specifics areas, you can minimize your risk, plus all the time and energy you will be putting into your home business.It is going to be your business, and hence you must ensure that you give it enough time and commitment, as you will be the sole person to gain from it. A home based business can be a great way to give yourself much more in life that would have been totally impossible otherwise.Darrell Lischka