Cottage Industries have long been an important segment of American Business. In fact, most small home-based businesses fall into this category. Merriam Webster actually defines cottage industry as “An industry whose labor force consists of…individuals working at home with their own equipment.”With the advent of the World Wide Web, new cottage industry home-based business start-ups are at an all-time high. There are currently more than 234 million websites, and in 2009 alone, an additional 47 million were created. Now, more than ever, businesses are heavily marketing online. Social Media sites are dominating the internet and smart businesses are using these sites as a very effective part of their online marketing strategies.Article writing as a means to advertise businesses online is proving to be a very viable work-from-home cottage industry. Network-marketing, social media marketing, Mult-level marketing (MLM) businesses- it seems as if every business has incorporated article writing into their marketing campaigns, so the demand for these writers is great.Article writing helps with “branding” a particular business or product. Articles are written and then published online as a way to get name and product recognition. It is a very simple, proven, effective step in accomplishing the “branding” that every business must have in order to stay ahead of their competition and remain successful financially.Home-based business typically do not require a large capital investment, which is why so many people are drawn to these cottage industry endeavors. A reliable computer and an internet connection allow you to work from home, set your own hours, allow a viable income while you work from home, and provide the life-style flexibility that so many people are looking for these days. There are many programs available online to assist you with your article writing as a cottage industry home-based business.There are internet marketing and coaching programs available online and the amount of marketing information that they can provide you with is astounding. A good, legitimate, reputable internet coaching and mentoring center will not come cheaply. Remember, you are getting what you pay for. If a program promises to teach you “everything you need to know” about internet marketing for just a couple hundred dollars, you aren’t going to get anywhere near everything you will need to know. A comprehensive internet marketing coaching and mentoring program will probably cost somewhere just under $3,000. 00. Many offer payment plans to make the cost more manageable for the average new home-based business owner. I tell people to think of this an investment in your education and future financial success. If you can pay someone $3,000.00 to teach you how to earn anywhere from a couple thousand to a few thousand dollars monthly, then your initial investment is actually pretty small, and can be recovered in a relatively short period of time. Pretty good investment, right?The beauty of internet marketing and article writing as a viable cottage industry home-based business is that, if done correctly, an individual can earn residual income long after he or she has stopped working. If you can expect a few hundred dollars to trickle in every month, you’ve got a residual income that will provide you with some extra spending money! Not to mention the fact that you will, forever, have the ability to be your own boss and work from home!

The niche you have chosen should allow creation of more than one product or service. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts, to complete turnkey solutions; there is no need to worry about spending time on the real products sold to the customer. The main ones are keyword selection, sales copy principles, graphics, affiliate programs, product creation, online payment processing, auto responders, and search engine optimization.

Once you’ve earned money from this type of information product business, you can invest in the creation of your own products if you want, or start offering more informational products that allow you to sell your knowledge. But the creation and production costs of a similar big ticket in sequence product, although higher, are still pretty low. A key by-product of this process will be the creation of 3-D, Computer Assisted Design art.

The Association for Financial Professionals permits the following activities for repatriating funds: Research and Development activities, advertising and marketing programs, hiring and training new recruits, acquiring patent and other rights to intangible property, improving transportation, funding capital investments with the purpose of job creation and job retention & funding product responsibility or environmental claims.

It prohibits certain activities like: Tax payments, Payment of executive recompense, Payment of dividends, Redemption of stocks, Debt investments and Portfolio investments. Therefore, before repatriating the money, you must consider whether it is worth or not.

Checklist on what artist and product development necessitate includes: Exceptional vocals, musicianship and/or songwriting skills, Continued education and enhancement of musical skills, Quality equipment, Performance ability, Image creation and maintenance, Plan of action, goal setting, excellent promotion materials including photographs, press releases and artwork, Business management skills, Marketing, Publicity and Promotion knowledge, Online and Offline Professional management, Basic knowledge of recording, producing, engineering, and mastering, Basic knowledge of manufacturing, distribution, and sales online, brick and mortar and air-play, Good choices in members, staff and advisors, Physical and mental preparedness, Basic knowledge of finances, accounting Law and legal issues etc.

The goals for doing so are for the product owner to: Communicate the whole, Determine and communicate when releases are needed, Determine what functionality is sufficient for each release & focus on business value derived from the releases. The delivery team on the other hand will see the whole, learn about the steps to realize the vision, learn the business priorities, provide technical input to the roadmap and provide estimates for the projected features. The salesperson must lead the prospect through the various decision criteria needed in order to secure a sale. Whether your idea is the development of a product, launch of a service business, or even the creation of an event or program for a non-profit, creativity is the root of all entrepreneurial efforts starting with the vision itself.

People quickly learn to spend their time on marketing and product creation, rather than repetitive tasks. Apart from empowering companies and individuals, there should be a particular focus on identifying labor intensive businesses that have the potential to make a significant and positive impact on employment creation as well as those businesses that have a product or service offering for export markets with the final objective of booming local economies.

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.