How Technology Affects Your Home Business

Setting up, maintaining, and managing a home business has become vastly different with the introduction of today’s new technology, which includes the Internet and e-commerce. People are actually finding it easy to become managers of their own businesses, from the comforts of their home.

Small home based businesses and home offices have been created all over the country by people who would like extra income on the side and those who would like to break from the bondage of a traditional 9 to 5 day job.

But let’s take a closer look on what technology has done to home business. It has revolutionized both the mechanics and the scope in a very convincing way.

1. Today’s technology has made marketing global. Before the commercialization of the Internet, products were usually marketed to local areas only. It was next to impossible, or at least prohibitively expensive, to promote your products in another state, much less the whole country. Unless you had a large advertising budget and were willing to spend it on larger regional or national campaigns, you were stuck with the local market, limiting your business’s chance for growth.

But that’s a thing of the past. Today, it is easy to sell your services or merchandise to people of different places and nationalities. Just market your products on your website through Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click advertising and people from across the globe will be able to see it, too.

2. Before Ecommerce came about, payment of goods are done over-the-counter with cash, checks, or credit cards. The next phase was taking credit card payments over the phone. Today’s technology has made payments from a distance for merchandise convenient while still maintaining security.  Today, you can pay for anything you purchased online through Internet payment gateways like PayPal and Authorize.Net, and even wire transfer. That’s e-commerce automation working for you.

3. Modern technology has also made shipping faster. It is easy to maintain a home business because even shipping has made great strides in technology. After receiving an order, software can assign tracking numbers and print out shipping labels. Couriers can pick up the merchandise from your home and deliver it with their ever-improving network of planes, trucks and people. Tracking of the goods can be done online by both you and your customer. So it’s easy to make sure that your customer will receive his merchandise within the agreed time.

These are the three main processes of a sale: promotion, payment, and delivery. With the application of today’s technology all these were made simple.  The promotion of the products is done online. The payment for it is easy and secure. The delivery the goods is handled seamlessly. And all these are done while sitting comfortably on your chair. A home business has never been easier to manage.