Do you have a home based business? Are you dreaming of creating one? In this article we will discuss seven steps to creating a successful home based business.1. Treat your home based business like a real business. You are a business owner, a professional. Treat your business just like any other business. Get a separate bank account for your business. You need a separate telephone line and/or email dedicated for just your home based business.2. Don’t mix your personal life with your business. Create a separate space in your house. Your home based business needs a room of its own for your home office.3. Set specific work hours. You are your own boss. You need to be a strict boss and not let your employee slack off and not get the work done. Make a work schedule for working your business and stick to it. Don’t start working and then stop to take breaks to do things around the house. A good help is to get an egg timer and set it for an hour. Work diligently for that hour and then take a 5 minute stretch break. Then do it again. You will be amazed at what you can get done.4. Approach your home based business with self-discipline. When you have a regular job, you go to work some days when you don’t feel like it or don’t want to. A home based business is no different. Get up early and start working, even if you’d rather watch the TV or read the paper.5. You must be organized. Make a list of the things that you need to do every day. Prioritize them in the order of importance. Then do them. Cross them off as you do them. Again, you will be amazed how good you feel and how much you get done.6. Let people know you are in business. You must advertise to do this. The internet is one of the most cost effective ways to advertise. You can advertise through banner ads, forums, blogs, pay per click. Educate yourself on these methods. Much is available online. Print media and traditional advertising are also an option.7. Maintain your integrity. In order for you to stay in business and make money, people must trust you. If you maintain your integrity you will win the trust of your customers. Always under promise and over deliver. When the customer is pleased with what he sees in you and gets from you, he will automatically advertise for you by spreading the word about you, your products or services.Starting and maintaining a home based business takes work to be successful. Once created and up and running, it is all worth it. These 7 steps can be the beginning of a wonderful journey of self- discovery and the great feeling of accomplishing something you are proud of, a successful home based business.

The beginning of each calendar year is a very busy time for many businesses, and Property Managers are not left out of that category! Whether you are a large Property Management Company or an individual Property Manager, this is the time when all tax forms should be issued for funds paid out to Rental Property Owners or Vendors during the previous calendar year. The form that is used to complete this task is the 1099-MISC, and this form must be submitted to the recipient and the IRS by a specified date each year. When 1099s are submitted to the IRS, they must be accompanied by a summary form, Form 1096, to meet the tax filing requirements.

- Why is the 1099-MISC necessary?
The IRS uses 1099s to monitor any income source that is not filed on a traditional W-2 form, which only shows income received as a salary or wage. This is a way in which the IRS captures any income received by an independent contractor or rental property owner that may otherwise go unreported. A Property Manager or Property Management Company is acting as a reliable source for the IRS to help enforce that all income is being reported.

- Who should receive a 1099-MISC?
• Rental Property Owners – all rental property owners that have received $600 or more in rent disbursements in a given calendar year should be issued a 1099-MISC.

• Vendors – all independent contractors or vendors who are unincorporated and have received $600 or more in a given calendar year for services provided should be issued a 1099-MISC.

- When does a 1099-MISC NOT need to be filed?
Every situation has exceptions, and tax filing and reporting is no different. Here are some of those exceptions:
• If the total payments to a rental property owner or vendor are less than $600, a 1099-MISC does not need to be filed.
• If a rental property owner is a corporation, a 1099-MISC does not need to be filed.
• If a vendor is an incorporated business, a 1099-MISC does not need to be filed.

- What information is required on a 1099-MISC?
• Tax ID # – this can be an individual’s SSN or an EIN for an unincorporated organization.
• Address – this is needed for the 1099-MISC to be sent to the recipient.
• Funds Paid – this includes a total of all income paid to a vendor or individual rental property owner during the previous calendar year. (Remember, only if the total is greater than $600)

- What boxes are used on a 1099-MISC to report income?
• Rental Property Owners – all income collected that was for rent should be reported in box 1 “Rents” on the 1099-MISC. Any additional income paid (late fees, utility bill reimbursements, NTQ fees, etc.) should be reported in box 3 “Other Income” on the 1099-MISC.
• Vendors – all payments made for vendor services should be reported in box 7 “Non-employee Compensation” on the 1099-MISC.

It is also good practice to send all rental property owners a copy of their financials for the previous calendar year so they can see where the amounts in each box on the 1099-MISC were derived from.

Not filing 1099s when required can lead to penalties and fines by the IRS, so it is very important to keep accurate records of amounts paid to each vendor and rental property owner and request any necessary forms that you may need to file the tax forms to be compliant in this process.

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.