At the end of each month, I feature a round-up of 5 posts.  Some are my favorites and others that readers have enjoyed.

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Here are 5 posts for November.

The Realities of Blogging as a Home Business

How Are You Branding Yourself & Your Business?

Cell Phone Etiquette for Your Home Business

Become Aware of Consumer Trends Affecting Your Home Business

Operating Several Home Businesses Simultaneously

What was your favorite or most helpful post this month?

When considering your most avid consumers, if you have an online business or a physical shop with online presence, don’t leave out seniors and boomers…as long as your products and services meet their needs.

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 According to recent surveys, these two groups are some of the most avid online customers.

If your products are geared for younger people, reach out to the senior and boomers as the grandparents who will be buying for grandchildren and adult children. 

When you know, from statistics, who likely consumers are, you’ll know better how to focus your promotions and products.

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Shopping on Black Friday, whether getting to the store on midnight or at 5 AM, has become a tradition in the United States.  At first it was 7 AM, but then the time began moving earlier and earlier when shoppers arrived at designated stores and shopping malls to begin their Christmas shopping with special deals and prices.

Sometimes a store does this individually.  Other times, a group of stores in an area promote the event and have special happenings for shoppers to enjoy, as well as special prices.

Even online stores nowadays have special prices for Black Friday.

Is your home business participating this year?  How are you doing it?  Do you have special stories and promotions to share?

Happy Thanksgiving to my Home Biz Notes readers…from my home to yours. Even though you might celebrate at a different time, in a different country, take time to count your blessings and find thankfulness in your life and business.  As author, Debbie Macomber does, keep a gratitude journal and write in it every day…or even every week. 

This even could become part of your business in which your customers write down blessings they’re appreciative of. 

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Several global trends are driving change in consumer selection and buying power, my husband and I learned at a recent business conference for one of our home businesses. 

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These trends affect not only home businesses, but most any…large or small.  When you’re producing products or providing services, consider these as they will affect your business to some extent.

• An aging population will determine what a majority of consumers are interested in.
• Convenience to make the daily routine easier has become important to consumers of any age.  They even will pay more for something that saves them time.
• Natural, organic or “green” are buzz words that play a large role in items today’s consumers purchase.
• The global economic downturn affects buying power.  Also, consumers are looking for items to make their life better in this crisis.
• In our digital informational world, they want instaneous service or gratification. 

How are you incorporating this information into your business?  How are you meeting your customers’ needs in these areas?

Take a look at your business and consider the current consumer trends.

In response to my post, One Home Business or Many, the blogger at Home Business Entrepreneur left the following intriguing comment:

I run several home based business. I have a home based bookstore. I also sell the books on the internet. I sell some paintings on the wall of the home based bookstore and I make money blogging about how to run a bookstore. All of them are run simultaneously from my living room.

It’s really amazing that in this day and age we can operate a business from our living room and reach people all over the world.  We actually can operate several home businesses which might or might not be related. 

What are doing for a home business?

“Turn a setback into a comeback,” I heard speaker/author Willie Jolley advocate. 

How do we do this in our business, especially when there are happenings beyond our control?  How do we turn depressed economic times, when business may be down, into an upturn or comeback?

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Find something in the situation that you can use to help others.  In other words, find a need and fill it.

I thought of this theory recently as I was reading a mystery.  Woven into the “who dun it” story line was the heroine Peggy’s challenge with a drought in her area.  This adversely affected her gardening/landscaping business.  Then her assistant came up with the idea of catching rain water (when it occasionally rained) to water gardens and flowers.  In the meantime, he suggested they offer the service of clearing up dead plants and replanting with ones that survive with little water.

Next they decided Peggy should conduct workshops on keeping one’s plants alive, what plants to encourage in dry weather and sell the items needed in her shop.  Voila!  A new aspect of her business was born out of adversity.

What can you offer, during natural and economic disasters,  that helps others while helping your business?

Developing a blog to accompany your business may be time consuming, especially if you’re not a good typist.  (My husband finds it takes him so long because he has to hunt and peck when typing.)

You might want to consider looking into voice recognition programs that enable you to write your blogs, letters, manuscripts and other work by using your voice.  These programs apparently have become better than the first versions developed so are handy and save you time.

I haven’t tried any yet, but at ProBlogger, Darren Rowse features a guest article with video, Speech Recognition for Bloggers – the Ultimate Guide, by Jon Morrow.  This gives great information about utilizing voice recognition for your blog and other written work.  You’ll want to check this out, especially if you’re not into typing and/or want to save time.

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Blogging has become one of the techniques to draw people to your business, whether it’s an at home one mainly on the Internet or has a walk-in shop. 

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 More and more people are becoming blog saavy and enjoy checking out interesting material.

• Develop a blog that is entertaining as well as informative. 
• Create one that doesn’t look like you’re only promoting your products or service.
• As you write about your work, yourself, history of your product, information related to producing it, you will capture your customers’ attention and hopefully stimulate sales.
• Create the idea that your customers need your product or service by letting them know how it can make their lives easier, more efficient or pleasurable.
• Post frequently so they’ll be looking for something new.
• Use photos and/or graphics.

How do you attract people to your blog?

Google has developed a new service…a free listing for one’s business.  Here you can fill out the requested information and find yourself listed on the Google map and Google guide.

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If you have a home business, where you might not want walk in customers or have mainly an online business, you might want to reconsider your listing.  It appears that you must fill in the information about address which automatically appears on the map.

However, if you do want to be listed and gain this free promotion, you could check into it.  Check out www.Google.com/LocalBusinessCenter