When you choose and run an internet marketing business you will soon realize that you cannot be the jack-of-all-trades. This would not be productive and by wanting to dilute your energy on all marketing techniques you would end up mastering none.

So you will need to focus on what you are good at. That’s why it is important to know what your strengths are. Here are 3 basic steps you should take when starting an internet home business.

1. Assess your talents.

Think of your talents as the things you’re really good at. They are like personality traits. For example, you may be a very creative person, or someone who is really good at attending to details or a person with a gift for communicating. Your talents are the base for any successful business venture, including an internet marketing business.

2. Examine your skills.

These are the things that you can do. The difference between talents and skills is that talents are passive and skills are active. Skills are being developed over time as you learn. For instance, a creative person may have excellent skills for drawing or writing.

3. Put your talents and skills together.

When you combine your talents and your skills they become strengths you will want to focus on. If you are a good writer, then you should work on this talent to develop copywriting skills and article writing or blogging.

Focusing is a major factor of success in any business venture. Knowing what your talents are, spending time to educate yourself and learn will help you develop skills. Then, be sure to focus on your strengths and you will surely build a successful online marketing business.

In my former company a big emphasis was put on setting goals. Every executive and manager had to set goals on different levels such as department, team and individual level, and this was done following the S.M.A.R.T. method (more on this later).

When I started in the network marketing business I was very surprised to see that many people had no idea about goal setting and how to do it the right way. Most people who contact me and people who join my team do not really take the time to set their goals for their business. I have some people tell me things like “but Anne, my goal is to make money”.

When you are working from home and especially when you are starting an internet business, whether on your own or as a distributor of a MLM or any network marketing company, it is critical to set goals properly. Why? Because first, if you don’t set precise goals you’re never going to achieve anything. And then, if you set your goals the wrong way this will prevent you from designing a good plan to achieve those goals and without a good plan it is very difficult to be successful. This is true for any business by the way.

Here is the method I was using with success in the corporate world and that I would recommend for any network marketing business: set S.M.A.R.T. goals.

S. = Specific

Making money can definitely NOT be a goal, because it is not specific. A specific goal would be to buy a house in a particular area, to pay for your kid’s education, to travel to Europe, to provide for retirement, these are just examples.

M. = Measurable

It must be possible to measure a goal, ie it should always be quantifiable. You might want to make $1,000, generate 25 leads, sign up 50 people in your business, and so on.

A. = Attainable

Your goals have to be realistic so that you can achieve them. Being a newbie in the network marketing industry and setting a goal to make $10,000 your first month is definitely NOT realistic hence not attainable. Another example: generating 100 leads per day might not be achievable if you know that the top producer in your business generates 50.

R. = Relevant

The goals you set must be directly linked to your business and must make sense. It may be more difficult to find simple examples here, but let’s say that you are setting goals for a MLM business with a particular company, and you set a goal of developing your own product; well this might be a great idea but is not relevant to your business.

T. = Time-bound

You will always achieve a goal within a time frame so never forget this element. Make $1,000 per week, generate 5 leads per day the first month, sign up 3 people per week, reach a six-figure income within a year, buy a house 2 years from now, and so on.

Once your goals are “S.M.A.R.T. proof”, you can safely move to the next step, which is building a solid business plan.