More than half of all U.S. businesses are based at home.  An estimated 6.6 million home-based enterprises provide at least half of their owners’ household income. Together these “homepreneurs” employ one in 10 private-sector workers, and by many measures they’re just as competitive as their counterparts in commercial spaces.

The 43% of home-based businesses that provide at least half of the owners’ household income are, on the whole, smaller than non-home-based companies. Only about 35% have revenue above $125,000, compared to 75% for non-home based businesses.

“It’s reflected in our pricing that we don’t have the same kind of infrastructure costs and fixed costs that some of our competitors do,”  Home based businesses measure up to other small businesses on key aspects of doing business, including access to capital, benefits to workers, marketing, and innovation.

“With so much focus these days on education, publishing, and content driven marketing initiatives, it’s no wonder that in person and online webinars and workshops are all the rage. Of course, the event promotion, registration, and tracking process generally involves an additional system of some sort to make it run smoothly.”

To help with this, Constant Contact has created a new Event Marketing tool.  “The way Event Marketing works is that you create an event by filling in all the details necessary and the system builds your email templates, a registration landing page (with Paypal integration), and tracking system to analyze your event promotion results. You can send email updates to registrants and manage your event sign-up list from with the tool. The cost of the tool is based on the number of events you hold and starts at $15/mo for up to five events”

As an added bonus for small businesses, Constant Contact is offering a Free 60 day Trial!

Every state in the US is now offering tax cuts and incentives to attract new business, but there are four states that top it all.

South Dakota:  There is no personal or corporate income tax and the sales tax is 4%.  “The favorable tax climate is a draw for penny-pinching startups.”

Texas:  Has no personal or corporate income tax but it does have a gross receipts and franchise tax.  Theses taxes charge businesses 0.5% of revenues if they are in retail and 1% of revenues for non-retail businesses.  To help small business during the recession the state legislature recently raised the revenue exemption level to $1 million, up from $300,000.

Montana: No Sales Tax!  “Despite skipping that revenue stream, the state’s coffers are overflowing: Montana is one of just two states currently in the black, running without a budget deficit. Corporate income and property tariffs are also competitively low. The Tax Foundation ranked Montana as the sixth most business-friendly state when it comes to taxation.”

Tennessee: No personal income tax but it does have a 6.5% corporate income tax.  “Still, as one of just nine states that goes without income taxes on salaries, Tennessee’s “live free!” ethos attracts a fair number of entrepreneurs.”

Google AdWords makes it affordable for Small Business Owners to advertise their business. “No matter what your budget, you can display your ads on Google and our advertising network. But if you don’t do some careful planning, you can easily find yourself spending thousands of dollars with little to show for it.”

Before you start your own Google AdWords campaign, answer the below three questions:

Are you AdWords the right Keywords for your business?

“Brent Hollowell and Jesse Travis, co-founders of a travel accessory retailer in Baltimore called Zen Class, had high hopes when they began using AdWords to promote their Nirvana eat Back Organizer, which slips over an airplane’s seatback tray. While they knew they might get clicks if they paid for words like “travel accessories,” they feared the cost of close to $1.50 a click would be prohibitive because not every visitor would be looking for their product. They decided to be more specific and set up an AdWords campaign using the keywords “airline seat back organizer,” which cost about 5 cents a click.”

Is your budget realistic?

“About a year ago, Georgette Blau, who runs On Location Tours in New York City, set up an AdWords campaign to promote tours that were timed for the release of the “Sex in the City” movie. In doing so, she says she made a mistake: She ran the ad on the Google AdSense network but failed to understand how quickly she could run through the money she had budgeted for her campaign. An ad placed on the Google network can quickly appear on hundreds of Web sites and generate thousands of clicks. While this can be a good thing, it can also run up quite a tab.”

What markets do you want to focus on?

“When Apple irst introduced the iPhone, Matt McCormick, who runs a phone-repair business called Jet City Devices,  saw an opportunity. Knowing that the iPhone’s screen was prone to damage, Mr. McCormick began bidding on keywords like “iphone repairs” and waited for business to flood in. A problem soon became apparent: while his site was swamped with traffic, very few people were actually mailing in their phones to get them repaired. But, after changing his campaign to run only on searches initiated within 50 miles of Chicago and Seattle — cities where he had physical shops where customers could drop their phones off in person — Mr. McCormick says his conversion rate jumped to 10 percent: “If you’re in business in only one or two cities, then Google’s localization feature can save you a ton of money, reduce AdWords competition, and bring great traffic.”