10 Necessities for a Home Based Business
by Dechen Lau
When you make the decision to earn income from the internet youwill need to go through a set up process to be ready forbusiness. Following are the basic steps in setting up for home businesssuccess. 1. Attitude The key to your business success is your attitude. Treat your business like a business. This is critical whether you are working part-time or full-time.One of my colleagues is a mother who works from home around herfamily. She has always put her family first whilst at the sametime developing her business. She says, "I work part-time, but Ihave a full-time attitude." Put another way, "If you have a hobby attitude you will have ahobby income, if you have a business attitude you will have abusiness income." You can be successful working part-time and you can be successfulworking full-time but it is highly unlikely that you will besuccessful working in your "spare time". 2. Working Environment A space that you can call your own, free from distractions foryour scheduled time. A comfortable chair and organized desk. Stationery supplies as required. For example: - pens - highlighters - stapler - hole punch - sticky tape - note book(s) - a simple filing system - ring binders - manilla folders Consider the value of a broadband connection. Your time isvaluable and a broadband connection can allow you to get moredone in a given time frame. 3. Schedule Develop a schedule that works for you, your family (or"significant others") and your business. When you allot a blockof time for work then use that time for work. Equally importantis to schedule time for your other commitments - family time,self education ( reading, listening and viewing), "health time"(exercise, cooking and eating), and leisure time. During theseother times don't work. After all if one of the reasons to workfrom home is to spend more time with your family then you don'twant your working at home time to consume your family time. You are working for yourself and your schedule (by your choice)is your "boss". When you have people calling you or droppingaround unexpectedly or maybe out-of-town visitors may want tocatch up with you then you need to make a choice. Are youcommitted to your own business success? What will be your choicein these situations? Only you can decide what is important toyou. In a family environment you may need to negotiate with yourpartner and children to have your business time agreed upon,during which you will not be interrupted. Put this scheduleprominently somewhere so all family members are aware of yourwork schedule. 4. Describe Your Business Be able to describe your business concisely; a powerful one ortwo sentence description that someone can repeat in describingyour business to others. A unique and memorable tag line can alsobe invaluable for promoting your business. 5. Know Your Product or Service Once you have selected your product or service to sell, it may ormay not be something that you use yourself but you need to knowyour product intimately. If you are selling ebooks then know thecontent and its value. If you are selling software then use itknow it "inside out". You will develop a reputation of providingquality information and because of your product knowledge you canbecome the preferred supplier. It is not practical to use certain products (for example a womanmay choose to sell man's shoes or vice versa) in which case theseller won't be a product user, however the seller can still knowthe benefits and features of the product intimately. 6. Administration Use good record keeping practices. This may involve a consultation with a tax advisor who can letyou know about the optimal way to set up your financial recordsand what records need to be kept. Your advisor will alsorecommend record keeping systems and you can find out whatsoftware may simplify this aspect of your business. Additionallyyour obtain advice on the best arrangement for your bankaccounts. You will most likely be advised to have a separate bankaccount. You will also need to keep track of your various logins,usernames and passwords. A very handy little software tool forthis is Treepad available as either the free Lite version(without password protection) or the commercial Plus or Bizversions. http://www.treepad.com There are other useful tools for this also from a simple papernotebook to free and commercial password keepers. One popularsolution is Roboform that will remember your login details andcan automatically fill out your login and other registrationforms. http://www.roboform.com 7. Computer Protection Your computer is the lifeline to your business dealings and mustbe protected including the data that is stored. You need a virus scanner, personal firewall, anti-spyware andanti-adware and preferably an email scanner with the ability todelete suspect of spam email from the server before it isdownloaded to your computer. Some suggestions are: AVG Anti-Virus: http://www.grisoft.com Spybot S
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