WorkAtHomeTruth

The Brutally Honest Truth About Working At Home (Helping People Stay Safe Since 2005)

Setting Up Your Marketing in Order to Work From Home

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Working from home can be quite the luxury if given the tools needed to make it a successful business venture.  When it comes to marketing, you can do marketing from just about anywhere but the question is: how? Every year, individuals who work from home spend hours asking themselves “how” instead of actually putting things into action.  Luckily there are tools designed to help all individuals who work from home decipher how to set up their marketing and succeed at it.

Online Marketing

What is online marketing? When you’re running a business from home or simply just working from home and deciding how to perform marketing for your company; online marketing is your best friend!

Online marketing tools include anything from intense Link Building to having a simple Facebook page.  Whether you want to do both or just one, learning how to use online marketing is the best place to get started.

How to Use Online Marketing

Online marketing tools are for the most part available to everybody who has the internet but not everybody knows how to utilize these tools.  For example take Facebook, if you want to use Facebook to help market your business you need to set up a business page that is linked to your personal Facebook page in which people can like your page and learn more about it.  I recently asked a young business owner if she knew how to set up a Facebook business page and she had absolutely no idea. So, the best way is either learn how through Facebook’s homepage or to have a friend show you how to do it.  That way you can get your business set up and all ready to go online!

Designating a Space

Whether you’re strictly working on marketing from home or your entire job is based around a work from home environment, having a designated space to work in is what will help ignite creativity and productivity.  Create a space that allows you to work from home without too much interruption such as a personal office. If you don’t have the luxury of a home office, try setting up a work space in a corner of your living/family room in order to get your work done in.  Whatever space you end up designating as your work space, be sure that it allows you to spark all of your creativity.

Jake Magleby has written extensively about effective marketing, virtual stock exchange, sales, and financing strategies to help small business owners succeed in the fast-paced and ever-changing business world. He also has an interest in education and development.

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Working from Home Tips

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For more and more people setting up their own business, or becoming self-employed, means working from home.  However, there are a number of important points to consider when doing this and you’ll not often find them all in business manuals.  Some simple, but often overlooked, features of working from home can become unexpected pitfalls that can damage, or end your business.  Forewarned is forearmed, as they say:

Basic Tools of the Trade(s)

What are you going to need besides an undying sense of enthusiasm?  Well there are some small, but often overlooked tools that all businesses need.  Accounting software and/or invoicing software are key tools that not all firms consider essential when starting up; in most cases they soon discover their mistake.  An accountant will also be an important ‘purchase’, and you should shop around for one that can provide a good basic service to ensure that you don’t fall foul of HMRC.  If you need advice on all matters tax, don’t be afraid to contact that particular organisation as, contrary to rumours, they’re actually really helpful.  Accounting software can also take the burden out of keeping your accounts up to date; different software is available to suit a whole range of needs and the online version is often suitable for small firms taking their first steps in the big world of business.

Two Headed Approaches

Two heads are generally known for being better than one.  In business this is perhaps more true than in any other area of life.  Setting up your own business is great, but sometimes joining forces with a friend or relative is greater still.  There are two big advantages to setting up a business partnership; you’ll both bring different skills to the business and different angles on each and every aspect of running it.  This can be a recipe for arguments, but if you’ve got the personality to succeed in business you’ll know how valuable a good spread of ideas can be.  The other big advantage, which rarely gets mentioned in business manuals, is that you’ll have a shoulder to cry on when you need it.  Sometimes running your own firm is hard and it requires a certain amount of inner strength but with two of you to share the burden, it can be that bit easier to succeed.

Home Insurance or Business Insurance?

Insurance can be an issue that those starting a business from home may overlook.  Household policies don’t normally allow you to operate a business from your home.  You’ll need to talk to your insurer (and often your mortgage provider) to check that it’s OK to do so and how much extra it will cost on the insurance bill.  Insurers don’t normally have an objection if your business just involves working on a computer from home, but if you’re storing stock or materials, they’ll see it as an additional risk and will need to adjust your policy.  It may be an additional cost, but invalidating your insurance could put you out of business and have even greater implications.

Home Work (with the emphasis on work)

The first problem you’ll encounter when working from home is one that takes most of us by surprise.  It’s surprisingly hard, and there are strange temptations like napping and daytime TV that you rarely have the opportunity to encounter in an office.  It’s almost impossible to stress this one enough; you need to take the ‘home’ out of ‘working from home’.  We don’t all associate ‘home’ with hard work, or earning a living, and although this may seem like an easy obstacle to get over, it’s not.  Making a work space in the home, whether that’s a spare room, or a garden shed, and designating it work only will help.  If you do find that you are struggling with this aspect of working from home, introduce a strict routine into your day and stick to it.  Apply the same rules as you would if you were going out to work; would you really pop home to do the laundry if you were working for someone else, or let your half hour lunch become a three hour one involving chocolate, snacks and a little nap?  If you couldn’t get away with it elsewhere, don’t do it at home.

From simple business tools, like accounting software, to avoiding Jeremy Kyle, working from home needs a lot of stamina combined with some basic common sense.  Avoiding the pitfalls can mean all the difference between success and failure.

Simon Wilson blogs about small business issues, covering everything from QuickBooks invoicing software tutorials to how businesses can better make use of social media.  When he’s not online Simon enjoys climbing mountains and skiing.

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How to Start Your Own Accounting Services Company

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Accounting services is a fast growing small business. The main reason for this is that small businesses across the globe are becoming more prevalent. Every business no matter what service they provide or product they make has to have some kind of accounting system.

Accounting shows not only how a business is doing financially but it also shows what needs to be done in order to keep on doing business. Accounting is how inventory is kept up with and what is owed and to whom and when it is due.

For some small business owners doing the work of accounting on top of running their business is simply too much work. This is where an accounting services company has the opportunity to shine and make money themselves.

Accounting Services a Great Small Business Idea

It is not necessary to be a certified public accountant in order to run your own accounting services business. Bookkeepers are also able to have an accounting services business. Often, these businesses start off as a single person doing the books for someone they know on a personal level. Then through word of mouth they will sometimes get a few more clients then they have an accounting services business. While it is not always this easy, it can be very rewarding.

Owning your own accounting services business means meeting a lot of different people. Like with any small business the return customer or client is your main goal. These are the ones that will pay your bills. The clients will be from all kinds of industries and the person doing the accounting will do the books for several of them but while keeping the accounting separate for each business.

The main tasks that an accounting service will do for each customer is to help them keep track of all their financial accounts. For some businesses this means doing everything from billing and posting checks to the annual reports and taxes. While for others it may mean simply doing the payroll and the annual reports.

Accounting services is a very flexible business.  You have to be able to give each one of the customers your full attention. Tax season is the busiest time of the year for these kinds of businesses. The work load can double or even triple and the customers that get their daily bookkeeping from your company are still going to expect their books to be done. This is the time some small businesses consider hiring a temporary worker to help out for a few months. These workers can be anything from clerks all the way to full charge bookkeepers depending on the needs of the small business.

As far as owning a small business goes accounting services is a great one for a single person to own and run. There is no real overhead cost since most of the time you will be going to your clients. There is no inventory to keep on hand and only yourself to consider as an employee. If you are someone who enjoys working with customers and has a background in accounting this could be the perfect small business for you.

A great way to get started with your own accounting services business is to go to school either online or in person and learn about accounting. This is a field that builds on its self and has many opportunities for growth. When just starting out you are considered a clerk and as such you would start off learning about accounts payable and receivable. There is a lot of filing and data entry in this position, but it can be done while in school.

Once a person graduates college then they can become an Accountant or a Bookkeeper. This is much more involved and has quite a bit of responsibility. This person does what the clerk does but also generates reports and payroll for the entire company. It is at this point with some experience that a person may consider opening their own small business.

Josh Rothenberg is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at EZCFO a company focused on accounting services. You can follow him on Google+

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