All Articles Tagged "home based business"
Why You Don’t Want to Use Your Home Address As Your Business Address
Every business starts somewhere and for many of us, it’s our home office, the kitchen table, or the local coffee shop. Even if you end up with a multi-million dollar company, it may be awhile before you can afford office space. So you use your home address until you can, right? Not if you can help it.
Using your home address as your business address can be a dangerous decision. In many situations, your business address is public. You might have it listed on your website or business card. If you’re incorporating, the address is on file at your Secretary of State’s office. Domain registrations require an address on file and just about anyone can find that looking it up online. When you register your business name with the county or buy your business license, these documents require your address and are on public record, too. The last thing you need is for customers, competitors, and just plain crazies to know exactly where you live if they have a deep need to find you at 3am.
Smart small business women use rented mailboxes as their business address whenever possible. The cheapest option is a post office box because they run about $50 every six months, depending on the size you choose. You can also access your mail at all hours of the day and night. You should remember that some companies won’t deliver to PO boxes and that most government licensing and registration processes won’t allow you to use them as your primary business address.
Renting a mailbox from a company that specializes in business mail services costs a little more but worth it. The UPS Store, PAK Mail, and many other independent companies have mail services that give you a real street address. They also forward mail when you’re away from home. You even have the option to check your mail by phone to avoid unnecessary trips to check your mailbox.
If the post office or a mailbox service isn’t convenient for you, consider piggybacking off another business’s address. For a monthly fee, someone with a dedicated office may let you use their office as a business mailing address. Negotiate or barter with local, independent businesses for the best results with this option.
Home-Based Business Nets 6 Figures
(Black Enterprise) — When Maxine P. Gill was laid off from her job as a sales and marketing director for Comcast Corp. in 2008, she decided to explore her longtime dream of entrepreneurship. “I always knew I wanted to own my own business,” she says. After considering a rib restaurant venture with a business partner, she decided to look into franchises instead since they have a structure and support system already in place.
6 Tips for Landing Work-From-Home Gigs
(Forbes) — 1. Work-at-home scams have been around for decades. In the past few years, the FTC has seen the number of complaints nearly double. Legitimate work-at-home jobs exist, but you’ll need to do some homework to avoid the too good to be true operators. For tips, see AARP’s advice here. The home-based work website ratracerebellion.com, a website co-founded Christine Durst, an internet fraud and safety expert, for example, prescreens job leads.
Lower Pay, Greater Savings and Telecommuting
(Christian Science Monitor) — Several years ago, Lisa Hammond quit her job as an assistant manager at the Wal-Mart inWichita, Kan., took a 60 percent pay cut to work for a call center, and came out ahead. How? She worked from home. This way, she saved on commuting and day-care costs, which had swallowed about half of her approximately $2,000-a-month take-home pay from Wal-Mart. Today, and two work-at-home jobs later, she earns more as a work-at-home field representative for the United States Census Bureau than she did at Wal-Mart – while still avoiding commuting and day-care costs. ”I’m spoiled now. I wouldn’t want to go back to working in an office,” says Ms. Hammond, a married mother of three. Amid traffic jams, high gas prices, family needs, and a yen for more flexibility, what 21st-century worker hasn’t thought about skipping the office scene and telecommuting instead? But taking a pay cut to do it? To some, the benefits outweigh the lost income. A survey by New York-based Dice Holdings released earlier this year found that 35 percent of technology professionals would take up to 10 percent less pay to telecommute full time.
Making a Home Based Business Work
(Businessweek) — When you are working for yourself, the responsibility for staying on top of projects, communicating with clients, and collecting money you’re owed falls completely to you. There’s no boss checking in to make sure you are meeting deadlines, no team to keep you on track. It helps to be naturally organized. If you’re not, you can learn to be. “Most people aren’t naturally good golfers, but they can be taught how to do it,” says Lisa Kanarek, founder of WorkingNaked.com in Dallas. If you don’t put in some effort, you’ll have a tough time being successfully self-employed. Mark Miller, a self-employed marketing specialist who founded High Impact Marketing in Los Angeles, says he learned this the hard way. “I have never been a particularly organized or neat person in terms of keeping my things in order. Unfortunately, those traits did not translate well into the business world,” he says.
11 Businesses to Start from Home
(Inc.) — Kene Turner understands the value of building a better business. After all, that’s his job. The mission of EpiLife is to help organizations achieve social responsibility by implementing special project-based initiatives within their communities. Before launching EpiLife, Kene worked for the YMCA of New York, where he taught youth entrepreneurial programs. EpiLife is based out of Turner’s home in New York City, and represents his desire to give back to the community that helped him in his own childhood. “When I was a teen I lost my mom to cancer,” he says. “I never knew my father. I was a child in transition. I had family, but not much. The ones that really helped me were members of the community…and it was that message that I want to implement into a venture or business.”
Starting a Home Business is Not For Sissies
(Huffington Post) — Like so many other Americans who’ve turned to entrepreneuship, I decided to start a home business and start selling the pique assiette mosaic art I’d been designing as a hobby. The first move was to load up on supplies — getting more plates on eBay, colored grout, tile cement and gloves from Home Depot — as my plan was to include planters, candlestick holders and lamps, later adding cremation urns. Everyone had advice: ”You need a state tax I.D. number,” — my husband. ”I need a web site,” — me.
Four Home-Based Businesses in Demand
(Entrepreneur) — The small-business market has traditionally been populated by corner stores and family-owned businesses. For women with an entrepreneurial streak, small-business opportunities have always been abundant. It’s turning ideas into profitable enterprises that takes dedication and hard work. From stylists and bakers to bookkeepers and designers, women have played an important role in the small-business marketplace. Today, women continue to influence their communities and the business world as a whole by launching successful, home-based companies. The economic downturn has been a catalyst for home-business growth. Take Indianapolis-based writer Emily Suess, for example. “In my case, my home writing business began because I simply needed the money to make ends meet,” she says. “In tough economic times, people become increasingly resourceful about how they market their talents and skills.”
