If you love the idea of going to work in your pajamas, here is some good news for you: working from home is more common now than it has ever been before. This is partly because there are lots of different companies that are figuring out how to allow their employees to telecommute. It’s also because every day more options become available for people who want to start and run their own home-based businesses.
If you know that you definitely want to work from home (at least part of the time), you need to search for positions that allow you some room for independence. If your job is highly structured and requires a lot of team work and supervision, you might not be able to do it from home as video conferencing can only go so far. Sales and marketing jobs, writing and design jobs and even quite a few data entry/analysis jobs are all far better suited to the part or full time telecommuter.
Of course, the best way to ensure that you get to work from home full time while earning a good living, you need to start your own home based business. Thanks to advances in technology, this is easier now than it has ever been before. It doesn’t even typically take all that much money.
1. Figure out what you want to do—do you want to offer a service or sell a product?
2. Set up a website. You lean learn how to create free websites at www.webstarts.com.
3. Set up your virtual office. This is where things get a little bit more complicated:
• Make sure you have a dedicated space from which to work in your home. This helps you separate your “business life” from your “personal life” (and will be handy come tax time because the space you devote to your home based business can often be a tax write off).
• Learn to love Skype. Skype is a fantastic tool for people who want to make it look like they have an office when they have only the spare room in their home. Skype offers phone numbers (with the ability to receive calls from and make calls to landline, cell and VOIP based phone numbers); voice mail, instant messaging and even video conferencing for a very low rate (around $40/year).
• If you have the budget for it, invest in some virtual office space. A virtual office is almost exactly what it sounds like. It will provide your business with a mailing address and, often, a location at which to meet clients (many have small offices and conference rooms that you can reserve ahead of time—you can’t work there full time, but you can make it look like you do).
Now all you’ve got to do is let people know that you (and your website) exist!
How you go about doing this is going to depend largely upon the type of business you want to run. Obviously there are quick and easy ways to get the word out there: classified ads and traditional media (newspaper, radio, TV). You can also buy advertising on websites and run ad campaigns through networks like Google AdWords.
You might also think about doing some direct mail and traditional marketing as well. Postcards, letters, cold calling—it’s all a part of making sure people know you’re there and getting them through the door. There are lots of different avenues to pursue here.
The point is that working from home is no longer a pipe dream. Plenty of employers are choosing to take on telecommuters and, of course, going into business for yourself is always an option.
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