I went to the newsagents today to purchase a card for a celebration that is taking place tomorrow. The date had sneaked up on me and I wasn’t prepared enough to have organised the card through my normal avenue.  The card cost more than double what I normally spend these days. I don’t begrudge the $$ but do recognise that if I’m going to be prudent in my spending then having been better organised if I had planned ahead I would have saved some $’s.

If you know in advance you need to send a card to someone, and I mean only 2 or 3 days, then you can get a card for just $2.99 printed and posted. And you can design your own card or use any one of the 15,000 templates that are available.

So if you want some choices without having to make time to go to the shops and the post office, click here to get started.  You can send one-off cards whenever you want, or you can open an account of your own and get the cards at an even lower price to be more cost efficient if you wish.

Well, when I say ‘no skills’ it does help if you know how to spell and use the Internet.

It’s not often that there is a true work-from-home opportunity that doesn’t require a good set of skills and isn’t a scam. But this one fits the bill.

In reality, all you need is a computer, internet connection and people connections.  That is, you are a great connector and always meeting people and willing to share what you know with others.

This business is about sending out cards to people:  family, friends, loved ones, colleagues, contacts, anyone you know really. And you can send cards to say any of the following things:

• Happy Birthday
• Happy Anniversary
• Merry Christmas
• Happy Easter
• For Bar Mitzvahs
• Wedding invitations
• Baby Showers
• Kitchen Teas
• Happy Easter
• Good luck!
• Bon Voyage
• Congratulations
• Extend your sympathy
• To say I love you
• Thank you
• I was thinking of you
• To give information and for any other reason you can think of.

If you already buy cards to send to people and know people who do the same, then this business is ideal for you and for them.

The business I’m talking about is “Send Out Cards” and these are real printed cards, on recycled card, and with a real postage stamp.

You login to the website, choose a card, or create your own, write your message, and click on Send.  The service then prints your card and posts it for you.  All for the cost of less than $1.50 per card printed and posted.

Because it’s on recycled card, the business is ‘green’ and environmentally conscious and the cards are good quality printed cards. There are over 15,000 templates available or you can create your own from scratch. So if you’re creative, or if you like taking photographs, or want to use your children’s drawings, then all of these can be done.  However, it’s not necessary and you can simply choose what is already available and write your own heartfelt message.  So, creative or not, this business is ideal for all.

You can even have your own handwriting uploaded as a personal font so the cards are printed in that font.

As with any business there is a cost to set up but it isn’t huge and the returns are really very good.  If you are prepared to put in 2-5 years on this business part-time, simply sending cards and showing others how to do it too, you can build a decent residual income. And the nature of this business is ideal for anyone who wants to work from home but is also suitable for those with existing businesses. After all, there’s nothing like a handwritten heart felt card sent to a client saying how much you appreciate them doing business with you.

If this sounds of interest to you, then you can send a card free on me by going to my Send Out Cards site. Watch the video at option 1, send a card to anyone you want at option 2 and look at the business options at 3.  Retail, Wholesale or Entrepreneur – it’s your choice.

And if you’re not convinced, then perhaps purchasing a copy of this book Beach Money might help you.  Jordan Adler writes about his experiences in trying many different business opportunities before finding Send Out Cards and is today a very successful business owner.

I’ve recently joined another forum (why do I do this??). I must be a forum junkie or something

Anyway, my heart went out to many there who are seeking work online but don’t know where to look, how to start, or what might be real versus a scam.  I posted a very long item on the forum but thought that the information would be useful outside of the forum so it was more public as well. Here seemed a good place to post it.  Your comments are welcome!

Hello everyone, I’m very new here but have been reading through the threads and contributing where I can.  I’m hoping that the advice I give here will help many of you who are seeking jobs or online businesses.

As you know it’s so very easy to get taken in by scams these days. So easy for people to set up a website, make it look impressive and make it sound
like they know what they’re talking about and that they have experience on
their side. Unfortunately it’s all too easy to hide behind a website and
you don’t get to see the real person for what they’re worth.

Whatever your skillset, research becomes a very necessary skill you need to
hone and develop.  Because the internet allows people to remain ‘invisible’
and only show what they want to show (there’s both good and bad in this)
then it’s important for you to check out who it is you’re planning to work
for or do business with.

There are some things you can do to help you:

• When you visit a website and you’re not sure of its longevity – has it only been around 6 months or 6 years, there is a way to check.  Visit the Wayback Machine and enter the URL.  It’s interesting to see how sites have progressed and matured over time. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php  If the site has only been around a month then you might need to tread carefully.
• Investigate the head person or the contact person for that business.  Do they show up on the web much or are they a non-entity?  Have people discussed them at forums and is the feedback good or bad?  If that person is really business savvy chances are they will have a profile at linkedin.com and have a website of their own. There may be articles written by them or about them or they may have shown up in newspapers and magazines online.
• If you’re looking to go into business with someone, or register with a
  business that requires you to pay a membership or subscription fee, then again make sure you research the company or person first.  No business opportunity is that urgent/important that you have to sign up today.  If the opportunity is good it will still be here tomorrow and next week, or even next month, so take your time to research and consider.
• Compile a list of pros and cons for joining that company or running that business.
• Look for discussion forums online that relate to that industry and if the forums are free (most are), then join it and hang around for awhile. Get to know the people and how they conduct themselves.  Let the industry speak for itself via the forum(s).  There are many board forums like this one, oryahoogroups.com has tons of forums there on almost any topic imagineable.  Ning.com does too.  And there are others so the research is worth doing.
• If you’re not sure what kind of work you’d like to do, make a list of your skills and abilities and then start doing searches on those skills and abilities. Google will show up all sorts of things – the adwords of people selling their services or products, lists of forums, websites and all sorts of other things relating to those items. This research may well open your eyes to possibilities you hadn’t considered before.

Who am I to tell you this? My name is Kathie Thomas and I’ve been in
business for over 16 years.  I began as a homebased secretary BEFORE the
internet so was well placed to adopt this ‘new’ technology when it entered
my country (Australia) back in late 95.  I was online early 96 and had my
first website by April that year.  My business has grown with the internet.
These days I’m known as a Virtual Assistant.

I get a lot of people (mainly women) emailing me, writing to me, phoning me up, just to make sure I’m a real person before they decide to join my VA
network. Others write to me for advice because they’ve seen my name on the web in lots of places and consider that I am well known in my industry.  I
get women from other industries seeking advice simply because they know
I’ve worked on the web for a long time and they want to know what they
should or shouldn’t be doing and what to look for.  It doesn’t matter that
they might be planning to do something different to what I do, they just
recognise that experience counts and they want to benefit from that.

There are always great new opportunities out there and once you’re in that frame of mind, they will keep showing themselves up.  I often get approached by people, mainly from the US, because their business is reaching my own shores and they’re looking for someone to join up, sign up, become a distributor or something along those lines and because I have a huge network of people I know, I’m an ideal target for those approaches.  Some I look at with interest, others I turn down immediately. But I only
get approached because I have a web presence and am visible to many.  Which brings me to my next point.

All of you can have your own website at no or very little cost to you.
There are services out there that are free such as blogger.com,
wordpress.com and similar.  Whilst these are known traditionally as
blogging tools you can create static pages instead of posts.  Why not set
one up in your own name and add your profile, almost like an online resume.

Don’t put in personal information such as your home address but do make it
easy for people to contact you if they need to. Anyone in business usually
has a contact form, or email address and a phone number for easy access.

If you have topics you’re passionate about and if you have good writing
skills, then use that site as a platform to share your knowledge – you
never know who might see it.

A good example: one of my daughters is into horses in a big way. She’s
almost 26 now.  3 years ago she got an email from someone who had been
reading her blog about the horse studies and work experience she’d had in
the industry. It kept showing up in their Google searches on the topic.
When she contacted me to find out if I thought the email was a scam I told
her ‘no honey, that sounds very real, you better call them’. She did.
Turned out to be a local Technical College of Advanced Education and they wanted to engage her as a teacher for their Equine Studies course. She’s now been teaching for them for 3 years. No, she didn’t have a teaching degree but the college recognised she had the experience and skills for the topic and they agreed to put her through a ‘train the trainers’ course. She’s now studying for her teaching diploma part-time while teaching at the college.  She’s making money she didn’t think she would be making as the industry is low paid but her passion outweighed her desire for a high income.

So, if you want to stand out and get noticed, start creating an online
profile for yourself.

While on that topic, it has been documented by the media many times now
that prospective employers can research their employees by checking places like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and so on.  What does your profile online say about you?  Is there anything you wouldn’t want a
prospective employer or business partner see? Best you get it cleaned up
now – before that time comes.  What you put on the web is there forever and
it pretty darned near impossible to get removed so take care in your online
presence – always.

Sorry for the long post but I hope this information helps someone here.

All the best to you in your searches!

My husband and I have recently shifted to the country from suburban life.  It’s still a suburb of Melbourne but an outer suburb amongst the hills and bushland. It’s beautiful and we look forward to many years here as we head towards retirement and grand-parenthood.

While I do run a virtual online business of my own, I find it’s still important to maintain contact with local business operators. There are just some things that need to be done on a local basis.  And it’s a great way to get to know the locals and let them know I exist too.

I woke up in the morning realising I hadn’t yet seen a local newspaper so when I went to the post office on my daily trek to the shopping area I noticed some shops had the local paper stuck under their doors. On enquiry I found out where I could get a copy and brought it home to check through the classifieds. (I find it strange thinking about the local paper on the very day it’s become available)

A short time later I had 3 appointments set for the day for a home handyman to do some carpentry, for someone else to come and cut up fallen branches and clear the area at the back of our property and for yet another to regularly mow our very large lawns.

It’s important to support the local business community whenever possible.

I have a sister going through a life challenge at the moment and I was thinking back to a time when I thought that my life was coming to an end too – not physically, but emotionally.  I didn’t know where I was headed.  I want to share with you the thoughts I shared with my sister, in the hope that it might encourage some of you too.

Late 1993/early 1994 before I began my business I worked for a pig of a man named George. He  had no respect for women.  I was engaged to be his Personal Assistant, set up his new office, help buy furniture and equipment and establish the business. He’d been flown over from another state by ‘daddy’ to establish an Eastern seaboard branch of their family business.

My thoughts were I would get 2 years experience in small business before branching out on my own but a few short months with George stripped me of all my confidence and I thought my abilities too. He was rude, demanding, lied, and was horrible. I’d drive into the car garage beneath the office building holding my breath till I could see if his car was there and then start breathing again when it wasn’t.  He’d accuse me of losing papers that I would find on his desk in a tray where I’d put them – he never apologised.  I was often in tears.

His wife was obviously terrified of him and I asked her one day why she put up with him. She was scared he would hear me – we only had a glass wall between our offices.  I ended up going to the doctor because I had all sorts of health problems and in the end the doc said to me ‘put up with it, or leave the job’.  So I decided to leave but when I went to give my notice the following day George told me that it wasn’t working out and he’d give me time to find another job. I told him fine, I’m leaving at the end of the week, I’ve got another job.  He was totally surprised. My new job?  My business.  I decided it was now or never and I’m glad I did.  I still wasn’t sure what or how it was going to happen but I decided that I didn’t want to find another job – I had to make my business work.

5 months later I bumped into a lady in an office downstairs from George’s and she asked me what we used to do all day?  I asked her why and she says there’s always yelling and screaming and George had gone through 5 more secretaries after me.  And here I was thinking that I’d not given it enough time to settle. He’d gone through 5 secretaries in 5 months – the amount of time I’d stuck it out with him. Do you think that lifted my spirits?

Use this time as a recovery time and a time for really exploring what you want to do with your life. What are your passions and dreams? What turns on a hot button for you? Is there something you’ve always wanted to do since you were a kid (doesn’t matter if there isn’t but it’s worth going back there to explore).

What I am doing today I have wanted to do all my life.  I didn’t know what exactly or how, but I always knew I wanted to run a business of my own.  I always knew I wanted control and didn’t want to have to answer to others.  I always knew I wanted to write. I just didn’t know what about, when or how. But it’s all come together.

Allow yourself to explore, dream, think, dare – let yourself and your mind go to places you haven’t allowed yourself for a long time.  You may find passions there to reignite and from that, new dreams and aspirations.  You may find you will gain new strength and courage and be able to  move forward and look forward to things again.

If you are going through ‘stuff’ right now and can’t see a future or can’t see a light at the end of your tunnel, then take heart. We all go through it and I do mean ‘through it’. There is an end where the light comes back on, the tunnel ends and you can start to see a hope and a future again.

Sometimes it’s those dark tunnels that really help us to turn corners in our lives and even though we don’t feel it at the time, it is often a time of real learning – about ourselves and about others.

I pray and hope that you will be encouraged to spend time thinking and exploring so you can move forward again – and I would love to hear about it!

lack of confidence, dark tunnel, self-confidence, life challenge

“Your Home Business” profiles home based businesses that have been in operation long-term. It came out just this week.  Published by Switzer Media & Publishing, I was approached a couple of months ago asking for an interview as I’d been in business for almost 15 years, from a homebased office. I was delighted. Any opportunity to promote the Virtual Assistant industry is always welcome.  And I love that the VA industry has allowed me to work at home now for almost 15 years (in March) so I could be present for our family as they grew up.   A decision I’m always glad I made.

Below is the front cover and my article starts on page 56.  The magazine is available around the country by various newsagents.  They also have an educational website called BizThinkTank worth visiting.

In light of our recent family troubles I want to highlight some things that I do and which you may need to think about as a business owner/operator for times when emergencies arise and you are unable to be present in your own business.

Some years ago, when my husband and I started going on overseas trips, I developed some systems to ensure I could hand over the running of daily activities in my business.

• I set up a new ‘business’ phone line so that business calls came only on that number and not my home number.  And yet for 10 years previous I’d only used my home number.  With the new number it meant I could simply divert my business calls to one of my Virtual Assistant team members and she wouldn’t be receiving personal calls as well – those could be diverted to my mobile number if necessary or we simply left a voicemail message saying we weren’t available for a period of time.
• After hearing a professional speaker talk about the use of his mobile (cell) phone I stopped giving out my mobile number to anyone who isn’t family or a close friend and diverted my business line to my mobile phone only when necessary.  This meant that my business didn’t have to follow me wherever I went.  And because 98% of my work is carried out in my own office (I rarely do on site work these days) it’s not necessary for people to call me on my mobile phone but I recognise this might not be a suitable step for all business owner/operators.
• I have an email address that is used specifically for job requests for clients and this is automatically forwarded to one or more team members to handle when I’m away from my office for periods of time.
• I have an emergency phone list of clients and contacts stuck on the wall by my computer so that if my husband or another family member have to call anyone on my behalf, they don’t have to go hunting for that information. The sheet is updated periodically.
• I also have a simple email list set up so I can email all my clients at once notifying them of unavailable time coming up so I can organise backup support for them in my absence.  Planned trips usually mean 1-2 month’s notice to my clients but of course, in emergencies, it’s usually at short notice – but at least they’re not left in the dark and they’re given a contact name of a team member to look after them.
• I’ve also developed more than one income stream through my business so I’m not wholly dependent on client work to financially support my needs. Which means I could realistically have a bit of time off without worrying too much.  Mind you, it is important to plan and put away funds when you know you are going to take leave but if something unplanned came up, finances won’t necessarily be at the top of the list in your mind.

If you are planning leave timing it across two months, i.e. a week or two at the end of one month and a week or two at the beginning of another will allow you opportunity to still bring something in for each month.  I’ve done this in the past, but of course, when unexpected things come up, you cannot plan the timing.

These are just some simple things I’ve done to ease the ‘load’ of what needs to be actioned whenever I have to be absent from my business for a period of time.  What about you? What ‘emergency’ systems have you put in place?

systems, planning, emergencies, taking leave, planned leave

Telecommuting is beginning to emerge as a truly viable way to work nowadays as it’s proven to cut down on costs from an employer’s end and make life easier for the employee working from home. Employers used to believe that people working from home were more apt to not get the job done but that has been proven to be an error in thinking. As more mothers are working now than ever there is a lot of competition out there to land a job working from home. Here are a few tips for job seekers:

1. Network! Network! Network! Let everyone know that you’re looking for a job working out of the house. Numbers indicate that at least 75 % of jobs are landed through networking. Go around and talk to people with small businesses that may need some extra help. The only way a job will ever fall into your lap is if you make the first contact and get the ball rolling.
2. Be proactive, not reactive. Not every employer is going to make their positions immediately available for work at home. So go ahead and apply to positions that could potentially be done from home. Data entry and bookkeeping are a couple examples of positions that could be easily transferred to the home. After you’ve been at the job for a while go ahead and approach your boss about moving the job to your home. Just be ready with statistics that prove that working at home is productive.
3. Be prepared to enter the work force. If you feel like your skills are a little rusty then you want to be sure you’re ready to jump into a job when you’re ready. Improve your skills and confidence with computer training classes at a local community college. Also, take a look for online tutorials that are often free and very informative.
4. Recruit yourself. Don’t be shy. Go ahead and put your resume in freelancing job banks. If you can get a part-time job doing freelance on a contract there is a good chance that you can develop the position into a full-time gig.
5. Make your resume spotless. The number of people that apply to part-time work will often be in the thousands of respondents. With these figures in mind it’s imperative that your resume can stand out in a crowd. If you’re worried about your resume take it to a career counselor and be receptive to constructive criticism.

By-line:

Heather Johnson is a freelance business, finance and credit writer, as well as a regular contributor for Business Credit Cards, a site for comparing best business credit cards. She welcomes questions, comments, and freelancing job inquiries at her email address heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

I get regular updates from Smart Company here in Australia and a recent article highlighted the difference between someone who is an employee and one who needs/wants to be an entrepreneur. Where do you think you belong? Would you like the flexibility and freedom of being an entrepreneur or do you prefer the stability of being an employee?

The Agony Aunt comes up with some great stuff in her column and this latest one is no exception.  The book she quoted I’d not heard of before, but I loved the chart she put up and I thought I’d share it with you. How do you fair in the test? I’ve love to hear about it!

Oh, so now entrepreneurship is the Gen Y answer to boredom. Jennifer, maybe you need a shrink, not a business. Why not try this poll? I found it in a book called Entrepreneur… and Beyond, By Alex McMillan.

Test yourself out on this.

Employee thinking

Entrepreneur thinking

To see the rest of this article, click here.

entrepreneur, employee, business owner, self-employed

I saw a blog post from a lady who wants to be a Work From Home Mum but didn’t know what to do. She discussed some ideas but sought comment from her readers. As I wrote my own comments I realised it’s information I really should be adding here too, so here it is. Hope this helps a few readers out there!

What skills and abilities do you have? Those who successfully work at home use skills they’ve already developed and turn them into a productive business. There are so many things you could be doing but it’s best to start with what you already know and build on that.

For example over 13 years ago I started with word processing and data entry because that was my skill base at that time. Today I do so much more and my business has expanded. My daughters have grown up with mum at home which was such a blessing. And 3 of them at least (I have 5) want to work from home too – doing what they know. One is a seamstress so is planning to do bridal and formal wear, and perhaps children’s clothes too. Another works with horses and wants her own property so breed and manage horses. And another has great computer skills and plans to develop an eBay business and perhaps do some typing on the side.

If you look at yahoogroups.com you’ll find tens of thousands of discussion groups on every topic imaginable. Do a search on what your skills are and I be you’ll find a discussion group of people running home based businesses doing that very thing – why not join and learn from them?

So, what are your thoughts? KMT

work from home, wahm, home based business, home business ideas