starting your work-from-home biz - yikes!

Starting a work-from-home business can be very difficult. You still have the other exciting elements of your life, such as laundry, cooking dinner, PTA, driving kids to school, and my personal favorite - paying the bills!

While you may not want to give up these thrilling components of your life, you may have to be kind enough to share them with other members of your family. Remember, no matter if you are man or woman, you have certain responsibilities in your life, but it is okay to ask for help. Your family and friends care about you. I am certain that they want you to be happy. They want you to be fulfilled.

Just ask for help. Call a family meeting, and explain to your family what you want to do. They will love to fill included. Then tell them that you are going to need a little extra help from each person. Make a list, and assign everyone with tasks. Hopefully, they will be ready to pitch in and help.

Just remember - Even though you sometimes believe you have superpowers, you are not superwoman (or superman). Besides, you will need those powers for other things, such as MARKETING!

working as a private investigator

In a previous blog, I mentioned private investigations as a work-from-home job idea. After going through my files, I found an article that I had published in the PI Magazine a couple of years ago that I wanted to share. It discusses some of the difficulties of conducting surveillance in rural areas. I think that it is something that anyone considering private investigations as a work-from-home job might want to read and consider:

Rural surveillance can be very tricky. Most would agree that it is more
difficult than conducting surveillance in the city.

When you conduct surveillance in a heavy populated area, it is easy to park your surveillance vehicle on side streets or in business parking lots. You can also utilize vehicles that are parked on the subject's street for cover, in order to establish a surveillance position in proximity to the subject's residence. In a rural setting, people will notice an unusual vehicle parked near their residence. You could make up a good reason for being there, but this rarely works. Subjects of investigations are often of a suspicious nature.

In rural surveillance, you may be able to park your vehicle on the subject's route of departure, but this is not always an option. In areas that are sparsely populated, subjects are often aware of unusual vehicles on the side of the road.

In rural areas the subject often lives near surveillance even more difficult. Even if the subject may not be aware that an investigator is there, someone closely associated with the subject will. This also makes it difficult when canvassing a neighborhood to gather information about the subject.

Sometimes when conducting rural surveillance, you may be able to get
a good viewpoint from a wooded area near the subject's residence. However, if you are trespassing on the subject's or someone else's property, any evidence that you obtain may be inadmissible in court. At the extreme end, you could be arrested for trespassing. If you do decide it will be possible to conduct surveillance in the woods, make sure you wear camouflage and use your natural surroundings to hide. Make certain that your vehicle isn't left in a suspicious area. Plan your way out before you go into the woods.

Rural surveillance is different. If you haven't tried it before, get some advice from an experienced investigator, and make sure that you think things through thoroughly. If you are hiring an investigator to conduct surveillance in a rural area, make sure that you ask about his or her experience in rural settings.

customer service

No matter if you are working from home (Yay!)or from an office (Oh well, it pays.), you want your business to be a success, right? Well, in my opinion, one of the major components of making your business a success is EXCELLENT customer service.

As I said before, one of the main avenues for gaining new business is through word-of-mouth. If a customer has a bad experience with your business, you will not have that benefit of word-of-mouth, at least not good word-of-mouth. So, do your best to keep your customers happy.

There are a few ways to do this. Most of these tactics are based on customer service.

• If you have a customer complaint, do your very best to resolve it. You may not always agree with the customer, but sometimes it is best to agree anyway and resolve the situation. Take a loss of you must. Hopefully, it will save you some trouble in the future.
• Ship out products or perform services as quickly as possible. It has been my experience that the sooner a customer receives a product, the better. If they recieve it earlier than expected, you make them very happy. If they have to start searching for their product, they begin to get aggrevated.
• Take returns if necessary and possible. It will save a lot of hassle in the longrun. Besides, you can hopefully resell the item. If not, you may be able to donate it or auction it for a small profit.
• Make it easy for returns. Have return labels if possible. The less hassle, the better.
• Let customers know by email when you have received their order, when products have been shipped, and let them know how to contact you if they do not receive it.
• Always respond to emails/questions (nicely). I do not understand businesses that have email, but they never respond to it. This is a huge annoyance. It also shows that I probably don't want to conduct business with you.

A good rule of thumb is to always consider how you like to be treated when you are the customer. Try to see things from the customer's point of view. If you still don't agree with the customer, try to save yourself a lot of hassle, and try to make the customer happy.

count me in

I found a great new site today that I want to pass along. It is count me in for women's economic independence.

I found the site this morning after seeing a story on my local news about more and more women working from home.

The site is basically a site for women entrepreneurs. It has some great information for women who are considering starting or even those who have already started their own business. According to count me in for women's economic independence, they can help women in the following ways:

• All woman business owners can join our online community and attend our live events throughout the country for access to education, networking and inspiration.
• Woman-owned business at least two years old and at $250,000 dollars in annual revenue can apply for the Make Mine a Million $ Business award-- up to $50,000 in financing, plus coaching, marketing, mentoring, technology and more.
• Woman-owned businesses under two years old and/or under $250,000 in annual revenue can apply for the Micro to Millions award-- up to $10,000 dollars in financing, plus coaching, marketing, mentoring and more.

The site is somewhat incomplete in a few areas. It looks to be a work in progress, but that definitely does not negate the wonderful information that is there. It is going to be an awesome site when it is complete, and it is a wonderful idea. I applaud Nell Merlino, Co-Founder/President & CEO 0f count me in, and the entire organiztion for putting assistance out there for women entrepreneurs.

blogging for money tip

I have to say that for anyone who wants to earn money from his or her blog, Steve Pavlina at www.stevepavlina.com wrote a very informative blog on the topic. It is a long blog, but all of the information is useful. Also, it was written in 2006, but still applicable if this is a topic of interest to you. The title of the Article is How To Make Money From Your Blog.

work from home blog introduction

Hi, everyone. Welcome to my blog, and thanks so much for reading.

Let me tell you a little about myself and why I am writing this blog. I have a master's degree in Information Technology. My husband and I work together. We own a business that we run out of our home. I have also branched out and had a couple of Internet businesses myself.

Why am I writing this blog? Well, it is not because I have a lot of free time on my hands. I just feel like that I have a lot of knowledge when it comes to starting and running your own business. Sure there are people who know more, but there are people who know less. I want to use this blog as an outlet to share my knowledge with those who know less. Hopefully, I can learn more from those who know more. I think learning and growing is such an integral part of running a business.

My friends are always asking for my advice about business. They are always curious as to how I have the answers to their questions. Well, I'll tell you what I tell them. Research. If I don't know the answer to something, I will not stop until I have the answer. I advise you to do the same. There is so much information out there. There is so much money to be made out there. So, let's do it together!