Work at Home – Starting a Home Based Business

Are you one of the millions of disgruntled “9 – 5ers” who are sick of the rat race and truly want to figure out how to work for yourself?

Have you been bombarded with advertisements chock full of promises of wealth and freedom and now you want to taste the rewards just waiting for you?

Or perhaps you’ve actually tried a few things in the past that didn’t work out for you?

Don’t give up!

The fact that you’re reading this right now proves you are still interested in learning how you can realistically work for yourself, supplement your income, and maybe even quit the day job.

However, if you don’t have the obvious credentials – such as being a plumber or electrician, or even a physical therapist, nurse, or accountant – there is still hope.

With the proper planning, the right tools, some self assessment, and a sincere desire to succeed, you could well be on your way to “self employed” very soon.

STEP 1 – What will your business be?

First and foremost, what is it that you want to do?

Do you have a special skill or trade that can support you?

Most people fail to understand or recognize their marketable skills and they never give themselves the opportunity to learn how to capitalize on their God-given talents.

Whether you are looking for a way to be able to afford to stay home with your kids, or you are out of work and want to fully explore all your options, these are just a smattering of ideas to base a business on – full or part time.

• Babysitting / day care services.
If you have your own children to care for, invite other mothers to leave theirs with you as well. It’s the ideal play date.

• Cooking / catering.
You don’t need to be a gourmet cook. Cakes, appetizers, or even side dishes could be your specialty.

• Sewing.
I’ll bet you there isn’t one person in your neighborhood who wouldn’t kill to have some hems taken up or a skirt let out.

• Typing, bookkeeping services for small companies or even sole proprietors (like you!).

• Pick up / delivery / errands.
Have you ever wished you had a personal shopper to get the cleaning, pick up the kids, get to the drug store, or just get milk and diapers? So does everyone else!

• Crafts.
Can you arrange flowers? Make gift baskets? Knit? Design picture frames?

• Organize storage space.
This is a new in demand skill. Many would pay top dollar for someone to find room for the car in the garage, or to have someone organize closets and junk drawers.

STEP 2 – Choose a business entity

Now that you know what you will be doing in your business, you need to decide what type of business entity you will have.

In very simplified terms, here are the major choices:

• Sole Proprietor.
This is the most common for people who find a way to earn money at home. You don’t need to find an alternate name for the business; when you file your taxes at year end your Schedule C simply has your real name as the name under which you do business. Your income flows through your regular tax return. You may very well qualify for a refund, too.

• LLC (Limited Liability Corporation).
You can be a sole proprietor – the only person in your business – and have an LLC. The difference here is that your liability (if you get sued) is significantly reduced over that of a sole proprietorship. You are required to have a specific business name. Your income flows through your regular tax return. You may very well qualify for a refund, too. Depending on the type of business you have, this may be a good option.

• Corporation.
Should you incorporate? Probably not. There’s very little benefit and there is one big drawback: you don’t get a tax refund if you incorporate. A corporation is a separate entity. It is not you. It requires a real professional to fill out even the simplest of tax returns at year end. For most home based businesses, this is overkill. If you are really afraid that you might lose your house if you’re sued, and you really believe this is the way to go, spend some money and have a serious discussion with a CPA or tax attorney.

STEP 3 – Register your business

Now you need to get permission from your state to do business.

This sounds more intimidating than it really is.

You can do this all by yourself.

You don’t need to pay anyone to do this for you!

Simply go to your state’s business oriented website and search for where it shows you how to file “Articles of Organization for a Domestic Entity”.

You can usually print this out with the instructions; it’s about 4 pages long.

Fill it out and send it in.

This costs about $150 to file for the first time and another $50 + to renew each year after that.

Most states allow you to do this online.

STEP 4 – Get your EIN

You will probably need an EIN (Employer Identification Number). Even though you most likely aren’t going to have employees, this shows the IRS you are a little more “business like”.

If you have a business where you would need a business checking account, most banks even require this in order to open the account for you.

You can apply for this online at the http://www.irs.gov/ site. Look for form SS-4.

STEP 5 – File for a fictitious name

Depending on your state, you may be required to file a fictitious name if you are not using your own name to conduct business.

This costs about $50 in any state.

STEP 6 – Tools of the trade

No matter what your new business, there will be specific tools you will need at a minimum.

Whether it’s a computer, a sewing machine, or even pots and pans, make sure you get the best you can afford and make sure you know ahead of time what you will need at the very least to conduct your business, and have them in place.

STEP 7 – Profit and Loss

Know your cash flow!

Set up at least a simple Excel spreadsheet to list your expenses and your income.

Your success depends on how much money you’re clearing (your profit).

You don’t want to find out the hard way that you aren’t even breaking even.

STEP 8 – Paying taxes

You’ll need to pay at least self employment taxes.

Don’t wait until the end of the year to find out you owe thousands of dollars on what you made!

Put away at least 25% of your income into an interest bearing account so you will be able to pay these taxes when the time comes.

STEP 9 – Advertise

Get the word out! Print some business cards, hand out flyers, email everyone you know, have your spouse bring in some brochures to his or her workplace.

Place free ads online at Craigslist.

Ask people for referrals.

STEP 10 – Stay focused and organized

No matter what kind of business you have, you’ll need a way to keep track of what’s what.

This could be as simple as a notebook you carry with you or as intricate as a Blackberry.

Remember commitments and appointments, track quotes and proposals, follow up with prospects, and ask clients for add on business.

Everything you need to know should take no more than 30 seconds to find!

If you can accomplish all 10 steps above, you’re well on your way to being successful.

Developing a secure foundation is over half the battle.

Work At Home Life.

You want to resign from your day job to work at home or you just wanna see if you can really work from home.

Mothers who earn their living working at home often find themselves the envy of those who hold down “real” jobs, but unless you are one of those moms making your living working from home, you probably aren’t aware of the challenges involved.

Here are some factors to consider that may help you decide if working from your home is really for you.

First and foremost, you have to decide what exactly you are going to do to earn money as a home business owner.

Being computer literate certainly opens up many more possibilities, but there are other ways to work at home as well.

Your interests and talents should be considered as well as how much of an income you are hoping for.

If you are going to work at home, you should probably be the kind of person who enjoys being somewhat in control.

This means that you need to be comfortable with making decisions and planning your time.

With a job, these elements are something you normally don’t have to worry about as it’s already decided and planned for you.

As your own boss however, these responsibilities fall squarely on your shoulders.

Your decisions directly affect your home business and in turn your bottom line profit.

You must be flexible.

Sometimes you will be forced to change and adapt to situations.

If you get a phone call to pick up your sick child from school and a deadline is looming, you may need to work through your night out with the girls or forego your eight hours of sleep.

On the other hand, if it’s a beautiful, sunny day and the garden beckons, you have the ability to shuffle your day and spend some time puttering in the great outdoors or anything else you may be itching to do.

Time management skills are another extremely crucial factor to work at home success.

There will be no time card to punch, no boss telling you what to do or how much time to spend on a specific task, but you will need to decide how to divide up your working hours so that the majority of your time is spent on completing money earning tasks.

You will have to be able to keep your attention focused for blocks of time.

This is one of the most challenging aspects of managing a home business, particularly if there are children present while you are attempting to work.

Although it can be difficult, it is possible with a bit of forethought and lots of patience.

Organization goes hand in hand with time management.

Setting up your working space, maintaining a supply of needed materials, using a planner to do both long range and daily planning, and having a bookkeeping system in place, are a few of the important organizational tasks facing the work at home business owner.

For a work at home mom, you’ll have to manage and organize your business as well as your family, so be prepared for double the planning.

The nice part about setting up a home business is that it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing type of venture.

If you’ve never experienced working at home, why not try setting aside a few hours here and there to see if it’s really for you?

This will allow you to try your hand at it before making the major commitment of quitting your current day job.

Step by Step Tutorial to Avoiding Work at Home Scams.

At some point during your Internet adventure, you will want to make money.

This relates especially to stand-alone moms, as well as people who have a lot of spare time.

Making money online is possible, but you have to be very careful. 99% of money making opportunities are pure scams, and their only goal is to rip you off.

After all, if all of them worked, how many people would be making a fortune online already ? But they don`t.

In fact, a very small percentage of people, 3-5 %, make a good living online.

So, here`s a step by step tutorial to avoiding Work at Home scams.

1. Look at the quality of information and design of the Work at Home opportunity.

If the website template is nice and clean, that speaks a lot about the owners.

If the design is ugly and the text is unreadable, exit the website.

If they can`t take care of the simple things like website design, how can you expect to make money working at home with them ?

Now, look at the quality of information.

Do they explain the work at home opportunity in details, or do they just put some lists of benefits ?

This is crucial, you want to know the exact steps on how you will be making money from home.

The information has to be very understandable, no technical mumbo-jumbo.

If they promise you millions in a first few months, exit. It`s a scam.

The info has to be very realistic, as this will show you that they mean business.

Don`t expect the ” $1000/day push-button” job. It doesn`t work that way.

You`ll actually have to work from home.

2. The second suspicious thing you should be looking after, is whether the service asks for money up front.

Just scroll to the bottom of a web page to see the “Order” button.

If you see it, run. They are probably wolves in the sheep`s clothing.

This type of scam is very common, and popular, because they make you think they are actually serious about giving you the opportunity to make money, by requesting money up-front. Don`t fall for that.

However, you can consider paying them money only if the service is about you working for them.

If you have to work alone by following some info, exit the website. It`s a scam.

3. The last thing you should do is the most important one: find the information about the Work at Home opportunity from the independent sources.

This is a crucial step, as it will reveal the true colors of the service you`re after.

There`s simply no better way of finding out about the quality of the Work at Home opportunity than from the good old word of mouth.

So how do you find this out from others ?

Go to Google and write: “SERVICE review” “SERVICE scam” “Is SERVICE a scam ?” “scam.com SERVICE”

Just be sure to replace the SERVICE with the actual Work at Home opportunity.

You can use the quotation marks to search for the exact phrase, but in that case, change the phrase to make it more realistic.

After that, simply repeat the process on Yahoo Search, as well as the MSN search.

Don`t be lazy, as this can spare you precious time by eliminating Work at Home scams at the very beginning.

Whenever you stumble upon a new Work at Home opportunity, be sure to follow this step by step process, and I guarantee you won`t get scammed.

The Internet is full of wolves in sheep`s clothing, so stay on your guard.