Work From Home

When the words get out that you have started working from home, a lot of non working friends and family might want to drop in and check on you. Aunts or sisters or friends might just want to make sure everything is going on fine while there might be non working friends who may drop in to spend some time and there would be associates or neighbors who will want to drop in to see if things are going well for you and if they are… might want to know how you do your job and find out if they could start something similar as well! Then there would be some calling just to chit chat.

It is not that easy to tell someone you can see them because you are working from right then. Family or friends might just take offence if you tell them the working hours and ask them to come by later, the only thing you can do in such a situation is to let them in and to let them know you were in between something important and if they could just make themselves Read more »

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Home based business can free you from static schedules of the day jobs and give you the freedom to work at your leisure and at your own pace. Take your on breaks without worrying about your supervisor, if it gets too boring call up a friend or watch TV. All that sounds so good right? Now let’s face some reality.. what if your job requires you to be creative, say you are a copy writer or a graphic designer and your neighbors have eight noisy kids who are on a roll while your deadline is approaching fast or you just chose the wrong locality! In this blog I’ll deal with these two specific unexpected issues that can ground your home business.

Zoning Restrictions

All cities have laws that prevent residents of certain localities from running a business out of their house. Did you check if Read more »

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Working at home is sometimes not as easy as everyone says it is, yes you are your own boss and yes you can work on your own schedules but then the distractions can be just too many at times, besides there are way too many things you need to get done in a day in order to make sure your business functions efficiently and professionally even if you don’t have your hands full with something that is your job and on days when business is good you might just wish there were more than just 24 hours in a day! There is no easy way out, there are just ways in which you can do things properly.. in this blog you’ll find top three tips to remain on track.

First Things First

Make sure you have your goals clearly laid out, then prioritize what tasks will lead you to achieve your goals and then keep Read more »

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Working from home comes with one big trouble, managing work with house guests. If you are at office you don’t have to worry about the odd visitors but when you are at home it’s just not easy for anyone to tell a guest to come back later because you are working at the moment. This article will address these issues especially for mothers working from home on how to deal with your guests and not let your work suffer at the same time so that you remain productive and your business profitable while your guests enjoy your hospitality.

Plan it out

If you know you’ll have someone visiting you in weekdays, assess whether or not you can make the time, if you can’t then try talking them into visiting you on the weekend, no friend or family wants to be burden or disturbance. Read more »

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There are two basic hurdles for the self employed people to get their deductionsThe first one is quite simple, that is that the space must be used exclusively for the purposes of business and also it should be regularly used for business. The space needs to be for exclusive business use and if there is anything else do not admit it or all the deductions are to be bid a goodbye.

The next block is slightly more complicated but there are ways around it.

The first way is if you keep your office space as your principal place for conduction business. It also is deductible if used for management or administrative activities. So the paperwork has to be done at home. Read more »

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Type “work from home” in Google and it will give you a lot of entries for stuffing envelopes, it is one of the most publicized work from home jobs that there have been.

It sounds like easy money, just sit and stuff and make your packet as simple as that. Lets look at whet actually is it?
What are you stuffing?

If the stuff that you stuff in the envelope is the catalogue or the Christmas brochure from a shop, this is easy fast and a great way to make money, but life is not always so simple, the real picture goes as follows:-
You read an advertisement, you like the way it sounds to you and you want to try it out, first like all cautious people, you read everything, all the margins and the small prints, everything and then you see that for this job, they need t make sure that u are serious about this, so they will ask you for an upfront payment, like a say $20 which they will claim u get back within the first batch of the stuffing.
You pay up and wait; there can be two ways now
1)    The package doesn’t come.
2)    The package comes.
If you are lucky the second will apply which will contain a letter saying somebody made this much money and someone made that huge amount of money, and then comes the shocker, you job is not to stuff envelopes, but to make sure that you refer other people to the same business, you will have to stuff the envelopes with the same notes of golden promises that you received and fell for and for every subscription do u get the 1$ or 2$ that is prescribed.
This is the story of envelope stuffing scams, the work is usually illegitimate and the pay is pathetic, also the ones running the scam will make thousands of dollars in the upfront subscription fee but more often than not, this is the scene so beware, even if it is trusting never ever give out money, any employer will give u money always and never ask for it from you.

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The numbers are testimony to the fact that work from home is the new mantra of the corporate world and to keep the employee’s productive and happy as well as not waste time. The number of employers now offering the option to work form the comfort of home is soaring. The official figure stand at about 46%, i.e. 46% of the business have now given the option of working remotely which is triple the figures last year.  The pitfalls are many if a worker is working from home; the first is the pay cut that you will have to take is you want to telecommute. The pay cut is quite significant, also the time if managed improperly again leads to the same type of a situation which they wanted to escape, i.e. you will have no time for your family because of the way that the new work pattern will have been structured and you will have to work harder for the same level of work due to so many distractions.

Robert Ainger, director of communications for Orange Business Services, said there was a gap between perception and reality when it came to flexible working.

“A key challenge is how notions of effectiveness are being redefined. Being the first or the last in the office can no longer be a measure of an employee’s commitment and productivity and managing a flexible workforce will mean worrying less about how employees work and more about what they produce,” said Robert Ainger, director for communications for Orange Business services.

The numbers of people who telework are now quite a significant crowd and has been on the rise since 1997 when the phenomenon was at first noticed.

In 1997 around only 4% of the workforce telecommuted, but the numbers by the year 2005 have risen to a limit of 8%.

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If you are thinking of a work from home business, then this is the game made for you, in our previous feature we discussed what exactly the mystery shoppers do, but there are some rules of the game, as it is with every game.

If you are employed by a mystery shopper company, then please know that any legitimate business will never ever charge you money for doing their work. The money should go out of your pocket as it puts you in a financially vulnerable position. The training tips that are provided, as well as the shopping opportunities for a mystery shopper are provided free of cost. Mystery shopping has is perks in the form of free products and free services, but there should be still this cardinal rule, you should never be asked to pay for anything, genuine mystery shoppers are either paid a pre-arranged fee for the survey each time or they are given reimbursement every time that they go shopping. The money paid is usually not very high and that puts the person in a disadvantage, thus this is generally regarded as a way to source good secondary income along with freebies like free food, services etc, though some mystery shoppers do make a living solely on this way to earning, but the usual practice is to keep it as a side option for additional money and stuff.  

Leading mystery shopper sites have now, over the years improved their registration process. The form available online usually takes just a few minutes to complete and register as mystery shoppers. You will probably need to register with one or more companies, once registered, the companies will inform you of the opportunities that are there and suit your preferences. They will mostly choose on first come first serve basis so please make sure that you take care and give them a number where you can be easily reached and an email address that you check regularly. 

You should be ready to accept last minute assignments and the worst ones have to be treated like the best ones.

If you are a fresher in the field, then take whatever you get so that you can build a reputation with the company. Take care of the instructions issued and make sure that you follow then to the “t”.

Have the required technology and you are on the go.

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And this is one where the name will speak for itself. The concept of mystery shopping is in actuality quite a simple approach. This is the job which is often also referred to as performance evaluations, secret shopping, frontline evaluations and service checks.  This is to evaluate what the companies or the industries offer and give the evaluators a straight idea as to what they are dealing with. Trained evaluators who are already aware of what all they have to evaluate, evaluate and provide a consumers perspective as to a particular good or a service and thus enable a producer or anyone concerned about the real value and quality of the goods. The management can thus have a clear view of their deliverables, business practices and their employee from the eye and side of a consumer consuming their goods thus enabling them to make their goods or services better and correct flaws.   

Mystery shoppers are often given evaluation sheets and questionnaires to help them with their work and evaluate on the basis that the evaluation is needed. They often call on these businesses and pose as regular customers in need of their deliverables, and thus give the viewpoint of a consumer of that business, without letting the employees know that they are undergoing evaluation.

The various places in which a mystery shopper can make use of his contributions are often businesses like (example of mystery shoppers in restaurants) retail, convenience stores, financial institutions, gas stations, manufactures, department stores, entertainment, travel and service providers. These are the business where the consumer is a direct common man and thus these areas these mystery shoppers can give the maximum output and can be most useful.

To be a mystery shopper though sounds like fun but it is a job with quite a bit of responsibility and professionalism. There are also quite a few frauds operating in which people claim to be able to teach you to be a mystery shopper for a certain registration price. This may be true, but the general rule of mystery shopping says that you should never be made to pay for whatever survey you do. There is a lot of financial vulnerability if you agree to do something like this. So it is not only unnecessary to pay out of your own pocket, but it is also foolishness if you mean serious business and cannot afford to lose money.

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Simplification of the shopping and the meal preparationMake a list. This is the bottom line to effective shopping to save time and to avoid deliberating over what to buy and what not to. The lists will help you simplify your shopping to an extent that all you need to do is go to the store and pick up all that you need for the time and be back as soon as possible, since you already know what you want, there is no deliberation and consequentially no wastage of time.

Make sure that the food you give is nutritious and not as elaborate, make use of ingredients that require less cooking and are nutritious, most foodstuff lose their nutrition when cooking so that should work out in you favor. Reduction of cooking time does not mean that the food served should be canned, but it means that the food should be nutritious simple and you children or house members should be able to help you with it.

General time management tips

Know what is wasting your time.

You do different activities a day, check to see if there is any that can be avoided at no cost to you or you entertainment, maybe it is that telecast you watch, or that extra long telephone chat with the friend that you met in the morning. Maybe you are surfing the net too much, for each it is different. Identify the time wasting elements and weed them out.

Make a timer your best friend

Keep a timer so you know how much time you are spending in each activity and how much you need to. Keep alarms for game time and the time that you finish your work so the kids also know that now you are free for them.  The timer will make sure that you are not late or incessantly waste time when the work is already completed.

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