If you are reading this module it is because you already have in mind to start your own activity and the easiest way is to start it from home. But there are some things to keep in mind.
Advantages to start a home based business:
- Better organization of your time
- Savings in money (on transport, on food)
- Being able to spend more time with the family
- Being able to devote more time to yourself
- More work efficiency
Disadvantages to start a home based business:
- Lack of comparison with colleagues
- Lack of sociability
- Less attention to one’s appearance
- More confusion and chaos at home
- Increase in bills
- Difficulty in managing your children (take into consideration Covid restrictions)
For those who work from home it is essential:
- Organization of a space dedicated only to work
- Purchase of suitable equipment (pc, internet connection, work station)
- Organization of the day in order to be able to “disconnect” from work
- Avoid “multitasking”, in order to maintain a separation between private life and work
- Analyze your skills
- Promoting ourselves with an active and proactive attitude, both from the point of view of research and from the point of view of presenting ourselves.
You need to accomplish some basic rules before starting:
- First, is it legal to hang your shingle or sign at home? This is one of the many possible restrictions on your being permitted to make your home a working site. Whether and how flexibly you can operate a business from your home is covered in local ordinances and also by the covenants, codes and restrictions of homeowner or condo associations.
- How are you going to separate your home and your workplace? While the demanding hours required to start any business affect an entrepreneur’s family, when you bring the workplace into the home, your family’s needs must be taken into account even more.
- How are you going to establish and maintain a professional image? This is especially important if your address is on Cow Path Lane, your dog loves to bark, or your teenager loves to play his drums in the room next to your home office.
Since almost 9 out of 10 people who operate a home business have a family, keeping personal and workspaces separate is critical to peaceful domestic relations. So location is the first thing to think about when you’re planning where your home office will be.
It is wise to build a business on your passions and skills, but it is possible to invent a job from scratch through your personal life path. You have to think that to start making an online business you have to invest your most important asset: time. Time to train yourself, to know, to find your way and to turn your idea into profit for you. Another important suggestion, almost compulsory, is to invest in your training. When you decide to invest in yourself you will give yourself a further boost of motivation to do things seriously and push them even in the most difficult days.
At this point, it is essential to invest in one’s training. Investing in your training will allow you to:
- To accelerate results
- To avoid the most common mistakes by learning from those who have been there before you
- To understand how to beat the competition
- To learn all technical steps to achieve your goals
With respect to investments, it also depends on what type of work you will offer. If your business will be based solely and exclusively on digital content and products then you can safely start using free tools (or almost free).
Basically in your on line business you can:
- Decide what you want to do and who you want to talk to
- Establish a relationship with your audience and understand their needs
- Start monetizing through different types of channels
- Get your business started when you decide it
An on line business it requires time but surely:
- It is faster than a traditional business where the average return on investment (covering what you initially spent) is about 3 years
- It is less risky as you have not invested anything but your time
- It is more flexible as you can start it as a second job or while looking after your family
- It is more modelable around you and your customers as you can modify, change course or cancel and redo as many times as you want
- There is a higher return on investment in relation to the amount of work
- There is an infinitely greater return on investment in proportion to the expenses
When you will have some profit you can invest them in a website, but there are some examples of channels you can use to grow an online business, clearly based on the type that suits you best:
- A Facebook page
- An Instagram profile
- A TikTok profile
- A Telegram channel
- A Pinterest profile
A nice video giving tips and suggestion to start a business from home (duration 7 min 33 sec) :
