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Online Phone Services Can Help Your Home Business

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If you have a lot of meetings with your home business, you might need a good way to coordinate communication with a number of people. One service that can help with that is Gotomeeting.com. This appears to be an interesting idea for setting up a teleconference. One of the nice things about it is that there is a video component over the Internet that allows for chatting and view presentations in addition to the audio. Home Biz Notes offers a good review of Gotomeeting.com.

But, of course, this service (which costs $49) may not be necessary for everyone. I do not often have a need for such meetings. But I do regularly make international calls. In such cases, I use Skype. It's extremely inexpensive, and if the other person has Skype, it is free.

If you are looking for more face-to-face home business meetings, but you do not have them often, it is possible to use Google Chat's video feature. You can even add multiple people to the chat — and it's free.

There are many online resources that can help your home business, without costing too much. And, even if you have to pay for a service, keep track and deduct it on your taxes.

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Start a Home Business for Practically Nothing

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One of the hardest things about starting a home business is that it can cost so much. In this economy, many people are looking for ways to earn a little extra money in order to provide a safety net — just in case the employment rate continues to sky rocket. And I admit, it is nice knowing that I have a work from home business that costs very little.

I’m a freelance writer and editor.

I write for blogs, and I write for print and online publications. I also provide Web content for businesses. While the journalistic reporting for print and online publications requires some professional experience and/or education (to be paid decently), it is possible to blog and provide Web content with little more than life experience. It costs very little to get started — just a computer and an Internet connection. And some time to look for, and apply for online writing and editing jobs.

You don’t have to be a writer to start a home business for practically nothing. Ron over at the Wisdom Journal offers these ideas for low-cost work from home opportunities that you can take advantage of:

1. Home makeover consulting. You can offer your services as a baby-proofer or as a green home consultant. In both cases, it is possible to provide help to homeowners looking to improve their homes. You can also charge based on the cost of making the changes, so that you do not have to get equipment out of your pocket. (Or at least you recoup the cost almost immediately.) When you do the green home consulting, make sure you contract out to professionals who can do work you may not be qualified for (i.e. electric).

2. Pet training. Pet sitting is a popular home business, Ron points out. Instead, try pet training. If you have managed to train your pet, and you like working with animals, you can offer these services.

3. Genealogy research. More people are interested in their roots these days, but don’t know how to start digging up information on their ancestry. You can get help from places like Ancestry.com, public records or familysearch.org, a site run by the LDS Church that offers access to free resources.

4. Teach your talents. If you are a musician, know a second language, qualified to tutor a school subject or have some sort of craft skill, you can teach others. For a while, I was a piano teacher. This month, I start taking guitar lessons from a local musician. If you are good at some skill, chances are that someone will want to learn it from you.

There are plenty of other ideas for starting a home business with very little capital outlay. Do you have a home business that you started for practically nothing?

SocioFluid

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Does Your Home Business Accept Credit Cards?

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Many people, when they are starting a home business, prefer not to have to deal with accepting credit cards. Unfortunately, the truth is that most people shopping online want to be able to use a credit card to make purchases. Over at My Wife Quit Her Job, the argument for accepting credit cards is made:

Have you ever heard of an ecommerce shop that didn’t accept credit
cards? Early on, we tried to save money by using Paypal as our sole
payment processor. Paypal basically offers 2 different account types.
The first one is their normal Paypal account which is free. They also
offer a business account which allows you to process credit cards
directly from your website. The business account carries a monthly fee
of 30 dollars.

With a free Paypal account, you can also accept credit cards, but
customers are first diverted from your website to the Paypal website
where they enter in their payment information. After providing their
credit card data, they are then redirected back to your site. All of
this redirection confuses customers.

We lost a ton of potential sales early on because no one respected our
store. They were all probably thinking “Why am I being taken away from
the website to a completely different one just to process my payment?”

This is a very good point. Just trying to save on transaction fees or monthly fees while putting larger sales at risk can be a bad home business move.

Do you accept credit cards for your home business?

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Home Business Productivity Tips: Limiting Email

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I've noticed that one of the most time-consuming parts of my day — if I let it be — is email. Checking email, and responding immediately once something hits the inbox, can interrupt you as you work, reducing your productivity. And, as a freelance writer, productivity in uninterrupted blocks of time is important to my home business. Here are the two things I found most effective in limiting my email time (and increasing my productivity):

1. Turn off the email notifier. Many email programs come with notifiers that make a noise or pop up a message when something enters your inbox. This represents an immediate distraction. When I turned off my email notifier, I marveled at how much I could get done when I wasn't constantly distracted.

2. Schedule times to check your email. One of the things I do is figure specific times to check my email. For me, it works to check first thing in the morning, before I get started. Then I check again after I've done all of my blog posts. I'll check again when I finish my non-blog writing. Finally, I finish out the day with a quick check. I've also learned to prioritize. Not everything needs to be addressed immediately.

Do you have an tips for limiting the distractions caused by email?

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Finding Home Business Success in the New Year

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The New Year brings with it new opportunities for success in your home business. There are a number of things you can do to improve your home business performance, as well as find success in your personal life this New Year. Lazy Man and Money offers some excellent ideas for things you can do to improve your chances of success in 2009:

* Set goals

* Keep track of your progress

* Learn new skills (marketing, public speaking, networking, writing, etc.)

* Learn from mistakes

* Start a blog (a home business blog, if you haven't already)

* Watch less TV

* Organize your home office space

And, for personal success and fulfillment, Lazy Man recommends that you think positively, strive to be in a good mood, be appreciative of what you have, exercise and help someone everyday.

What do you plan to do to achieve success in the New Year?

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Looking to Relocate Your Home Business? Now May Be a Good Time

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For some, the success of a home business means that relocation becomes necessary. If you are looking to get new digs for your home business, now may be the time to do it: Apparently office space is becoming eminently available, and rents are falling.

Commercial real estate in general is taking a hit due to the economy, and vacancies are on the rise. As supply begins to outstrip demand, it is likely that rent for office space will drop, reports Mortgage News Daily:

"Annual rent in the office sector is expected to slip 0.4 percent
this year and decline another 3.6 percent in 2009.  In 57 markets
tracked, net absorption of office space, which includes the leasing of
new space coming on the market as well as space in existing properties,
is seen at 12.3 million square feet this year before contracting by
63.0 million in 2009."

If you are looking to relocate your home business to an office, it might be a good time to consider making the move.

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Holiday Sales Fall Dramatically This Year

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If you run a home business in which you sell items, you have probably noticed a rather dramatic drop in holiday sales this year as compared to last year. SpendingPulse, a division of MasterCard that keeps track of these sorts of things, points out that a number of retailers suffered large drops in holiday sales. And, while Amazon did spectacularly this holiday season, online holiday sales were down overall this year.

Unfortunately, your home business might have experienced this same thing. And you probably have a pretty good guess as to the cause: The economy. The Investing Blog sums up the main reasons that holiday sales were much lower this year than in years past:

First, many consumers didn’t start shopping until late in the season
this year and simply ran out of time to buy as much as they had last
year. Second, unemployment is much higher this year than last. And
third, the recession has left the average American with less to spend
than before, a limited supply of credit certainly isn’t helping either.
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