Everything to do with your shak.
A career coach can be a great help to you as you crystalize your efforts to work from home. Whether you are looking for a telemarketing job, or whether you are looking for direction with a home business, a career coach can get you on the right path.
Over at Interview Chatter, career coach Darlene McDaniel is offering a free session to the first 25 commenters. There are 16 right now, so if you hurry over, you might get a slot. This can be a great chance for introspection and help.
The auto industry bailout couldn’t manage to get through. Perhaps a little pick-me-up in the form of Bailout, the wine.
Happy Friday!
If you are smart, capable and organized, you might try this home business idea: virtual assistant. A virtual assistant is someone who handles administrative-type activities long-distance. You can be in Arizona and keep track of appointments for someone in Chicago or New York. (Just make sure you know the time difference.)
This is a great home business opportunity, especially in this economy. As companies look for ways to cut back, those who provide services from their home businesses can be desirable. They get the work done, but do not have to be offered benefits. Additionally, the overhead associated with office space is not a factor for companies. Outsourcing certain necessary activities becomes more attractive in this economy.
If you are going to work from home as a virtual assistant (or any other home business for that matter), you need some certain characteristics:
* Professional manner
* Self motivated
* Flexible
* Collaborative
* Good with communications
* Organized
Jean Murray, over at Home Biz Notes, has published a great interview with Stacy Brice, the founder of AssistU, about what it takes to become a virtual assistant.
When freelancing (whether writing, consulting, graphic design) is your home business, you may find that you are getting a drop in work around the holidays. I know I haven’t had as much work in terms of book chapters, reporting and other types of writing that I do.
However, if you have steady clients, it can help. I have a few clients on contract for a set number of blog posts each month — and some for specific articles each week. This is good, since it provides a nice base that I can usually count on. (Although with this economy, nothing is ever certain.)
However, as one might guess, being ready to work at your home business through the holidays requires its own preparation. Here are some things I do to get enjoy a couple days off around Christmas and New Year:
* Prepost on blogs (write the posts ahead of time in the editor and then set a time and date for them to post).
* Work an extra 1/2 to an hour for a few days of the month to get more done ahead of time.
* Outsource some of the work to people I can trust. I don’t get as much money from the assignment, but it gets done, I remain reliable, and I help someone else out.
What do you do with your home business during the holidays?
One of the things that can be sort of frustrating for me as someone who does work from home is the fact that I don’t get the same vacation days as my husband and son, both of whom are in school. My husband can amuse himself — usually with a combination of video games and grudging attempts to make progress with whatever thesis or dissertation he’s working on.
My son, however, is a little tougher. So I was very excited to see that, over at Sparkplugging, there is a list of printable word puzzles with a holiday theme. Great stuff. My son loves words and he is learning to read. The puzzles cover different age groups and levels, and can keep him occupied for 30 to 60 minutes at a time.
What do you do when school is out and the kids are home?
In these times, it is important to stay on top of things with your home business. However, capital is scarce, and you may not know how to implement an action plan for growing your business in this economy. This is where a great contest at Smart Money Life comes in.
You could win cash, useful business products and services and a plan of action to help your home business achieve success — even in the current economy.
There are a number of prizes in addition to the grand prize:
* Company logo designed by a graphic designer.
* Content management set up by a programmer.
* Help from a search marketing specialist.
* Web promotion.
This is a great chance to get a little extra help for your home business. Get the details at Smart Money Life.
Great, funny video about computers.
Happy Friday!
If your home business involves selling items online, you might have had a good start to the week. Cyber Monday this year saw e-commerce spending jump by 15%. This is the second-heaviest spending day for the Internet.
Indeed, reports Calculated Risk, $12.03 billion has been spent online, with $846 million of it spent on Cyber Monday. This Comscore graph compares weekly online shopping over the past 5 years:
How was your Cyber Monday?
It’s the holiday season, and even though times may be tight this year, there is still much you can do to help others. Even if you can only spare $1.
That’s the idea behind the One Dollar Give. Nearly everyone can spare a buck or two, right? Frugal Dad brought this to my attention. Everyday of this month, a different blogger will be featured — along with his or her charity. You can then donate $1 to that charity. The idea is that with hundreds, or thousands, or more, people contributing only $1, a lot of good can come of it.
So I encourage you to participate in the One Dollar Give. It’s a great way to help this holiday season.
I like my Roth IRA. It’s great, but sometimes I wish I could put in more than I’m "allowed" to by law. The recent law allowing for a Roth 401(k) excites me, though. It comes with the higher limits of a 401(k) and the advantages of a Roth option. The only thing was this: does a self-employed or solo 401(k) come with a Roth option?
Patrick at Cash Money Life put me on the right track. It does. Vanguard actually offers a self-employed 401(k) plan with a Roth option. This has made my day. Even those of us who don’t have traditional bosses need to set money aside for "retirement." And now we have all options that traditional workers do.