work at home business

How to Provide Typing Services and Office Support Services from Your Home

by Work at Home Magazine

How to Provide Typing Services and Office Support Services from Your Home

An office support business or secretarial service business is one of the best home based businesses for people with administrative skills. Office support services can include typing services, secretarial services and virtual assisting. You will perform secretarial services, typing services and clerical functions similar to the work office assistants and secretaries perform every day in an office.

If you already have a computer and printer, it’s inexpensive to start an office support business from home.

There is plenty of work. Many business owners don’t have the time to handle the routine tasks involved in running their business. They use secretarial services, virtual assistants, administrative assistants and other office support people to perform routine computer work, typing work, and other repetitive tasks. That is why secretarial services, virtual assistant and other office support businesses can run profitable home businesses. The more skills you have, the more services you can provide and the more money you can make.

If you’re reading this article and are interested in an office support business, you probably already have the basic skills required of an office assistant, virtual assistant or home-based secretary.

To provide typing work from home, you must have typing skills, computer skills and be proficient with a major word processing program like Microsoft Word. You must have good organization skills and be able to prioritize the work you’ll be getting.

If you have been looking for typing work from home, have good typing skills and are interested in starting your own home business, here are a few tips to get you started.

You will need office equipment such as a computer, desk, printer and telephone. Having voice mail or an answering machine will help to get your messages when you’re away from your desk. Today, you can also get caller ID which will tell you who called and didn’t leave a message. I recommend having a telephone line you use exclusively for your business.

Most secretarial services and virtual assistants find their clients through word of mouth, networking, referrals and advertising in local newspapers and on the internet.

It’s easy to start a office support business, secretarial service, typing service or virtual assistant business. The start-up cost is low. If you’re serious about doing typing work from home, consider starting your own secretarial service business or virtual assistant business.

The Secretarial Business-in-a-Box provides everything you need to start and run a successful home-based secretarial business and cash in on the high demand for secretarial services. Visit www.startasecretarialservice.com.

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Examine your skills: What can you turn into a WAHM business?

by Work at Home Magazine

Examine your skills: What can you turn into a WAHM business?

As you think about the myriad of work-at-home opportunities, you could be overlooking one important thing – you have skills that you can turn into a career. Although it’s easy and sometimes tempting to sign up with a company or to begin selling a product, there are many skills that each of us bring to the table that can help us to create our own successful at-home enterprises.

Before you settle on a work-at-home job, carefully examine your skill set and determine if you can make a solid at-home work opportunity out of your skills. Though there is no harm in joining an already successful company, many moms are more interested in starting their own businesses. If you are that kind of mom, consider your skills first so you choose the right at-home business for you.

Money

Have you ever worked as a cashier? What skills did that require? If you had to reconcile your cash drawer, you have some experience with bookkeeping. You also likely have some customer service skills. Many women work at home as bookkeepers or as assistants to accountants.

Office skills

If you have ever worked in an office, you might have a long list of beneficial qualities that would help in an at-home job. These include phone skills, customer service skills, software experience and perhaps even some marketing or public relations skills.

Office skills and experience (as well as any training you might also have) can be used in a variety of ways with at-home jobs. Many moms work at home as virtual assistants, for example, which require customer service skills, software experience and basic office training.

Other moms with office skills can work at home for a local business. To save money, local businesses are more likely these days to hire people to work from home to handle calls, mail and basic clerical duties.

Technical skills

Those who have worked in graphic design and website design are perfectly positioned to take advantage of the work-at-home job market. That is, you can easily turn your graphic design and website design skills into an at-home business. Your services will likely cost another business less than using an in-house designer and if you provide the same – or better – quality, you can create a niche for yourself that others might not be able to easily fill.

Other technical skills that might be useful for at-home businesses include computer repair, specific software application training and other skills that you might have learned in a previous job, in college, or that you took specific classes for.

Entertainment

Many moms have had success turning their entertainment skills into an at-home business. Your ability to put on a beautiful party can be turned into a business that puts on tea party birthdays for young girls. Or you might start a catering business from home. Or you could become a personal chef. Some moms start successful home businesses that are borne out of their theater or singing experience.

The key to turning your skills and experience into a successful home business is to be honest about your skills. Know what you can do and what you are weak at. Perhaps you know that you can run a lucrative web design business, but you can’t handle money. Maybe you can hire another WAHM to do your bookkeeping for you. In that way you help yourself and another mom at the same time.

Make a list of the skills you have and those you might like to acquire and from that list, create some ideas for your at-home business. You might be surprised how much you bring to the at-home business table.

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Examine your skills: What can you turn into a WAHM business?

by Work at Home Magazine

Money

Office skills

Technical skills

Entertainment

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Creating a Contingency Plan for WAHM Businesses

by Work at Home Magazine

The last question that anyone wants to think about is “What would happen to my home business if I was to be seriously injured or if I die? Who would tie up the loose ends?”

It can be difficult to think about these things, but just as it is important to leave a will and/or final personal wishes for your family, it is important to leave information regarding your business. If you become seriously ill, are injured in an accident, or in the event of your death, then you owe it to your customers, clients, or business associates to make sure that things are taken care of in a timely and professional manner. They are the ones that helped you make your business what it is; without them you would not have one. Making sure they are taken care of is extremely important.

Below is a checklist of what types of information you will need to document, along with tips and suggestions for the person you leave in charge.

Make a list of all website names, links, hosts (with contact information), plus usernames and passwords for these accounts. You may also want to leave instructions for accessing any of your website files on your hard drive, how to make changes and how to publish those files.

Make a list of all email addresses detailing which address belongs to which site, along with usernames and passwords for those accounts.

Leave the link to and username/password for your PayPal or any other “merchant” or payment processing accounts. Also if you have a separate business checking account, leave the account numbers, and any online username and passwords to access the account. If you have debit cards associated with those accounts, make a list of the card numbers that go with each account, along with a description of the card(s). For example if you have a PayPal account with a blue MasterCard debit card and a bank account with a red colored VISA, then you could list something like;
PayPal, Blue MasterCard, Card Number 1234567812345678
Bank Account at First Federal Bank, Red VISA, Card Number 0987654309876543

Leave instructions for accessing your online store account (if you have one) and retrieving any and all pending orders, plus instructions for filling or refunding those orders, i.e. where to find products, order products, or how you want the money refunded. Leave your preferences such as refunds via money order, business check, PayPal, etc.

If you sell on EBay, Half.com, Amazon (or any other “auction” type site), make sure to list usernames/passwords for the account(s), and leave instructions for retrieving any pending auctions or shipments. In the case of Half.com or Amazon, be sure to give detailed information on deleting your inventory.

Make a list of current affiliates, clients, contacts, advertisers, etc. with which you are doing business along with all contact information. A database program such as MS Access would be perfect for this.

Make a list of groups or message boards in which you participate and usernames and passwords for those accounts. Leave instructions on whether or not you want a message posted on these groups or message boards letting others know what has happened to you and when you will be returning to the group.

Make lists of names, addresses, phone numbers of all of your wholesale suppliers, drop shippers, or companies for which you are a representative, etc. along with names and email address or phone number of any particular contact with those companies.

Finally, sit down and type out all of the information that you would like to have in the email that you want sent out, the info to type on the homepage of your website, and the info you want to have posted in your groups. This should include any information on when you will be returning (if you know) or in the event that you will not be returning, final words, wishes, etc.

Go over all of this information with the person you wish to leave in charge. Choose someone that would be able to handle the responsibility professionally as well as emotionally in the event of your death. It would probably be unwise to leave this responsibility to your husband, your mother, or a grown child because this would likely be the last thing they will want to think about. If you can count on a good friend or business associate to do these things for you then it would be better. If you are personally familiar with your web site host, one of your affiliates, your business suppliers, etc. then leave some of the information with them and ask them to take care of it. For example, if your web host is a friend, leave instructions with them on the type of information that needs to be posted on the home page of your site, and whether you want all the pages taken down, etc. If you are personal friends with the owner of any groups of which you are a member, then leave information with them for posting a message on the group on your behalf.

It is important that ANY business have some type of contingency plan in place in the event of an emergency. Remember if YOU were the associate or customer of a business that suddenly closed (and it happens all the time), and you were left hanging, how happy would that make YOU? Use this same consideration when making your own contingency plan. It is not only the professional thing to do, it is the ETHICAL thing to do as well.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

Kandi Traxel is a WAHM and the owner of Shop With a Mom www.shopwithamom.com and Simply Melt Away www.simplymeltaway.com

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How to Start a Business Selling Ebooks to Moms

by Work at Home Magazine

Ebooks are fast becoming an in-demand product on the Internet. Found on many websites, written by authors of all walks of life and on many different topics, Ebooks can be downloaded for a fraction of the cost of traditional print books. If you are an online business offering products or services to moms or even if you’re new to online business, you can sell EBooks to this already huge and growing population on the Web.

The use of Ebooks is unlimited and because there’s no need for keeping a large physical inventory, you can sell them over and over again and adapt them to your customers’ needs. In short, this is an inexpensive business to start and has a high profit margin.

Why Moms Love Ebooks
In online communities everywhere, there are moms who enjoy learning new things and improving the lives of their families, by visiting websites, libraries and schools. Ebooks can be a great way of sharing that knowledge to this growing market of readers in a convenient format.

Not only are Ebooks easy to access for quick reference, but they are portable with the advent of Internet-ready cellular phones and iPods. A mom can locate an Ebook on any topic of her choice, download to her portable device in a matter of minutes, and take it wherever she’d like to enjoy it later.

Ebooks can be read over and over again and they can be stored for later use. Ebooks are environmentally friendly; no trees have to be killed in order to print out books that will sit around on people’s bookshelves and collect dust years after they are read. And that’s a relief to many moms who are environmentally conscious and probably already have enough clutter in their house…books in digital format help keep things clutter-free.

How to Research Your Topics
Over the last five years, moms have contributed much to the Internet as a whole. Many moms have created an online presence on social networking sites, specialty forums, and personal blogs. These moms are a perfect source of research on topics you can create ebooks about. Plus, they are perfect candidates to help promote and sell your ebooks for you. Simple set up an affiliate program that allows them to earn a commission on the sales they refer to you.

Sell and Give Away
You can use Ebooks to build your business in many ways. One, as we’ve discussed is to sell your Ebooks, but giving away Ebooks for free can also boost your sales.

For example, a business selling beauty products can publish a free Ebook about how the company’s makeup can be applied to achieve the most desired looks. Or a natural products store may want to offer an Ebook explaining the origins and uses of the organic ingredients – which the store happens to sell.

People are starving for information, solutions to problems and more. Find out what they need and deliver it to them.

Creating Your Ebooks
Publishing Ebooks is not as hard as it may seem. Topics and resources can be found by a simple search online or can be drawn from personal experience. Ebooks are generally around 25-100 or so pages in length and offered in an Adobe Reader format.

But if you don’t want to or don’t feel you can put the ebooks together, you can hire a ghostwriter or…

Get More Help with Your Mom Ebooks Business
To get help with selling ebooks…plus have the ebooks and promotional materials created for you, check out Mom PLR Ebooks. You receive a new ebook to customize and sell each month, plus a ton of great resources, promotional graphics, sales copy and more. It’s a super easy way to break into the business of selling ebooks to moms.