As someone with a home based internet business, you know the siren lure of staying for an extra hour or two at the computer - just one more job, one more email. That next ping might be the big deal that boosts your business, big time. It's very easy to get wrapped around the spindle of your work and let your home life suffer.
Letting your home life suffer will cause your business to suffer. It's important to schedule some time away from the computer; it's even more important to do this for things relevant to your business. Networking is critical in any kind of field, and it's no less true in Internet derived businesses than it is in more traditional ones.
So, having resolved to do this, it's time to put resolution into action. First, make a list of old friends and colleagues, and make a point out of talking to them on the phone, or even better, over lunch, to keep up on developments with them, and within your field.
If your friends don't do the same sort of work you do, think about how you'd explain it to them - this is valuable practice for talking to potential clients. Your old colleagues may know people who need your services, or may be able to cover for you if you want to take a vacation...and if you don't keep the lines of communications open, you'll find them less willing to help you out.
While face to face is good, there are other ways to keep in touch, ranging from Instant Messenger programs like AIM or Yahoo Messenger (or even better, a multi-service package, like Pidgin) to social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and MySpace. These are also ways to get client referrals and to promote your own products.
It's worth noting that internet connected time tends to go 'faster than expected' - when dealing with communications at the speed of text, people type at about 60 words per minute, and speak at about twice that rate (and read at about 400 words per minute, all told).
Budget it appropriately, and in spite of the need to keep in touch, keep yourself on a tight budget, including scheduled times when you're NOT going to be checking emails and instant messenger prompts. This is an important tool set for keeping in touch with your clients and colleagues, but it's also an incredible way to lose productive time.
Another venue to look into is a place called Meetup. This is a social marketing site that's geared around making face to face meetings of people with common or related interests happen. It's a great tool for organizing professional brunches and the like, and a great way to stay in touch with professional organizations dealing with your profession.
Finally, there's the issue of relating to clients over the internet. The first rule is being timely. The second rule is that typing in SMS "textese", even if it's faster, is going to come off as unprofessional. And it's very important that you maintain a strict discipline about office hours, if you don't want clients to pester you non-stop about the status of work you've got for them.
Achieving success is defined by most as setting and meeting goals. The goals can be financial, productivity based, or be related to company growth goals. The goals vary from business to business. Some goals can be purely financial such as a freelance writer setting a monetary figure of income over a set period of time.
In a different scenario, a writer can set productivity goals such as writing a set number of articles a month. Setting goals can keep business owners on track however, it is also important to achieve the goals successfully. There is no point in meeting your goals with shoddy work and having to redo it.
Set realistic and achievable goals to avoid disappointment. It is better to set smaller goals than one big goal. This allows you to achieve in smaller steps. Short term goals can be monthly goals or six month goals while a long term goal can be as long as a year or two.
Keep tabs of your goals. Write an actual physical plan that includes your goals and the criteria you set to achieve the goals. An eBay storeowner can set goals in terms of the amount of merchandise they sell.
Set realistic time frames. Don't set a high monthly goal while you are still learning the ropes of your business. Three months is usually a realistic first goal time frame because the learning curve stops being erratic at that point. Keeping your goals close by where you can remind yourself of where you're headed can be motivating.
Measuring Success through Achieving Goals
Before embarking on a home business, it is important to define what you consider as success. Start by listing things that you consider successful by finishing the sentence "Success is when I..."
Success is when... I can take work only twice a week and still meet my financial obligations. This is the financial aspect of success. Start saving money on a regular basis. The same rules for reaching goals can be applied here. Set aside small amounts of money and increase it as times goes by. Set a realistic daily or monthly goal that allows you to limit the amount of time you can work.
This is an important goal, because it allows you time away from your business. People running home based businesses tend to work long hours. There should be no difference between a regular office job in terms of sick days and vacation time.
Success is when... people recognize my products. This goal is related to productivity and branding. Writers know that to have recognition they need to appear in mainstream media. A plan should be devised where the writer builds their portfolio to where they can be hired by a national magazine to write articles.
If the business makes homemade craft objects, the business owner could develop a marketing plan that eventually gets the goods into the national marketplace.
No matter what you define success as; keep a reminder of your goals within easy access. When you lose motivation, revisit why you started a home business and what you wanted to achieve. Then get right back to the grind. Mental preparation and goal setting are an important part of the achieving goals and remaining motivated.
posted by Chris Simpson
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Wednesday, April 8th 2009
Veteran work at home professionals have a lot of valuable experience to impart on making working from home an effective and productive way to earn a living. There are lots of benefits - being able to work in your bathrobe, and deciding on taking a nap in the middle of the afternoon are just two of them, and they aren't even covering the benefits on your taxes.
However, getting the most out of working at home requires discipline, and keeping track of things you may not have considered before taking on the career choice.
First - time management is critical. Start each day with a list of what must get done, and check things off the list as you complete them. It may seem Mickey Mouse, but it's a very important motivational tool for boosting productivity, and keeping track of what you have (or have not) gotten done.
Second - set goals. If you're a writer, set a daily word quota. If you're doing marketing, set a client contact quota. If you're doing graphic design, set a quota of work that needs to be done each day. It's entirely too easy to slip into the "Oh, I'll just do that a little later..." while you check your email (nominally for work), surf the web (looking for information pertinent to your field or your current project) or work on your facebook page (to bring in new work, of course).
Third - your time is valuable, but only if you value it. And by this, we mean that you make yourself aware of how many billable hours or billable projects you're doing each day. Schedule at least three hours on the computer where the Internet connection is turned off, so that you can minimize interruptions and distractions. Your clients will understand if there's a regular time where you're not available.
Fourth - if everything is the top priority, nothing is. You absolutely must prioritize your work each day; otherwise, you will procrastinate, or feel overwhelmed, and let projects slide from day to day. When you make your daily list, put the small jobs at the top of it, so that you can make more progress (and build up a motivational head of steam) as you go through the day.
Fifth - organize everything. Set up your work space and file carefully. When you're done with something, put it away - the time you 'waste' doing this will more than make up for itself in being able to find things when you need them. It also keeps your desk from getting horrifically cluttered, and keeps you in a better mental space for getting work done.
Sixth - at the end of the day, make a written record of accomplishments. Have a scheduled end of day time; this is the time of the day when you stop working. If there are things left undone, put them at the top of the list for tomorrow's tasks. NOT doing this is the best way we know of to burn out, and burn out fast.
Doing this also gives you a written record of what you learned, and every two weeks, you can go through your logs and notice patterns in what gets done when, and where, and how efficiently.
posted by Chris Simpson
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