Times have been tough for many families lately. COVID-19 has put many people out of work. Others are fortunate enough to work at home, but have to help their children with remote schooling at the same time. All of the stresses that have come about this year have made being unemployed a big problem. It may even feel as though you have no alternative but to be unemployed. You don’t have to worry only about earning enough money these days – you also have to consider how you will keep your family safe and healthy.

Is an online business a good alternative for the unemployed? What about a remote job?

That depends on how you go about it. For some, it’s going to be a great idea, for others a terrible one. Working at home is great in that you don’t have to worry so much about exposure to COVID. It’s also more stressful in other ways, especially if you have young children to care for at the same time.

What Are The Online Alternatives To Being Unemployed?

Depending on your wants and skills, there will be some excellent online opportunities to earn money from home. If you want a steady income, a remote job is likely your best option. If you don’t mind the risk, an online business can be a great opportunity.

Remote work opportunities have increased tremendously in recent years, and not only due to COVID-19. Collaboration tools such as Slack have made it much easier for remote teams to stay in contact. Many jobs that don’t require face to face interaction or physical labor can now be done remotely.

On the other hand, an online business can give you greater flexibility along with the financial risk. Running your own business means setting your own hours as well as not knowing how much you’ll earn each month, especially at first.

Do A Lot Of Reading… But Not Too Much

If you want to succeed with an online business, you’ll need to know a bit about what you’re doing. It’s not rocket science, but earning a living online takes a lot of work, and much of it will be unfamiliar.

There are a lot of great resources online that will help you learn what you need to know to run an online business. There are paid resources too, but if you don’t have the money, don’t spend it.

If you need to add in some skills, for example, learning sites such as Udemy offer a huge range of courses you can take for reasonable prices. Improving your skills is almost always a good idea, whether you’re starting an online business or seeking out a new job.

Don’t spend an excessive amount of time reading and learning before taking action either. I’ve been working online for more than nearly two decades now and I’m still learning. Just learn enough to get a good start, and continue to learn as you go. Too much information will make it harder to get started.

Don’t Spend Money You Don’t Have

This is something I always tell people who want to start an online business. If you don’t have the money, don’t spend it. A business of any sort is a risk. If you can’t afford the risk, find another way to make things work.

Fortunately, you can start an online business for free, so long as you have internet access. Don’t expect fast results, but it’s certainly something you can work on while looking for a job.

Start a free blog at Blogger, Wix or WordPress. Write interesting posts about a topic you love and know well. Don’t go too broad in your topic. You cannot appeal to everyone. You’re better off appealing to those who share your interest in your niche.

Learn free marketing methods such as writing guest blog posts for other websites with your link in the resource box, posting on social media, and the legitimate uses of blog commenting and forum participation.

Sign up for AdSense and/or affiliate programs associated with your niche. Insert ads as appropriate, but don’t pound your readers with nothing but ads.

You can do a lot for free. The results won’t be as fast as if you pay, but it may be worth the try.

Offer Your Services

Offering your services is another way to earn money online, but depending on what you do, you may need to pay for a domain name and hosting to look professional.

Virtual assistants can work at home. So can website designers, graphic artists, programmers, social media managers, and more.

Whatever your skill is, price it and start looking for clients. Don’t limit yourself to the internet. There may be businesses right in your community that need help with the online side of their business.

You can take payments through PayPal rather than go through the trouble of taking credit cards yourself. Square is another popular option.

Sell Your Own Products

Selling products online may not be all that easy, but it’s possible.

If you’re into crafts, sell your work on eBay or Etsy. There’s competition, of course, but these are places that people go looking for things to buy. You will have some risk in terms of how much inventory you carry, but it’s a great opportunity to indulge your creative side.

You can also create an ebook or video to sell. Provide solid information on a topic people want to know about, and people will pay for it. Just think about the wide range of books in bookstores.

You can even sell photographs you’ve taken as stock photos. There are a number of sites that allow you to do this, such as Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, and Getty Images.

These options won’t usually earn significant money right away, but if you can’t find a job, finding other ways to earn money isn’t a bad idea, right? Especially if you’ve been searching for months or more than a year and nothing has come through yet.

Consider Remote Jobs

You don’t have to start what most people think of as a business to earn money online. Many companies now hire people to work remotely. You may even be able to stay in your current career and find an employer who encourages remote work.

Alternatively, there are many websites that pay people to write for them. If writing is one of your skills, it’s a way to bring in some money. Not necessarily the best pay, but it’s something.

For better pay but a harder time getting articles accepted, write for magazines and other printed publications. Go to your local library and borrow the most recent copy of Writer’s Market to get an idea as to which publications you should be considering and who to contact.

Remote jobs offer great possibilities, but just as with any other kind of work, these jobs are hard to come by. Lots of people want to work at home, and when you find a legitimate opportunity, odds are good that others have too. Still, there are many jobs that can be done remotely if you have the skills.

Beware Of Scams

Don’t think that just because you aren’t spending money you can’t get scammed. You can have your identity stolen if you share personal information such as your Social Security Number. You can participate in a criminal action by cashing fraudulent or stolen checks and forwarding the money. The last thing you need when you’re unemployed is to fall for a scam.

Really think about what you’re going to do and make sure the opportunity is legitimate before spending money, sharing your personal information, or doing just about any kind of work at home. The number of scams out there is scary, and smart people can be taken in.

Beware Of Time Wasters

There are some things you can do from home that aren’t exactly scams, but will use up more of your time than they’re probably worth. These include pay to click emails, most surveys and completing offers. In fact, completing offers often costs money, as it’s easy to forget to cancel the free trials you must join to get paid or earn whatever gadget you’re after.

Some may really payout, but the amount of time you will spend earning that money will result in a pay rate usually well below minimum wage. Find a better use for your time.

You Decide

Whether or not working online is a good choice for you depends on you. If you aren’t going to take consistent action, it’s probably not a good choice. If you’re willing to work, knowing that it may be some time before you see any money or even website visitors come in, it might work out for you.

Take some time and read up on the options that are interesting to you. There are a lot of opportunities out there for those who are willing to go for it. You may not find the alternative to being unemployed that you’re looking for, but you won’t find anything if you don’t try.

And if none of the online options work out for you, that’s fine. It’s not for everyone. Do what it takes to bring in the money you need for yourself and your family. Even a job that is below your skill level is a better alternative than being unemployed.

The post Is An Online Business Or Job A Good Alternative For The Unemployed? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

If you pay much attention at all to the news, you probably heard about the recent earthquakes in California. I live about 100 miles from where they struck, so we had a little mild shaking, no damage or anything. But it reminded me about how important it is to get your home business ready for a natural disaster.

When I talk about getting ready for a natural disaster, I’m not talking about prepping for the end of society. If that happens, your home business probably won’t matter much anyhow.

Instead, I’m talking about things like earthquakes, floods, fire, tornados, and hurricanes. Things that you know about how likely they are to strike in your area.

Which Natural Disasters Are Likely In Your Area?

The range of probable natural disasters in a given area varies quite a bit. I’m not at all far from the San Andreas Fault, so naturally earthquakes are a consideration for me. Tornados and hurricanes, not so much. Flooding can happen in my town, but I’m in the upper area with good drainage all around, so it’s not likely to be a problem.

Fire, of course, can strike anyone, anywhere.

Knowing what you’re planning for can help you make the right plans. Earthquakes, for example, strike without warning, while you may have several days’ warning of a hurricane. The things you need to do to prepare are slightly different for each.

The SBA has a list of preparations for emergencies that businesses can make. While their focus is more on small businesses in general, many of their tips can help your home business. They even offer specific advice for different kinds of emergencies.

Do You Have The Right Insurance Coverage?

Talk to your insurance agent to be sure that you have the right insurance coverage for your home and your business. Flood and earthquake insurance, for example, are usually not a part of the standard coverage. In some places it’s difficult to get fire insurance because the risk of wildfire is too high.

Insurance is sometimes a balance between what you know you should have and what you can realistically afford. It can be tough to pay for, especially when you know there’s a chance you’ll never need it.

But can you afford to take that chance?

Which Parts Of Your Home Business Are Most Important To Save In A Natural Disaster?

Deciding which parts of your home business you would save in a natural disaster can be tough. They should be balanced by the more personal things you’d want to save. Any home business plan for natural disasters, after all, must consider the other people and possessions in your home.

So before you start planning what to save from your home business, make plans for what to save from your home. Make an evacuation plan with your family. Talk about how to handle different kinds of emergencies. Decide which items are most important to grab on the way out if the emergency permits. Know where you’re going to go once everyone is out.

Once your family is prepared, you can start taking your home business into consideration.

Assume the worst as you plan. Most disasters won’t be that bad, but you won’t know in advance. That’s why you should start from “no time to grab anything, just run” and go from there.

From there, you can decide what you will grab if there is time. Figure out your priorities ahead of time.

Physical Products

If you sell physical products, these may be a priority for you to save in a disaster. Just how much of a priority may depend in part on how good your business insurance is. If the insurance will sufficiently handle the financial blow of losing your physical product inventory, there’s not much to worry about, even though the loss will still be painful.

On the other hand, if your insurance won’t cover them sufficiently, you may feel much more need to protect the products you sell. That’s your livelihood, after all!

Even so, remember that your first priority is people, then pets, and then decide which things can be saved. Things can always be replaced or at least remembered. If you don’t have enough insurance, it will be harder to replace your things, but it’s better to have the people you care about.

Your Home Business Computer Files

Your home business computer files is very important to protect in case of a natural disaster, but it’s also one of the easiest things to do. Simply have everything backed up to the cloud. This goes for personal data too.

I have all my photos, for example, backup automatically. This way I’ll have a copy no matter what happens. I only need to be able to log into the account to retrieve them.

Google Photos gives you unlimited free storage for photos so long as individual photos are no more than 16 megapixels, and videos are at no higher than 1080p resolution. You can pay if you want to store at higher resolutions, but these levels are fine for most purposes.

You can store other files on Google Drive, which gives you up to 15 gigs free. However, this includes the space your Gmail takes as well as any photos or videos that are above the resolutions allowed in free storage. It’s also easy to buy more space if you need to.

And of course, there are plenty of other cloud storage options such as IDrive, MicrosoftOneDrive, and Dropbox.

If your data is backed up offsite automatically, you won’t need to consider it during a disaster. It’s already safe. Restoring it may be a pain, but that’s all it will be.

Your Equipment

The equipment you use to run your home business is no doubt very important to you. The things you put in your nice, comfy home office are important to your success. That’s how you’ll get things going again once you’re able. But it can be hard to decide what matters most in an emergency.

In general, you want to consider what will be easier to replace versus more difficult to replace. Replacing a computer is a pain, but if all your data is backed up, you may actually lose very little if your computer is ruined in a disaster. Other equipment may be more difficult to replace, depending on what you use.

Take an inventory of your equipment occasionally. I do this by taking pictures and video. This then gets uploaded along with all my other photos. Having visual proof of your possessions may help with insurance claims. Keep receipts if you can as well.

Paperwork

No matter how much we try to get rid of paperwork, some of it keeps hanging around. Worst of all, you really need some of it.

Any paperwork you want to protect from a natural disaster can be stored in a fireproof safe. These will help with most disasters.

If you want a more grab and go solution, a three ring binder with your important papers in plastic sleeves is easy to grab in an emergency. A waterproof bag is another option.

The good thing about most paperwork is that it can often be replaced. It may be tedious and cost money and/or time, but it can be done. You can also store your most important papers in a safe deposit box.

Consider Disasters Where Your Website Is Hosted

You should also take into consideration the disasters which may happen where your website is hosted. Your hosting company should have a disaster plan of their own, of course, but it never hurts to consider the data that makes up your website.

Backup your website regularly. Not only does this help if your host has a problem, it helps if your site is hacked. Hacking is an all too common problem for websites. A time may come when you need a clean copy of your data.

If you use WordPress, there are a number of solutions which will backup your blog automatically. Make sure this backup is sent to you regularly. You can also backup your WordPress blog manually.

Don’t keep every backup copy of your site ever. Go through every here and there and delete older ones. You only need one good copy, but keeping three or so backups is a help if you discover that you didn’t know about a problem for a time that makes newer copies less reliable than older ones.

Making Your Home Business Ready For A Natural Disaster Is An Ongoing Process

Being prepared for a natural disaster isn’t a “once and done” kind of thing. You need to review your preparedness regularly. Otherwise, your home business won’t be as ready for a natural disaster as you thought.

Review your priorities. Something that was important when you made your original disaster plans may be less so now, and vice versa.

Sometimes a part of your plan will fail. Your data backups, for example, may not work out the way you thought they would. Paperwork goes out of date. Your physical inventory gets bigger or smaller.

Make the time to get your home business ready for a natural disaster before one happens to you, and keep your plans current. Rushing around trying to decide what to take in an emergency wastes a lot of time, and important things will be missed. Plan ahead, and you have a better chance of getting at least some of the things that matter out safely.

The post Is Your Home Business Ready For A Natural Disaster? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Summer shouldn’t be all about slacking off on your online home business. Even if it’s a slow time for your business, there’s still a lot of work to do. Don’t take the entire summer as a vacation (take some vacation time if you can) – take the time to get these important things done for your online home business this summer.

Slow times in business are a great time to think of more ways to get ahead. It’s a great way to shift your focus from what’s going wrong to what you can make better.

Take time for your family as well, of course. This is especially important when you have kids. Summer breaks are great for making memories as a family. Find that balance between improving your online home business and enjoying the summer with your family.

1. Review Your Progress So Far This Year

It’s the middle of the year and a great time to see how much progress you’ve made on your goals for the year. Are you ahead, behind or right on schedule? What’s not working out? What is?

Progress toward goals rarely goes smoothly. Sometimes you’ll shoot far ahead of where you thought you’d be. Other times you’ll fall short.

Don’t let these ups and downs trap you. You can’t assume that things will always go as smoothly as when they’re at their best. You certainly can’t assume that they’ll continue at their worst.

2. Plan For The Second Half Of The Year

Now that you know where you are, where are you going? Look at what you had planned already, and decide if that’s still the goal. What has come up to change things? How will you change them?

In particular, this is a great time to think about how you’ll handle the Christmas season. It’s not too early. Make plans for product promotions, guides you want to write, and so forth.

The back to school season should also be considered, if you haven’t done so already. This may relate to your family if you have kids in school as well as your online home business. Plan ahead so you don’t have to rush around right as school starts.

3. Catch Up

We all run behind on things – paperwork, emails, writing, etc. Be honest with yourself and find the things you’re behind on, then work on catching up.

For example, I just cleaned out my email inbox. It takes a little while to figure out how to do this efficiently each time, but it feels so nice to get the clutter out of there. It helps that I use a lot of filters on my email, so some categories can simply be deleted after no more than a glance.

Ideally, you should think about ways to avoid falling behind on these things again as well. It won’t always work out that way, but try.

4. Get Ahead

What can you work on ahead of time? This is especially helpful if you’re planning a vacation. You can keep things running while you’re away.

Blog posts, in particular, are easy to write ahead. WordPress allows you to schedule your posts easily, which is a huge help. When I go on vacation, I try to have my blogging already done, so I don’t have to check on things often.

It may mean some late nights when you’re trying to get ahead for a vacation, but it’s worth it.

You can also get ahead on your social media. There are tools that allow you to schedule your social media posts. You won’t be as responsive if you don’t pay attention to the things you schedule, but sometimes it’s nice to not have to stress over these things for a while.

Just one word of warning – be prepared to reschedule social media posts if real world events make anything inappropriate. Sometimes a scheduled post will come off as insensitive to something that just happened, even though it’s just fine any other time.

5. Train Some Help

Have you been considering hiring a virtual assistant? Summer could be the perfect time to do so. If you have some extra time right now, why not use it to make your work life a little easier?

Easy places to find virtual assistants include Fiverr and Upwork. There are sites that focus on such services as well. Start out with something relatively easy to get a feel for how the person you try works. Build your way up to the amount of work you need help with.

A virtual assistant may sound expensive, but if you do it right, you’ll earn more than it costs. They will let you focus on other things to build your online home business this summer and any other time. In the long run, that’s what you need to do.

6. Take A Break, But Don’t Slack Off Too Much

Just because summer is a wonderful time for a vacation doesn’t mean you have to take all of it off. Take the time your family needs, but make sure they understand that you need to work sometimes. A productive summer can put you ahead of the competition in the fall.

This isn’t always easy. Your family may have their own ideas as to what they want from you over the summer. Kids may hear from friends about all the neat things they’re doing, and be jealous. If you’re married, your spouse may have plans of their own.

Balancing it all can be tough.

Make a list of the things you need to get done and prioritize them. Make a schedule that takes the fun things you want to do into consideration. This way, you and your family have a plan and know what’s expected. Having a schedule is a big help when figuring out if you have extra time for slacking off or if you need to push yourself a little harder to get your work done over the some.

The post 6 Things You Should Do For Your Online Home Business This Summer appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

You can take inspiration for running your online business from all kinds of things. Just about anything in life can be a lesson if you let it. But some sources give really awful advice. That’s why I’d suggest that you be careful when taking online business tips from your cat.

Don’t get me wrong. I love cats. They’re cute and fuzzy, and odds are that there’s one on my legs right now. Not just when I’m writing this… when you’re reading this. Seriously, mine won’t leave me alone most days unless I insist.

It’s just that some things that work for cats really wouldn’t work so well in your business. Other things they do… brilliant! And if cats could talk… well, I’m pretty sure they’d play lots of mind games with us.

Shed Everywhere

Most breeds of cats shed a fair amount, some more so than others. It’s not their most endearing characteristic, and somehow they always manage to shed light color fur on dark fabrics, and dark color fur on light fabrics. Just a bit of feline magic, I suppose.

I think of this as being similar to spam comments on blogs. Think about the badly spun comments some people leave in the hopes of getting a backlink from your blog, or the “good post” comments the lazy leave behind. Usually, it’s some vague sort of praise that sounds nice until you realize several different people are saying about the same thing to you. “Great post,” and all that.

If you look at the links included with such comments, the sites are usually awful. Poorly written, and clearly meant to get ad clicks, not to work for the long run.

Some spammers even share the feline gift of leaving black fur on white fabric. That is, they leave entirely irrelevant comments everywhere they go. They stand out and are super annoying.

Of course, if you’re alert and have a good quality antispam plugin on your blog, these comments are much easier to get rid of than fur on your clothes.

Don’t shed your comments just anywhere. Blog commenting software may speed up the process of posting comments, but you’ll lose out as soon as your comments start getting marked spam, and even legitimate comments are harder to get published.

Hunt Your Prey

Cats are great hunters. Birds, mice, lizards, your feet as you get out of bed, nothing is safe from a cat on the prowl. They watch their prey carefully, choosing just the right time to strike, then play with it for a time until it either escapes or dies.

Just as there are some things you want your cat to hunt and others you wish they’d leave alone, this is not a behavior you want to mimic without some thought.

You certainly want to know what your target market wants, and for that, you have to know something about their behavior. Don’t do it to the degree that someone might call stalking, but do know what kinds of things people might want to buy from you and why. It helps to make sales.

You should also consider the cat’s focus on its prey. A cat doesn’t go for two mice at a time or a bird and a lizard at the same time. The cat keeps its focus on whatever it’s trying to catch. It may switch focus if something better comes along or if the other prey gets away, but they’ll maintain focus a good while.

Similarly, you should keep your focus on your target market. Don’t go for several all at once. You may be able to serve more than one market over time, but early on it’s a mistake that will slow you down.

Once you’ve captured your audience, don’t make them feel like prey. Offer products to them you think they’ll want. Give value. The best relationships with customers are the ones in which you both benefit.

If you just play with your audience and offer whatever products offer a commission, regardless of quality, they’ll leave you. And unlike a cat, you can’t drag them back unless they agree to stick around. A customer who unsubscribes cannot be put back on your list just because you want them back.

Squeeze Into Tight Spaces

Cats can get into amazingly small spaces. There’s a reason why some people joke that cats are both solid and liquid.

This is much like choosing a niche for your online business. Some people choose a niche so tight that others are amazed there’s room for anyone to run a business in it. Others want more room, so they can show their own style more. They want to be themselves, not confined to a small box.

Deciding how tight a niche you want your online business to fit into may not be easy. Most of us want some flexibility. We don’t want to be so tight in our niche that there’s no room to be ourselves. But only you can decide what’s right for your business.

Get In the Way

Any cat owner knows that cats have an absolute gift for getting in the way. They’ll be under your feet as you try to walk. They’ll lie down on your laptop and get in the way when you’re reading. Small as they are, they’ll even hog the bed.

Often enough, you are your own greatest obstacle. If you make too many excuses for why you can’t work, it’s very hard to own a successful online business.

There may be days that you don’t feel like being productive. If you want to succeed, work anyhow. Don’t let your mood get in the way.

How you set up your home office or other workspace can make a big difference in how productive you are when you work at home. Make sure it’s a space that lends itself to productivity, not to distractions. It may even help to keep the cats out or at least be ready to distract them so they don’t distract you.

Chase Lasers

A small laser has to be one of the best cat toys ever. Cats will chase that little dot of light, determined to catch it, but never getting it. Turn it off when they get tired, then turn it on again and the cat will be after it.

Many people are like that with their online businesses too, always chasing the latest bright and shiny offer they see, but somehow never able to catch the success it promises.

Of course, the cat will never catch that laser, no matter how hard it tries, because light cannot be caught. You may or may not ever reach the level of success you want, but if you try as hard as you can, you improve your chances.

Keep It Clean

Cats wash a lot. If they feel even a slight need, they’ll wash themselves thoroughly. This is one of the great examples cats make, although their technique leaves something to be desired.

Similarly, you should keep your business practices clean. Treat your customers right. Don’t mess around with poor SEO practices. Be honest.

And when you make a mess of things, do the best you can to clean it up. We all make mistakes sometimes. The important thing is how you deal with it after.

Take Lots of Catnaps

Cats sleep a lot. They may be very active when they’re awake, but there’s a reason why it’s called a catnap.

As an online business owner, this isn’t something you can usually get away with. Most people have to spend a lot of hours building their online business. Sure, you can walk away and leave it for a time, and a good business will keep earning for you, but you’ll usually do better if you keep working on it regularly.

This is especially true when you’re trying to build your online business. Don’t assume that the Four Hour Workweek will come true for you right from the start. It probably won’t. It’s far more likely that you’ll have to work a lot of hours for a long time before you can afford to ignore your business for a long period of time.

Push Boundaries

Pushing boundaries can be both the best and worst online business tip from your cat that you can get. Anyone who knows cats knows how they love to push boundaries. That rule that they can’t get on the counters, for example.

Yeah, that one only applies when you’re not watching. Trust me, they get onto the counters when they think they won’t get caught.

Pushing boundaries in your online business can be a great thing. You can go beyond your comfort zone and try new things. That may be what helps you succeed.

But going so far as to break the rules may come with consequences, as any cat knows. Be sure that you can afford the consequences that come with pushing the boundaries.

Be Curious

Curiosity is one attribute of cats you should certainly emulate, within reason. They say curiosity killed the cat, but learning new things is often good for your business.

Learning new things only becomes a problem when you overdo it. If you spend too much time learning and not enough taking action, your business won’t grow.

Find that balance. Keep learning things that will help you grow your business, but be ready to put that information to good use. This way your curiosity about new things you should know for your business won’t kill your business.

I hope this has made it clear why you should be careful about taking online business tips from your cat. Make sure you apply similar caution when taking business advice elsewhere.

The post Be Careful When Taking Online Business Tips From Your Cat appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Content is one of the most important parts of your website. There’s a reason why many people say “content is king.” There are other important factors, and your website won’t thrive without things like traffic, but what your everyday website visitor will notice most is your content. It has to be good. How do you make sure you’re offering great content to your visitors?

Writing great blog posts is only a part of creating great content for your website. Your blog needs more.

1. Know What Your Visitors Need From Your Content

Great content isn’t always paragraphs of information. Graphics are content. Lists are content. The information on your page in general, however it’s presented, is your content.

It will never be great unless it’s what your website visitors need. If you’re selling a physical product, for example, words on the page are rarely enough. Pictures of the product, possibly including the ability to look closely at the item and at multiple angles, may make the difference. Videos can also be useful.

Don’t, however, rely excessively on pictures or videos. Not every visitor will be in a situation where they can watch a video, and you can only learn so much from pictures. As much as possible, make sure information in your pictures and videos are available in print.

Transcripts are a good idea for most videos. They make videos more accessible to the blind and hearing impaired, as well as to those who just don’t want to watch for whatever reason. Link to a transcript on another page if it’s too much to put on the same page for any reason.

If it’s information you’re providing, make sure it answers your website visitors’ needs as best you can. You can’t predict all needs, but you should have the information your site claims to offer. If it’s an information product, include information to help your visitor decide that it’s the right purchase. Your content should reflect the needs of your audience, not your own needs.

2. Include References When Appropriate

You don’t know everything, even when you’re an expert in your niche. Linking out to appropriate references makes you look better. It reinforces that you know what you’re talking about. It’s one thing to quote a statistic, for example, and quite another to show where it came from. When you’re using information from elsewhere, don’t just quote it, link to your source for it if at all possible.

For example, if you want to share with your readers how long it takes to write a blog post, you can discuss how long it takes you to do so, but it is more effective to also include post such as this one, which says that the average post takes about 3.5 hours to write.

3. Pay Attention To Popular Content In Your Niche

You should know what’s happening in your niche so that you can take advantage of it. You need to do this not only on your own website, but on the sites of major competitors. This information has become fairly easy to gather as many websites clearly display the number of Facebook likes, tweets, pins, and other social media shares a particular page has received. That’s highly useful information.

Don’t assume that your post will quickly gain a similar number of shares. The post you’re comparing your post with may have been updated a number of times through the years, allowing it to gain a large number of shares, even if the most recent update was recent.

Don’t copy popular content onto your blog, of course. Do better. Find a way to stand out from the rest.

4. Be Original

While you want to be aware of what’s popular within your niche, you don’t want to copy what others have already said. You must find a way to make your work stand out from the rest.

If you’re quoting other sites as resources, for example, find better or more current resources than what others are offering right now. Make your post as up to date and accurate as possible.

Look for details to include that others have missed or glossed over. If you can share information that hasn’t been added into similar articles, readers will like yours even if they’ve seen similar work in the past.

5. Solve Problems

Why are people reading your blog? A few people might answer that their blogs are read for entertainment purposes, but most readers are looking for information. They have a problem and they want it solved.

Even if one of your goals is to entertain your readers, it can be seen as solving a problem. In this case, the problem could be seen as boredom.

But even entertainment can be informative and solve problems.

Great content doesn’t make it difficult to find the solution to the problem your post claims to solve. It makes it as easy as possible.

Consider a variety of ways to present the solutions you offer. A video post should include a transcript so that readers who can’t watch it can still get the information. An infographic can provide a visual way to present the information that is more appealing to readers.

6. Write Great Titles

The title of your post is what draws people in. A blah title will make an otherwise great post perform poorly.

Writing great titles for your content takes practice. You won’t get it right every time.

Here are some factors to consider while writing blog post titles:

• Is it accurate?
• Does it call readers to the article?
• What feelings does it evoke? Are these the feelings you want to evoke?
• Is it too long?
• Is it too short?

Experiment with your titles. Write more than one for each post, and then choose the one you think will work best.

7. Consider The Appearance Of Your Content

No matter how carefully you’ve crafted your content, if it isn’t appealing visually, it won’t perform well.

For blog posts, this means using subheadings, bullet points, images and so forth appropriately. No one wants to read a wall of text or watch a video that rambles on and on.

Don’t add something just to add it. Each subheading should have a purpose. So should every image or change of scene in a video.

Done right, these will make your content more appealing. Done wrong, they can drive away visitors.

8. Know What The Search Engines Want

You also need to make sure that you aren’t writing the same post over and over again. If you have something to say on a topic you’ve written about before, consider updating your old post rather than writing a new one.

There was a time when bloggers could get away with writing lots of similar posts, changing up the keywords a little each time to bring in search engine traffic. That time is not now.

Search engines focus more on semantic search and understand more of what searchers are after, and what you’re really saying in your posts. It’s not just about keywords anymore – context matters.

Don’t focus purely on what search engines want, of course. Write for your readers first, and then find ways to please the search engines.

9. Set High Standards For Your Content

Creating content isn’t as easy as some people think it is. Coming up with the right words takes time and tweaking. Not every blogger can sit down and crank out the perfect article, video or podcast in a single shot. Many find it far better to write, put it aside, and edit later from a fresh perspective.

If you hire others to write for you, set a high standard for them as well. Whatever appears on your website, reflects on your website as a whole. Allow a lot of low quality content to appear and your website won’t impress visitors as a great resource.

Of course, you should also do basic things such as check spelling and grammar. Such mistakes can put website visitors off, even if the rest of the site is well done.

10. Keep Trying

You may not learn the tricks to providing great content to your niche right away, no matter how well you know it. It takes time to develop your writing style and to get accustomed to what works online. The less you work at it, however, the longer it will take to master.

Writing every day is a good place to start. You may not feel that all of it is worth publishing to your website, but no one says you have to. Put the stuff that just isn’t quite working aside – somewhere down the line you might find a use for it, even if it takes a complete rewrite to make it happen. Take the good stuff and polish it until it’s good enough for your website.

Writing every day is not the same as publishing every day. Many bloggers post only a few times a month. Don’t publish a post just because you wrote it. Publish because you think readers will love it.

The post 10 Ways To Create Great Content For Your Website appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

One of the most popular ways to earn money from home is to join a multi-level marketing (MLM) company. It sounds great. You sell products you believe in to friends, family, and anyone else who cares to buy from you. It’s flexible, perfect for busy moms and dads who want to earn an income while raising their family.

But are MLM opportunities worth the risk?

Make no mistake, there are risks when you join an MLM. Some involve more risk than others. And the risks aren’t only financial.

Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of MLMs. The selling style has never appealed to me, nor has the level of risk.

MLM Risk: The Cost Of Joining

The cost to join an MLM varies significantly by company. Many are quite affordable to join, under $100. Other, such as Lularoe, can be several thousand dollars.

People trying to recruit you into an opportunity can make the cost sound entirely reasonable and recoverable. They have an incentive to do so, of course – it helps them to make money. It shouldn’t be their primary means of earning money, as that’s a sign of a pyramid scheme, but recruiting always has some kind of benefit in MLM.

The cost of entry isn’t the only one you will face. With most companies, you’ll face a push to attend special conferences and events at an additional cost. These events can be quite educational and motivating, but they’re also expensive.

The pressure to attend these events can be huge. I have a friend who has tried several different MLM opportunities who tried starting a GoFundMe to attend a conference, stating that while she didn’t have the money on her own, she wanted to know that her friends and family had that much faith in her ability to succeed in her new business.

Then there are the costs of finding customers and building a downline. Sure, you start with your friends and family, but for many people, that won’t be enough. So you sign up for online training, that being cheaper than attending a conference, and keep trying to build. You might even try paid advertising.

All these costs add up. If you don’t succeed in making sales and recruiting a downline pretty quickly, your new business isn’t going to work out for you.

MLM Risk: Few People Succeed In MLM

While most MLM companies love to brag about their success stories, these truly are the outliers, not the average.

In 2006, the Direct Selling Association (DSA) testified to the FTC that the median annual gross income from direct selling is about $2,400 per year and that 59% of direct sellers earn under $10,000 per year.

TruthInAdvertising.org reviewed the income disclosures of 32 direct sales companies and found that more than 80% of distributors in those companies earned less than $1,200 annually (less than $100 per month!).

All in all, not a terribly promising proposition, is it?

Yes, some people make serious bucks and an amazing living in MLM. You can hope that you’ll be one of them. Just be aware of the odds against it and be ready to work hard toward that goal if that’s what you decide to do.

If you want even more information, check out this list of MLM Income Disclosures. It’s only for certain companies, but what you’ll quickly see is how little money is earned by the people at the bottom of the list, and how much the very, very few at the top get.

Pay attention to how they disclose income. Some companies look pretty good until you realize that the income table only includes top earners, while lower earners averages are hidden in the paragraphs of text above or below. They have to share that information, but that doesn’t mean some won’t try to hide it a little.

MLM Risk: The Company Goes Out Of Business

When you join an MLM, the life of your business is connected to the life of theirs. If they go out of business, you’re out of luck.

While this happens only rarely with older MLMs, it’s not all that uncommon with younger companies. Some just never manage to get sales going well enough. Others are shut down as pyramid schemes.

MLM Risk: Too Much Competition In Your Area

A popular MLM opportunity can sound hugely appealing. It has some name recognition, which could make it easier to find customers.

It can also mean there’s too much competition in your area.

If you have several friends doing the same MLM opportunity, for example, where are you going to find a customer base of your own? Odds are that they’ve already contacted many of the people you would target.

The other problem is that you create your own competition as you recruit a downline. Sure, you make money from their sales, but not as much as if you made those sales yourself.

Worse, they were probably one of your customers to begin with. Will your sales to them be the same after? It’s hard to say.

A significant downline is vital to success in MLM, as it’s hard to find all those customers yourself, but when that downline reaches people you would have liked to have customers sooner than you

MLM Risk: Your Friendships

Have you ever had an old friend (or even a current one) contact you out of the blue, wanting to reconnect? It’s a pretty special feeling, right up until you realize all they want to do is recruit you into their downline.

The Washington Post shared an article recently on how MLMs hurt female friendships. A part of the problem is that recruiting efforts have gone beyond inviting people to join a downline at an event they know is about MLM to bringing it up under the guise of renewing a friendship or starting a new one. When the recruiting effort fails, the interest in friendship disappears.

It doesn’t make the person recruiting look good. It makes them look deceptive and damages the relationship. How can you be friends if they only care about you if you sign up under them?

MLM Risk: What If It’s A Pyramid Scheme?

MLMs are in the form of a pyramid, that’s their nature. Each person recruits people below them, who recruit people below them, and so on. It can’t be helped.

But that doesn’t mean most are pyramid schemes.

One of the key signs of a MLM being a pyramid scheme is that you have to buy a large inventory of products. Having to buy some products is reasonable – being forced to carry a large inventory is not.

Another sign is that recruiting new people is more beneficial to you than selling to the public. A legitimate business opportunity should make most of its money from sales to other people, not to recruits.

Is LuLaRoe A Pyramid Scheme?

LuLaRoe was an extremely popular MLM company a few years ago. You probably saw several people online selling it if you were on Facebook. There were groups everywhere, and people bragging about the money they made from it.

Things don’t look so great with them now.

The Washington Attorney General has filed suit against LuLaRoe, accusing it of being a pyramid scheme. They accuse the company of making misleading income claims and pushing consultants to focus more on recruitment than on sales.

The company often promised high profits and that a full time income could be made through part time work. The included disclaimers may not have been adequate.

Over time, they also had problems with product quality and returns. Consultants found that the company was steadily less willing to allow them to return products as promised.

Is LuLaRoe a pyramid scheme? That’s for the courts to decide, but it’s a great example of a company that was hugely popular that may have been one.

But the Washington lawsuit isn’t the only one LuLaRoe is facing. They’ve been sued by many consultants over their business practices.

What you should learn from the LuLaRoe example is that popularity does not mean a company is not a pyramid scheme, or that it’s safe to join. Take your time to ensure that you really understand what you’re getting into with any home business opportunity. Not just MLMs, but all opportunities.

How Can You Investigate The Risks?

No matter how much you trust the person recruiting you into a MLM opportunity, you should take the time to do your own investigation of it. The FTC has some great tips to help you get started on checking out an MLM opportunity. These are some of the tips:

• Consider the products
  • Is the pricing reasonable?
  • Are they safe?
  • How good is the quality?
  • Can claims be backed up?
• Investigate the company
  • How long has the company been around?
  • Does the company have a good reputation?
  • Has the company been sued for deceptive business practices?
• Consider your potential earnings
  • How do you earn money?
  • How much does the average distributor earn?
  • What expenses should you expect?

How Else Can I Earn Money At Home?

If you’ve read much at all here, you know there are lots of ways to earn money from home. Some are flexible, some aren’t.

Work at home jobs have the advantage if you want to know how much you’ll earn for the work you do. The pay may be hourly, salary or based on production, but you know what to expect from your paycheck. Depending on whether you’re a regular employee or an independent contractor you may have to provide your own equipment. Some also require training that you would get on your own before applying or require that you pay for a background check during the application process, but otherwise, have few costs.

Home businesses have all kinds of opportunities and risks. What I love most about starting a home business is that you can decide exactly what you want to do, and figure out how to make it happen. You can blog, freelance, sell crafts, cook, design apps or whatever suits your skills and interests.

Home businesses, no matter how affordable, are not without risk, but that’s okay. The fact that there is a risk is a part of what makes the reward so worthwhile. Even when the learning curve is difficult, you know you’re building something that is yours. About 50% of small businesses fail in the first 5 years, which is much better odds than you get with an MLM.

Even though I’ve met someone who had significant success in MLM, I just can’t say that MLM opportunities are worth the risk. Too few people succeed in them. I know quite a few more who have failed in MLM, some multiple times. If you decide to join an MLM opportunity regardless, do so with your eyes open to the risks so that you don’t get caught off guard.

The post Are MLM Opportunities Worth The Risk? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

How much can you afford to spend on your home business? Many people can’t afford to spend a lot, which is why freebies are so popular.

But there’s a potential cost of “free.” It’s not always the best choice for growing your home business. “Free” tools can cost you a lot of money that you can’t see directly. And that’s the price you pay for it.

I’m not always a fan of “free” when it comes to running my business. Getting things for free feels nice, but it’s not necessarily effective.

Don’t get me wrong. There are many free tools you can use for your home business which are very much worth it. Many open source tools are wonderful. I use WordPress software for my blog, which doesn’t cost anything, but I pay for my hosting.

But if you rely on free things in the wrong areas, you’re asking for trouble. There are a lot of great reasons to pay for higher quality tools.

Free Goes Poof!

One cost of using any free tool for your home business is that it can go away at any time. If you’re relying on it, that’s a huge potential problem.

That’s the big problem with free blogs such as WordPress.com, Tumblr and Blogger. Do something wrong and your blog is gone. Don’t do something wrong, and sometimes it still vanishes, and you don’t always get a warning or a chance to move your data elsewhere.

Free tools vanish often, even when they’re supported by big companies like Google. You may not remember Google Wave, Knol, or Picnik, which shut down years ago, but you probably know about Google+. The consumer version of that will shut down in April 2019.

Tools supported by smaller companies can also vanish or cease development. Lots of free WordPress plugins are developed for a time and then abandoned, even if they developed a pretty good following.

This isn’t to say that paid tools don’t disappear. It’s just that developers have a greater incentive to keep working on them when they’re making money.

Free Tools Are Developed More Slowly

When a tool is free, it is often developed and updated more slowly. Once again, there’s less incentive for the developer to keep the tool updated.

I’ve used Gimp for years, for example. It’s an excellent tool and it can do many of the things Photoshop can do. But it is very slow to change. This means it takes just about forever (or so it feels) for new tools and features to be added.

Paid tools are more likely to have people dedicated to keeping it up to date.

What Are You Giving Up For Free?

Free means only that you aren’t spending money for the product. There’s often a different cost for you.

Information is a significant hidden cost, and it’s why you need to read the privacy policy and terms of use for any free products you use. You want to know what will happen to any information that passes through that tool. Most are respectful of privacy these days, but it pays to check.

One cost may be that you are exposed to advertising. I personally don’t find it to be too big a deal, so long as the ads don’t get in the way of the utility of the tool. We all have to make a living somehow, and providing something free with no way to earn any money at all doesn’t help.

For free blogs, the cost can be whether or not you can earn money with your site. Some don’t allow you to commercialize your blog at all. If you can’t make money, it’s not a business, it’s a hobby.

May Not Work as Well as a Paid Tool

Sometimes the free tool is indeed the right tool for the job, but other times you really need to use the paid tool. You need to consider the flexibility you need.

Free blogs are a great example of this. It’s quick and easy to put up a basic Blogger blog. The problem is that it takes more effort to make it look professional, especially if you don’t even spend money on your own domain name.

Putting up a WordPress blog on paid hosting (rather than a free WordPress.com blog) takes a little more time and has monthly costs, but you get a tremendously more flexible blog with more themes and plugins available, so that your blog can have the look and options you prefer.

Paid tools generally offer more features. This is why many have a free version and a paid version. The free gives you a taste of what you can get, and gives you the confidence that the paid tool is what you need. That’s a good thing.

Consider Tailwind, for example. They give limited free access to Tailwind Tribes as well as to their pin scheduling tool. Using the Tailwind free trial was enough to get me to pay for the whole thing. The paid version of Tailwind also has a wonderful analytics section that can help you figure out what is and is not working in your Pinterest marketing.

Free can be amazing, of course. Google Analytics gives you a tremendous amount of information about traffic to your website, yet it’s free for most users. Some do have concerns about how much information Google gets by providing such free tools to so many websites, but most find the advantages sufficient to use them anyhow.

Support May Be Lacking

A lack of support when you have problems is a serious problem with many free home business tools. When you have a problem, you want help fast, and sometimes that’s just not available with free tools.

This isn’t to say you get perfect support with all paid tools, of course. It can take a long time to get help with some of them as well. But your odds are better.

Free Marketing May Be Slow Marketing

One of the great things about social media marketing is how much of it you can do for free. You don’t have to pay to pin on Pinterest, post on Facebook or Instagram, and so forth.

The price you pay is in how long it takes to get that marketing going. You don’t start out with a following on any of the social media websites. You have to build it.

If you want your marketing to go faster, you probably have to pay for it. Once you know what you’re doing, doing paid promotions of your social media posts can greatly improve your results. There’s a learning curve, and it can get expensive. But once you know what you’re doing, you should be able to make it worth the expense.

One thing you should not do is pay sites for followers. Many of these sites don’t give you high quality, targeted followers. Some are even against the TOS of the various social media sites.

Sure, having a large number of followers looks good, and if you’re trying to get paid to post for other people you need a lot of followers. But if your followers aren’t engaged with your content, they’re worthless. Don’t pay for something that doesn’t help your business.

Use Free Right

The big thing you need to remember is to use free right. If you want to have a home business and take it seriously, spend a little on it.

Get a domain name and pay for your hosting. Domain names are cheap, and it’s easy to find hosting for less than $10 a month. That’s not much money at all to risk, even knowing that you may not earn anything for a while. Going with the free option may slow you down and make it harder to start your business right.

Save free for the areas where it won’t hurt you in the long run. I do a lot of my rough drafts for blog posts in Google Drive, which doesn’t cost me anything, but means I can work on them anywhere, and on a range of devices. If it were to disappear, I wouldn’t suffer from any significant problems.

Free trials are almost always worth it if you’re considering a tool or training. They’re often the best way to find out if what you’re considering will be worth the money.

There are any number of free tools that are worth using, so long as you understand the risk. If you’re relying on something free as the base of your entire business, make sure you know what you’re going to do in the event that it goes away.

When Is Free A Good Idea?

Free is a good idea when there’s too little to be gained by paying for a tool. If you can get all the functionality you need for free, and it won’t endanger your business should the product vanish,

There are lots of products, tools and training that qualify. Here are some that I like.

Productivity And Scheduling

• Evernote
• Doodle
• Google Calendar 
• Todoist
• IFTTT

Business And Financial

• Mint
• Frugal Entrepreneur Business Forms
• Wave – accounting and invoicing are free
• SCORE
• Trello
• Toggl
• Slack
• Asana
• Google Analytics
• Yoast
• Hemmingway
• Google Trends
• Paperity
• Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator
• Answer the Public
• UberSuggest

Office Alternatives

• Google Drive
• LibreOffice
• OpenOffice

Graphic Design

• 7 Free Image Editing Tools To Make Great Blog And Social Media Graphics
• How To Find Free Images To Use On Your Website

Many of these tools have paid upgrades, but the free versions work well enough for most needs. When you need more features, power, or speed, upgrade or find a better solution!

Tools Worth Paying For

There are other things you absolutely should pay for. These are the things that will help you grow your business more quickly and effectively. Going with free alternatives can make it more difficult to have a successful business.

Yes, some people do very well building a business entirely for free. But for most of us, paying for the right tools is far smarter.

Website hosting, for example. I’m on A2 Hosting right now, and I like it quite well. I’ve always paid for hosting because I prefer the flexibility it gives me.

I also pay for both Hootsuite and Tailwind. They make my social media marketing much easier. Not everything I do on social media is scheduled – you should never forget the social side of social media – but a significant amount of it is.

Advanced training is something else you should pay for. You may be able to get the basics for free, but if you want to learn the bigger secrets, you’re probably better off paying for them.

If you want to be a virtual assistant, for example, you should consider signing up for the Horkey Handbook. It will help you learn the things you need to know to become a virtual assistant. Sure, you could figure much of it out on your own, but it’s faster to learn it from someone else.

What are your favorite free tools? Which tools are worth paying for?

The post What Is The Real Cost Of “Free” To Your Home Business? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

It’s not that long until all the holiday craziness will be behind us. As you finish up your holiday shopping, it’s time to turn your attention to planning for the new year, and greater success for your online business..

You don’t have to make grand resolutions for the new year just because it’s a tradition. This is, however, a great time of year to consider where you’re headed and where you would like to be.

What Are Your Goals For Next Year?

Just where are you headed with your online business anyhow? Are you moving in the right direction?

No matter your answer to that question, set goals to keep things moving. Setting goals is a huge part of planning for the new year.

Some people say their goals are as simple as “I want to build a great business online that gets tons of traffic and earns me lots of money.” 

That’s fine. But not really helpful.

A goal must be actionable.

It’s easier to set actionable goals if you use the SMART Goals technique. This means the goals you set must be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-related.

Once you have your overall goals set, you can create milestones that will help you work toward those goals. Think of these as smaller goals which will help you reach your bigger goals.

If you want to earn $10,000 a month, for example, you can break that down into milestones that will help you get there.

Milestones don’t have to be the same type of event as the overall goal. One milestone could be finding five high quality products to promote to your list. Another could be getting a certain number of subscribers.

You can also set a smaller version of your big goal as a milestone, such as reaching $1,000 a month. Just don’t limit yourself.

If you find it too difficult to reach your goals, you may have set them too high. Remember that SMART goals must be attainable. If that’s not working for you, rethink the goal.

Is It Time To Update Your Skills?

When you have an online business, odds are that you have some skills that could use updating or improvement. Things change fast online, and it’s important to keep up.

Consider social media marketing, for example. Most social media sites make significant changes throughout the year.

Twitter, for example, no longer wants users to tweet the same post out over and over again. They want you to use the retweet function or change the content of the tweet. This has changed how you should use scheduling tools with Twitter.

That’s only one example.

Consider paying for courses that will help you keep up to date with the things that matter to you most. Many will include free updates for at least a year, and possibly for life. When you’re trying to keep up with a changing industry, getting updates helps a ton.

And of course you should keep up with your industry to the best of your abilities as well. Exactly what that means depends on the niche of your online business.

Udemy can be a great resource to find courses you want to take on just about any subject. Many of the course creators keep them updated regularly.

You can learn about SEO, making YouTube videos, WordPress tricks, ebook publishing, app development, improve your writing skills and so much more. Now’s a great time to get started.

Is Your Website Up To Date?

It’s amazing how fast information on a website can go out of date. This is a great time of year to see what needs to be updated.

Start with your photo on your About page. Does it look good? Does it convey the impression you want to create?

What about the information you share on your About page? Has anything changed? Are you still happy with the information you present there? Does it have a call to action?

If you don’t have an About Me page on your site, make one. People like learning about the person behind the site.

Next, check your website for broken links. Broken links make your site look terrible.

This is easy if you use WordPress – the free Broken Link Checker plugin can handle it for you. Don’t run this plugin all the time – it’s very resource intensive, but it’s great for the occasional check. Deactivate and uninstall it once you’re done. Be aware that some hosts do not allow the use of this plugin due to how resource intensive it is.

If you have Google Analytics installed, you can also use it to find broken links on your site. Follow the steps offered on this site to see how to find and fix these errors on your site.

There are also a variety of online broken link checkers you can use. Most check a limited number of pages for free, and have a paid version that will allow you to check your whole site.

Finally, check for information that is out of date. What has changed in your industry in the past year? Keeping the information on your site up to date makes you look better to visitors.

Review Your Social Media Accounts

Social media plays a significant role in marketing for most online businesses. It’s affordable, and extremely effective if you do it right.

Start with your profile image for each social media account. Do they convey a consistent impression of your and your business?

In many cases, a photo of you is the best choice for a social media profile. It shows the person behind the business. And while you don’t necessarily have to update your photo every year, it should be reasonably current.

Next, take a look at who you’re following. Cull the ones that aren’t interesting, and find new people to follow who are relevant to your industry. 

Don’t worry about who follows you back – following people on social media should always be about who you find interesting.

Take a look at any analytics you have on each social media account. Tools such as Hootsuite and Tailwind make it easier to see how each social media account is performing. You should do this regularly throughout the year as well.

On Pinterest, take a look at your boards and see how they’re performing? Does it make sense to create any new boards in your niche? Are there any boards that you aren’t really pinning to at all?

Start Organizing For Tax Season

The end of the year means tax season will be upon you all too soon. It’s time to start getting ready.

Start by getting all of your expenses pulled together. Any money you’ve spent on your online business should be listed. Anything you have any doubts on should be put into a special place so you can ask your accountant or bookkeeper if it’s deductible.

Start pulling together your income reports as well. Having all of these things ready to go will make it easier to file your taxes when the time comes. If you’re getting a refund, the sooner you file, the better!

If you have employees or contractors you paid during the year, you need to get the appropriate tax forms ready for them as soon as possible in the new year. You know how much of a pain it is to wait for these forms – don’t make other people wait for one from you.

Get Your Email Under Control

Are you the organized sort who keeps their email organized all of the time, or do you let it slide and have thousands of emails sitting in your inbox? If you’re the second sort, it’s time to clean out your email!

Start by finding newsletters you don’t read, and unsubscribe from them. They’re just clutter.

Next, come up with a system for sorting your emails. I have lots of filters set up so that many of my emails are sorted before I ever see them. It helps a lot.

You can use filters to sort out emails from social media sites and newsletters, so that they aren’t the first things you see. If any are important to you, keep them where you’ll see them promptly, but otherwise get them out of your main inbox.

Create email templates for any responses you give regularly. I use email templates quite a bit, and they significantly simplify my responses, as many questions come in over and over again.

Organize Your Home Office

Odds are that your home office has become cluttered during the year. This is especially a problem if it’s the spot everyone throws things when getting ready for the holidays. It might even be the guest room during the holidays, and not available for you to use for a time… which can also mean a mess when guests leave.

But there’s more to it than that.

Take a look at the technology you use. Is it out of date? Should you upgrade or add on?

Do you have all of the tools you need to make things happen?

Not everything has to cost money, of course. Some productivity apps are free to use, at least at the basic level, yet will help you be far more productive.

Don’t only consider the technology in our home office, however. Consider the furnishings.

A comfortable and functional home office can help you be far more productive and worth an investment in appropriate supplies and furnishings. Anything in your home office that is getting in the way of your productivity should be replaced.

Consider your office chair, for example. This one is a current focus of mine because I found out how incredibly uncomfortable my husband’s office chair is. He doesn’t work at home, so it’s not the priority mine would be, but wow, his chair is hard to sit in for any length of time.

An ergonomic office chair will allow you to work comfortably for longer. If you’re comfortable, you’re probably more productive.

Similarly, a good sit-stand desk will allow you to change positions and still keep working. It can be an excellent investment. There are a number of sit-stand desks that simply go on top of your current desk, so you don’t need an entirely new desk.

Commit To Action

Don’t just think up what you’d like to do. Commit to it. Write it out if that helps you. Keep track somehow of your progress. Hold yourself accountable.

Take a look at the things that have been slowing you down. What has kept you from being productive? How can you avoid the problem in the future?

Committing to action is a key part of planning for the new year. Plans are nothing without action.

In a way, committing to action is much like setting goals, as I suggested at the start of this post. But it’s action that takes goals from dream to reality.

What Are Your Plans For The New Year?

Have you made plans to grow your online business in the new year? What items are most important to you?

The post Are You Planning For The New Year Yet? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

The holiday season is a hectic time for most of us. Not only are there all the usual things to deal with in terms of running a home business or otherwise working at home, there are all the extra delights the holidays bring. Extra shopping. More demands for family time, especially with extended family. Lots of events to consider attending. Traditions to follow.

All this makes it difficult to balance the holiday rush with your home business.

Sometimes the holidays really throw a wrench into your plans to follow a normal work schedule. There’s so much to be done, and you’re usually the one with the flexible schedule expected to handle it.

It gets even more difficult when you’re looking at the things you enjoy doing. You may feel more motivated to do the fun stuff and less motivated to work on the things that bring an income in, at least until you start thinking about the incoming bills.

This isn’t something that people who work outside the home always understand. They can work their usual hours and handle all the holiday stuff, no problem. Why can’t you?

It’s more challenging to deal with the holiday rush when you work at home because you often aren’t working standard business hours. You may work a part of the day, then again at night. You may work weekends. Or maybe you work when it fits into your schedule.

That flexibility means your work hours often take a hit when life gets busy. It’s so much easier to hit the store during the day in the middle of the week when more people are at work than it is at other times. You take less time on errands that way. The only problem is that you take away work time.

How Do You Decide How Much To Work?

It’s helpful to decide how much work you need to do to keep up the income you need to have at this time of year. There’s no one answer to that. If you have a lot of passive income, you may be able to let things go for a while. If you earn based directly on the work you do, you will need to work as usual, especially if your family badly needs the money.

This takes sacrifice if a lot of family events are at times you’d usually be working. That’s the life you chose when you decided to work at home. You may be your own boss, but that often means being a harsh taskmaster. Find a way to get that work done.

For many home business owners, working later at night or starting your day earlier in the morning may be the answer. You have 24 hours in a day no matter how much you need to get done.

Know When To Take Time Off

We all need time off, and the stressful holiday season is no exception.

If you’re feeling tired or burned out, it’s time for a break, even if you have a lot more to get done. You will be more productive after you’ve taken a break. Don’t stare at your computer monitor, getting nothing done just because you’ve told yourself you need to get a certain number of hours of work done today. Staring at the monitor doesn’t count as work, it only counts as wearing yourself out.

Also, make sure you aren’t overdoing the holiday fun too much. If you’re stressing about decorating your home just right or baking all of the perfect holiday treats, it’s not so much fun anymore. The holidays, no matter which ones you celebrate, should be enjoyed by all. That includes you.

If you have clients, let them know as soon as possible what your vacation schedule will be. It’s a huge help for them if they know that you will not be available certain days.

When in doubt, give yourself a little extra time off from clients, rather than too little. You don’t always know exactly when life will be back to normal during the holidays – they’re hectic and rarely go exactly as planned.

And then there are all the little events you may need to attend, such as

• School concerts or other performances
• Family gatherings
• Holiday events with coworkers – yours or your spouse’s
• Getting together with friends and/or neighbors.

These don’t go away just because you didn’t clear time for them in your schedule. Take that time off to enjoy the fun and social side of the holiday season.

Consider Hiring Help

If you just can’t get it all done, this is a great time of year to hire help, whether it’s around the house or for your business.

Hire a housekeeper to get your home clean enough for company if you don’t have the time to do it. Hire someone to hang those Christmas lights on the house.

You may also want to hire someone to do the writing for your site, some research, or whatever else you need help with. You’re better off with this option if you’ve done it before and have either a regular assistant or know how to find good help. Otherwise, it can add to the stress. Teaching someone how to meet your expectations is not easy.

Don’t Hold Yourself To Unnecessary Deadlines

If you’re running your own business, most of your deadlines are the ones you set. You’re the one who knows if the deadline is necessary or just something you set for yourself.

If it’s not necessary to keep to the deadline, don’t! Give yourself a break.

I don’t mean give up and ignore all your deadlines. You still need to get things done and have productive workdays. But there will be times when it makes more sense to ease off on a deadline to get something ready for the holidays.

This takes planning well in advance. If you have clients, they need to know early on that you won’t be putting in as many hours as usual on their projects.

The first thing you should focus on each day is getting the things done that MUST be done. This will give you more flexibility to work on the things that don’t have to be done right away.

Can You Get Ahead Of Schedule?

One way to balance the holiday rush with running a home business is to get ahead of schedule. It’s tough, but if you can do this, you’ll have more time when fun things start happening.

Here are some of the things you can do to get ahead of schedule:

• Work 1-2 extra hours a day
• Brainstorm blog post ideas for the season
• Create link roundups
• Write extra blog posts and schedule them
• Update old blog posts and repost as new (this post was originally written in 2010!)
• Design social media images
• Plan social media posts, including variations on titles and text
• Schedule out your social media using tools such as Hootsuite and Tailwind
• Schedule promotions for your email list
• Repurpose content for marketing purposes
• If you ship physical products, prepare them for shipping so all they need is a shipping label.

Get Your House Ready

Somehow, amid all the work you need to do in the holiday rush, you need to get your home ready for the holidays. This is something you should do outside of work hours, of course.

Sometimes that includes preparing your home office to be a guest room. It may be time to get that space company ready, not just productive work ready. Make sure you prepare an alternate space for those times when you need to work while your home office is a guest room, or be sure that your guests understand that you will be working in there at times. Just how well that will work depends on your guests.

Decorating your home for the holidays can be a break from work. Take the time to enjoy yourself and your family. Create memories.

Depending on the kind of home business you run, this may even be inspiring. You may be able to share some of your holiday preparations in a blog post, for example. Think of things you do for the holidays that relate to your niche and you’ll kill two birds with one stone.

Prepare To Work As You Travel

If you’re traveling to visit family or just take a vacation during the holidays, you may decide that you want to keep working while you’re away from home. There’s often downtime when you’d just be sitting around anyhow. If you want to use that time to work, make plans to do so.

If you don’t normally work on your laptop or tablet, make sure that the equipment you’re bringing with you has everything you need in order to be productive. Also, know when you’ll have wifi available and when you’ll need to use your smartphone’s data connection.

It’s a good idea to bring along an external battery charger when you’re traveling. This will keep the worries about having enough power for your tech to a minimum. Buy one that’s good for several charges on your phone or other devices. Some of the better ones will even have a plug for your laptop.

Don’t assume that you can do heavy duty work while traveling. You will have much less work time available to you, so whatever work you do while away from home should be things you can work on with distractions around you. Major projects can wait for when your work at home schedule goes back to normal.

You will also need to talk to those you’re traveling with or visiting. Make sure they understand what your plans are. If you’re at your parents’ house, you don’t want them upset that you keep disappearing into the bedroom to work rather than sitting and chatting for the entire visit. Let them know that you’ll need some of that time to keep your home business running.

And be sure you spend a good amount of time being social with the people you’re with. That’s the whole point of the trip, isn’t it?

Prepare For Sick Days

The weather is getting colder, and everyone around you is bringing cold and flu viruses home. While you can get a flu shot to cut down on the odds that you get the flu, or help shorten it if you do catch the flu, there’s nothing you can do about it if you catch a cold but deal with it.

Toughing it out rather than taking a sick day can be a big mistake. You may end up sick longer than if you had simply taken a day or two off. It’s hard to be certain, of course, as you can’t compare the two directly.

If you’re sick enough that it’s hard to work, take the day off and don’t feel bad about it. You’d do that if you worked outside the home, wouldn’t you? The smartest thing you can do is give yourself time to get over the bug.

Remember To Enjoy the Season

No matter which holidays you’re celebrating this time of year, remember to enjoy them. Don’t drive yourself crazy thinking about work when you’re supposed to be having fun. The work will still be there when you come back to it.

Step away from the smartphone as well as your computer. You truly do not need to be available to your business 24/7, especially during the holiday season. A 2012 survey found that many professionals keep in contact with their work by smartphone for 13.5 hours a day and 5 hours a day on weekends dealing with email. 51% of consultants in one survey checked email regularly even on vacation.

Take a break!

Spend time with family and friends!

Work will be there later.

Taking a break from work will help you enjoy your holidays more, and you’ll be more refreshed when you return.

The post How Do You Balance The Holiday Rush With Your Home Business? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Birthdays and holidays are a great time to get others to help you improve your home business. It’s hard to know what to ask for sometimes, but even harder for others to know what gifts you want if you don’t ask. I’ve gathered some ideas to help you build up a list of home business gift ideas.

Education

Udemy – Udemy has a lot of online courses that could be very useful to anyone running a home business. You could learn to develop apps, improve your social media or writing skills, learn about digital marketing and more. The courses are reviewed by students, so you can see which are likely to be worth your time and money.

Conference Tickets – If there’s a conference coming up in your industry, wouldn’t you love someone to get you tickets? They’re a great way to catch up on what’s happening in your industry and make new connections. Events such as Affiliate Summit, BlogHer, Social Media Marketing World and more can make a huge difference to a home business owner who is looking for ways to take their business to the next level.

Books – Get on Amazon and find books related to your industry that you’d like to read. Add all of them to your wish list. Here are some selections to get you started.

The key to picking a great book to gift to an entrepreneur is to know what they’re struggling with or want to learn. If they’ve told you that they’re having trouble getting results from their social media, for example, a carefully chosen book in that area may be welcome.

Remember that some things change fast in business. A book on online marketing that is a few years old may be badly out of date, while one on motivation is still relevant.

Equipment

Microphone – If you have ever considered starting a podcast or posting videos, a good quality microphone would be a great investment. The Blue Yeti is a popular choice, but there are many to choose from.

One option to consider is whether a desktop microphone will be preferred to something that can be clipped on. This depends, in part, on where the person you’re shopping for works. If they’re at a desk all the time, a desktop microphone should work wonderfully. Some people, however, prefer the mobility of a clip-on microphone, especially when making videos.

Camera – How good is your camera? The ones in smartphones are pretty impressive these days, but if you want to get serious about high quality photography on your website, a better camera may be in order.

Consider whether they’re likely to use the camera to make videos as well. A camera that takes high definition video and can take sound input from a microphone will be a big help in that case.

Second Computer Monitor – I love having two monitors in my home office. My setup isn’t ideal, as one is attached to my laptop, but I’ve still noticed how much it helps to have a second computer monitor at times. The most useful setup is usually to have them side by side, which doesn’t work with keeping my hands at a good level with my laptop. Even with that disadvantage, having two screens is worthwhile so that you don’t have so much clicking back and forth to see different pages.

Tablet Computer – A tablet computer such as an iPad Pro can be very useful if you want to work on the go. It’s so much easier to carry around than a laptop.

Make sure you know which operating system the person you’re shopping for is comfortable with. Someone who has Apple everything isn’t going to be as happy about the gift of an Android something or other, and vice versa. In many cases, it’s much easier to share apps across devices if they’re all the same OS.

Laptop or Desktop Computer – A new computer can be a wonderful gift if yours is getting old. Something a bit faster and less cranky is always nice.

Performance is always key with computers. You don’t want to give someone a computer that isn’t as good as what they already have. More RAM and more memory are always good, as are faster processors.

Of course, if you’re the more technical sort, you may be able to buy parts to upgrade their old computer. This is cheaper, but not practical unless you know how to put the new part in. It is fun, however, to take an otherwise good computer from “adequate” to “amazing” with just the right new part.

Laptop Cooling Pad – A laptop cooling pad can extend the life of your laptop by ensuring that it is always well cooled, even when you use it on your lap with a blanket.

I bought one of these recently for my laptop when its fan was struggling to cool it. This problem came close to destroying my laptop.

A cooling pad won’t save your laptop if the fan completely dies or if something else goes wrong, but it can drop your laptop’s temperature nicely. Some of the reviewers on Amazon have shared the results of tests they’ve done on various laptop cooling pads, and the results can be significant.

I chose the Havit HV-F2056, which has a lot of great reviews. So far, I’m delighted by it. If you have a laptop, I strongly recommend getting one. Be ready for a cold lap, though.

Smart Speaker – A smart speaker such as Amazon Echo or Google Home will be welcomed by many people. They’re a nice way to play music in your home, and they can answer questions for you. There have been problems here and there, and there can be privacy concerns, but those don’t seem to limit the interest much.

Whiteboard – A whiteboard is good for brainstorming or visualizing goals. It’s an easy way to keep ideas and goals in sight while you work.

This gift idea works best for an entrepreneur with an available workspace. It’s hard to use a whiteboard if it’s not hanging on the wall or otherwise readily available.

Don’t forget a variety of colors for the dry erase markers. It helps a lot if you can color code or sketch things out.

Sit-Stand Desk – I love my sit-stand desk from Autonomous. Appropriate heights can be programmed in, making it easy to change positions throughout the day. They say either sitting or standing all day is bad for you, but changing positions is better. You don’t have to get a full size desk – there are units that simply lift the keyboard and monitor on the desk you already own.

Office Chair – A good, ergonomic office chair is a must for anyone who spends long hours working in a home office. No one wants to be hurting at the end of the day due to a poor quality chair.

Proper back support is essential, as is a comfortable seat. You don’t have to get an office chair with a headrest unless that’s a preference. Most people don’t spend that much of their workday leaning back anyhow.

UPS Battery Backup – Having a UPS battery backup is a huge help for anyone who uses a desktop computer. There’s no worry about losing all your work if the power goes out. It’s less important with laptops, since they already have batteries.

Backup Drive/Personal Server – Having a backup drive or personal server can be a lifesaver if your computer dies. My husband’s computer inexplicably quit working recently – won’t even boot far enough to turn on the monitor. Fortunately, his hard drive was fine. Also, fortunately, we have a backup drive of our files anyhow. You don’t want to lose all your home business files because your computer goes kaput.

USB Flash Drive – These little drives come in handy so often. They’re great when you need to move data from one computer to another. They come with enough storage now that they can do some good work as backup too.

Alternatively, sign up for an online backup service. These can be very reasonably priced, and their data will be safe even if their home is subject to a disaster.

Portable Charger – I love my portable charger for those days when we’re on the go. It’s not necessarily just for work – they’re great when you go on vacation too. It’s nice not having to worry about running out of charge on my phone or camera while out and about.

Choose a portable charger that carries enough charge for multiple devices. It’s not at all uncommon for an entrepreneur on the go to have several devices with them.

Laptop/Messenger Bag – My laptop bag was one of my favorite gifts several years ago. I still use it any time we travel. It’s so nice having an easy way to carry my laptop.

When gifting a laptop bag, remember that more than a laptop will be in there. That’s why pockets, lots of pockets, is often a good idea. Make sure it’s big enough for their laptop and any necessary accessories.

Noise Cancelling Headphones – Noise cancelling headphones are great if you have a lot of background noise in your home office. You can get ones that will work with your phone if you have to call people, or just use them to listen to music while you work.

Square Card Reader – Square is great for home business owners who sometimes take credit card transactions in person. Its small size makes it convenient to carry around, plus it can be connected to a mobile phone, so payment processing can take place anywhere they have a data connection.

Moleskine Notebook – For the home business owner who likes to take a lot of written notes, a Moleskine notebook is a great choice. They’re attractive and functional. You can step it up a little with a Moleskine Evernote Smart Notebook. It allows you to digitize your notes, which can be a huge help when ideas really get going.

Fitness

Basic Exercise Equipment – Some basic exercise equipment to be kept in your home office makes it easier to get a quick workout in during the workday. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Some hand weights are a good start.

The one big catch with giving any exercise equipment is making sure it’s welcome. You don’t want someone to feel that there’s a hidden message in the gift.

Exercise Ball – An exercise ball is great for core exercises. It’s also useful as an office chair.

Treadmill Desk – For those who are more ambitious, a treadmill desk may sound like a good plan. It may be more difficult to type while using one for some people. If you can make it work for you, it’s a great way to keep moving while you work.

Gym Membership – Not only will a gym membership help them get fit, it gives an excuse to get out of the house more often.

Activity Tracker – It’s far too easy to be sedentary with many home businesses. A good activity tracker can be that little bit of encouragement needed to get up and move.

Decor

Posters or Art Prints – It’s their home office – it doesn’t have to be plain. The kind of posters or other wall decor depends on what you like and how professional your office needs to look. If you have clients come in, you have to consider them. If no one ever comes to your office or sees it on video, it’s all about you!

Fun Stuff – What do they like? My office has dragons, some Harry Potter stuff, Doctor Who stuff, Star Trek stuff… you get the idea. Go to Think Geek if you need ideas.

For The Home

Smart Thermostat – A smart thermostat makes it much easier to control the temperatures in your work environment. You can set up the basic program for what you usually want household temperatures to be, and change if if needed using your smartphone.

Fire Safe – A fire safe is a perfect place to put all your important documents, both for your business and your personal life. You can even keep your backup drive in one. You may never need fire protection for these things, but if you do, there may not be time to think about how to save them at that moment.

Shredder – Having a shredder is a great way to take care of those papers which shouldn’t be thrown directly into the trash. Most are also good enough to shred old credit cards too.

Video Doorbell – A video doorbell, such as Ring, can help you decide whether or not it’s worth it to answer the door during your work hours. The ability to know who’s there is a huge help when you don’t want to be interrupted, but you’re also expecting a package.

Food & Drinks

Stainless Steel Water Bottle – I love my stainless steel water bottle. It’s one of the ways I make it easier to drink water throughout the day. The straw lid I use minimizes the chances for a spill, which is great.

Travel Mug – A good travel mug will be loved by anyone who drinks their coffee or other hot drinks on the go. They help prevent spills, which is great for having your coffee in the office too.

Coffee – Some good coffee, or just some gift card to Starbucks or a local coffee shop, will be welcomed by many home business owners. A good source of caffeine is a great help most days. A good coffee maker is also worth considering.

Chocolate – For those who don’t drink coffee (me!) or who just love chocolate (also me!), some good quality chocolate is always a welcome gift. It makes a quick snack while working or taking a break.

Healthy Snacks – Having some healthy snacks available to grab and go is great for those busy days.

Help

Childcare – Whether you offer to take the kids yourself or pay a babysitter, having the kids out from underfoot can be a huge help to the home business owner. This is especially true when kids are small and clingy.

Relaxation

Slippers – Is the floor of your home office ever cold? A nice pair of slippers will help you deal with that in comfort.

Massage Equipment – At the end of the day, a massage will probably always sound good. It’s much easier to get one if you have the right equipment. Alternatively, a gift card to a good local spa would be a great idea.

Big Red Button – For those days when you need to pound something in frustration. We all have those days.

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