There are many aspects to consider when you think of working from home. These considerations can run the gamut from basics like identifying your business idea, your home office, your time, and your desires to specifics like drumming up business, retaining clients, and expanding services. Let's look briefly at each of these to help lay out how you can best work from home.
Laying Out the Basic
Before you dive head first into your business endeavor, you'll need to identify a few basics about your would-be company. To begin, you'll need to identify your business idea. Will you freelance from home or would you prefer to work as a contractor for an established company? What services will you offer? What won't you do? Basically, you'll need to decide the business idea and model before you go too far.
Once you know what you want to do, it's time to identify the who, what, when, where, and why of your company. Who will you work for or with? What will you and/or your employees do? What will your hours be? Will you work out of a home office or from your laptop on the couch? What do you want to accomplish with this business?
Getting Down to the Specific
When your basic business model is in place, you can tackle the nitty-gritty details, and the first thing your business will need will be clients. Some of the best ways to find clients are to join an online freelance community, to advertise by flyers in your town, and to post an ad in your local newspaper. You could also network through young professionals' clubs, advertise on Facebook, or stop into established business in your area to offer your expertise.
They key to maintaining your business after you land your first few customers is to retain the clients. This is best accomplished by going above and beyond. If your client requests his computer be fixed in a week through your technology services firm, for example, have his computer ready a few days early. Being diligent and professional will get you noticed, and from there your business can spread through word of mouth.
Since many established business begin to expand after a while, you may wish to expand your services as well. Taking some courses can help you branch out from your original business model at this point to include even more services useful to your clients. For example, if your technology firm focused only on fixing printers in the past, there may come a time where you could benefit from offering computer repair services as well.
Working from home can be a joy, but it should ideally be approached with a level of dedication and professionalism similar to any startup business outside the home. Thankfully, accomplishing a successful startup takes some basic focuses coupled with some specific tasks. Both can help you identify your ideal business practices and find the clients you need to be successful.