Home office expert's guide to working from home/home office tips» Making money from home

Why Friends Don’t Always Make Good Employees

Lisa — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:47:03 +0000

During my almost 20 years of working from home, I’ve never hired friends to work for me. Although now I consider the freelancers I’ve worked with throughout the years including a graphic artist, an editor, web designer and CPA, friends.

Unlike Duff Goldman and the Charm City Cakes team of friends I described in another post, not every business works when you hire friends. Before you hire a friend to join your business team, consider these comments from business owners who no longer hire friends.

When I started my home-based business, I hired friends to help me. Doing this was a huge mistake. You do not get the quality of work or respect from friends that you do from hiring previously unknown employees or contractors to work for you. It is very difficult to work with a friend when there is now a boss/employee relationship. I had to fire my friends who worked with me due to poor performance. This of course led to me losing my friendship with those people.

—Peter Geisheker, CEO, The Geisheker Group Marketing Firm

I have learned that friendship has little to do with whether someone is a good employee. Regardless of being friends, someone either has what it takes to be successful in their role or not. I have been sued by a friend that worked with me and I have established a long-term, trusting work partnership with another. I have hired one friend into a role where they were highly successful and another into the same role that failed. Being friends had little to do with their success or failure.

—Randy Mitchelson, Owner, National Web Leads, LLC

Several of my friends are in the PR business, as am I. Having seen some of their work and work habits, I would not hire my friends. In one case, the writing skills are less than optimal. In another, the attention to detail is so meticulous, deadlines may be missed.

—Reese A. Nank, APR, Reputations PR and Marketing

The decision of whether or not to hire friends may boil down to a choice between your business and your friendship. Would you hire a friend to work for you?

Think Creativity Over Cash When Marketing Your Business

Lisa — Mon, 24 May 2010 12:51:48 +0000

Marketing your homebased business can be challenging and frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. In another Working Naked post, a few entrepreneurs shared their low-cost, highly effective ways to market their businesses on a budget. A few more entrepreneurs share their marketing secrets.

—Leslie Guria, SpeakingBonanza

“As the person responsible for marketing our new website, I am online all of the time, blogging on all different websites. I share content from our site with others that currently have more traffic than ours, create links, and use Social Media (Twitter and Facebook) to post relevant information.”

—Julie ArnheimCo-Founder, RubbingNickels

“I launched a home-based publishing business in 1997 and by 1999 I was running it full-time and was able to hire my husband away from his “real job.” One of our marketing tips is to publish a free, opt-in weekly ezine or newsletter that provides high-quality content to your readers (potential customers) that they can’t find anywhere else. This reminds them that you and your products are there for them.”

—Angela Hoy, Publisher, BookLocker, WritersWeekly

Don’t be a Dummy…Learn Smart Ways to Market Your Business

Lisa — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:06:37 +0000

The folks at Copyblogger are no dummies. They know that if they fill their site with valuable advice about writing a blog and marketing online, their readers will want more. What kind of people are they?

Obviously they’re brilliant, generous and Internet savvy because they’re offering Internet Marketing for Smart People, a 20-part, free email course and continual newsletter. This course is down and dirty, quick and easy and best of all, packed with useful advice about Internet marketing.

Check the Internet and you’ll find hundreds of programs that promise to give you the “secrets” to Internet marketing. Sometimes you’ll see a photo of a guy on his yacht who wants to make it perfectly clear that he’s made a fortune from Internet marketing and you haven’t. My advice? Shop carefully and if you can get a high quality marketing course for free, grab it immediately.

After you’ve read through the free course, check out Copyblogger often. You won’t believe how much information is on their site. I never leave Copyblogger without learning at least one new thing. They know everything and I want to know it too (insert evil laugh).

Why Can’t We All Work Naked?

Lisa — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:13:24 +0000

Working naked — working without the help of an assistant, accounting department or an IT staff — makes sense considering that technology makes it easy to work anywhere, anytime. So why can’t we all work naked? Consider a few of the many benefits of working from home:

There’s no commute
You’re not stuck in a cubicle
Technology lets you keep up with your corporate counterparts
You save money on rent
You have the freedom to have a life
Your clothing and dry cleaning bills drop significantly
There’s no boss looming over your shoulder
You can wear whatever you want or better yet, nothing at all. A non-scratchy chair is key to working naked comfortably!

What’s keeping you from stripping yourself of the corporate workplace?

Marketing Your Business on a Budget Takes Creativity

Lisa — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:11:46 +0000

When you add up the expenses of running your own business, sometimes there’s not much money left for marketing. So when money is tight, you need to be creative. I asked homebased business owners to share out-of-the-ordinary, proven strategies they’ve used to market their businesses. Here are a few of the tips I collected. I’ll share more tips soon.

“Something I’ve found very effective in increasing traffic is writing articles and then transforming them into multiple media. I’ll post the text version on article directories, the audio version on Associated Content and the video version on YouTube and Facebook. Then when I have four posted, I create a Squidoo Lens.”

—Carma Spence-Pothitt, President & CEO DragonWyze Solutions

“Promotional strategies I’ve used include providing donations for silent auctions and welcoming new Chamber of Commerce members through my involvement in the local Chamber. Having recently added a retail site as another line of business, I’m exploring new ways to promote that.”

—Lynn Maria Thompson, President, Thompson Writing & Editing, Inc.

“To help reposition myself and my business from the competition, I decided to write a book titled Stretching A Dollar To Save And Make Thousands: An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Doing More With Less. To help promote my book and my business, I decided to start my own Internet radio show on Blogtalkradio.com, Stretching A Dollar For Entrepreneurs.”

—Lisa Sims, Author

What are you doing to market your business?

E-commerce Makes Cents…Dollars Too

Lisa — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:20:37 +0000

For the past few months I’ve been researching online payment systems for this site. The many articles I read gave me insight into what to look for and the costs involved. While the articles were helpful, I turned to a few friends and colleagues to get their two cents about the checkout systems they use.

“For a new small business, there are a few tried and true online payment portals that people trust and are relatively easy to set up. PayPal and Google Checkout being the most obvious. Authorize.net is another relatively popular (and trusted by buyers) payment processor. CNet and Authorize.net have both published comparisons.”

—Mika Lofton, MarComm 3.0

“I have used Yahoo Merchant Services since 2004 and with my previous employer since 2000. They have 3 different plan levels based upon your needs and they have the most secure shopping carts in the industry. They are also the biggest merchant cart hosting service out there and they have fantastic 24/7 customer service support that is free and included.”

—Melissa Lierman, TimeOutMom

“Shopify. It’s got one of the best back-end management systems that I’ve used, and it’s actually pretty easy to customize though the starter templates themselves are awesome. If you want to try a cheap (Free!) up-and-comer, check out Storenvy. “

—Dave Yankowiak, Lift Development

Which online payment system do you use?