Working from home – the promised land right?

Tell people that you work from home and they think pyjamas, afternoon naps and skiving right? And with the likes of Boris Johnson endorsing this belief with his so-called ‘Skivers’ Charter’, then it gets harder to convince people that working from home is actually hard work.  But, the times, they are a-changing. Because big business is tapping into the fact that having people working from home saves it money. Take telecoms firm BT. It now employs some 11,000 people who are working from home, saving it £60 million. Not bad in these times of austerity. Currently 5.4 million homes in Britain have one person who works from home. Out of this half are the likes of those BT employees. The other half are freelance.

Five or even four years ago, it would have  been hard to imagine that so many people would have the choice of working from home. But thanks to the massive advances in technology, walls have been broken down and communications streamlined. Business initially slow to embrace this have heard those magic words – money saving – and begun to warm to this working from home idea.

Alongside this a new money-making industry has established itself: working for yourself from home. A Google search will reveal just how much we’ve bought into home-based making money schemes. The results, which  are into the hundreds of millions, speak for themselves. There’s a belief that making money working online is the place where you can earn millions first wearing your pyjamas and then via the golf course, private yacht, or wherever else you fancy. Because as money-making reputations go, earning money online is one that people would have you believe is easy. Just get yourself a blog and boom: sit back while the money rolls in right? Wrong.

If you’ve got a business idea for the internet, then that’s great. But before you launch yourself in to a world of websites, it’s important you do your research. And that means beyond reading the first page of Google search results. If you want to make money from this, then you need to know if there’s a gap in the market. If there is, good news, but it’s also worth looking into reasons why this gap might exist. For instance, is there no demand for your niche idea? Or is it too tricky to market? Then you need to get down to the financial facts: how much money could you make? Because it has to be worth something. There’s little point in dedicating your time to a project that gives no return.

Then you need to learn how to market your product, to turn your traffic into sales. And for that you need to get your site out there, viewed by people. The way most websites make money is via advertising. Or there is the option to sell products online. Sites like Etsy have made it easier for average Joes to sell their goods without the overheads involved like a shop or staff.

There are other ways to make money working from home. But ditch those get-rich-quick schemes. They’re a con and are themselves only about making money From you. Careers in business and marketing opportunities are out there. Affiliate marketing for instance is a new niche. And aside from blogging, there are other writing opportunities with essay writing a booming industry. So if you’ve got a degree, Masters, PhD or MBA then you can put it to use and ear money while you’re at it.