Starting a Career from Home
Nowadays, more and more people are deciding to work from home – and it’s no surprise! The coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way most of us work. As the virus spread around the world, governments in most countries advised that those who could work from home, worked from home. This helped to reduce and slow down the spread of the virus among people. Of course, this was a huge change, but many people have found that remote work actually suits them much better than their previous roles in an office. Working from home just comes hand in hand with so many benefits – especially if you have a family. You can reduce your commute time, which means you have more hours in the day to run errands, spend time with your loved ones, and do whatever you want. You also save money because you don’t have to leave for public transport, fuel or parking. Then it is simply more comfortable.
You can work in your own environment, choose the temperature according to what you want, use your own bathroom, use your own kitchen to make lunches and much more. However, as vaccines are rolled out and we learn to deal with the pandemic, many businesses are trying to get their staff back in the office. If you don’t want to do that, you might consider starting your own business or freelancing to allow you to work from home permanently. Here are some suggestions to help you with that!
Freelance or start a business?
There are two key choices when it comes to becoming your own boss and working remotely. The first is freelancing. This is when you advertise a skill that you have and allow other companies to essentially hire you for it on one-off or occasional projects. Common freelance careers include copywriting, graphic design, web design, accounting or anything else you can do remotely and project by project. A second option is to start your own business. This tends to be more work as you will have to come up with a product idea and bring it to life to sell to the consumer market. Both are great options and only you can decide which will be best for you.
Choosing what you will make or sell
Whether you decide to freelance or start a business, you will need to decide what you will make or sell. Freelancing tends to be simpler in terms of this decision, as you simply choose a skill you have and an area you are competent in. However, when you start a business, you will have to decide longer. If you have an idea for a product or a larger-scale service in your head, you’ll need to complete market research with your target demographic to determine if people will actually be interested in what you’re offering. You can also find additional information such as what price they would be willing to pay for it, how they would like it packaged, how they like to be advertised and more. There are countless market research methods you can use, from questionnaires to surveys, focus group discussions and more.
Creating a website
Of course, in order to freelance or sell your own products or services, you need to make sure that people who are looking for these things can find you and know that you exist. Nowadays that means creating a website. When people are looking for goods and services, they generally do a Google search to find what they are looking for near them. You need a website that can showcase what you offer and allow people to contact or make purchases online. Creating a website yourself will involve a lot of work learning web design and even coding. So, you should generally contact professionals who can accomplish this on your behalf. Most people choose to contact Web design services and a web developer who can create your actual website for you. You may want to contact a product photographer to take pictures of your products or your work, a copywriter to explain what you do or write product descriptions, a UX designer to make sure potential customers and clients have a good experience on your website and anyone else who can do your website functional and looking great!
seo
It’s all well and good to have the best products or services in the world and the best website in the world. But if no one achieves it, you will not make any sales or create professional relationships that can secure customers. This is where SEO comes into play. SEO stands for search engine optimization and involves getting your website to rank as high as possible in search engine results. Why do you want to achieve this? Well, when you shop online, what to do you do? Most of us will type a few keywords into a search engine and browse the options that are presented to us. We click the first links first. This means that if your site comes up first, more people are likely to click on it first, which gives you the best possible chance of enticing them to buy with you, instead of having them walk into the arms of your competitors. seo is a complex area of business operations, so most freelancers or small businesses tend to outsource this work to an SEO agency that can take care of optimizing your website and its content on your behalf.
As you can see, there really is a lot to consider when it comes to diving into a work from home career of your own making. Whether freelancing or starting your own business better suits your individual needs and preferences, one thing can be certain. You can look forward to having more control and choice in your own career – working from home is just one element of this. Hopefully, the tips above will help you get the ball rolling in the right direction!