Starting Off A Career from Home

Nowadays, more and more people are deciding to work from home – and it’s not surprising! The coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way that the majority of us work. As the virus spread around the world, governments in the majority of countries advised that those who could work from home did work from home. This helped to reduce and slow the spread of the virus amongst people. Of course, this was a huge change, but many people found that remote work actually suited them much better than their previous roles in office. Working from home just comes hand in hand with so many benefits – especially if you have a family. You get to reduce your commuting time, which means that you have more hours in the day to get through chores, spend with your loved ones and do whatever you please. You also save money, as you’re not having to fork out for public transport, fuel or parking. Then, it’s simply more comfortable.

You can work in your own environment, choose the temperature based on what you want, use your own bathroom, use your own kitchen to make lunches and so much more. However, as vaccines are being rolled out and we’re learning to cope with the pandemic, many businesses are trying to bring their staff back in-office. If you don’t want to do this, you may be considering starting your own business or freelancing to allow yourself to work from home permanently. Here are some suggestions to help you with this!

Freelancing or starting a business?

There are two key options when it comes to becoming your own boss and working remotely. The first is freelancing. This is when you advertise a skill you have and allowing other companies to essentially hire you for it on one-off or occasional projects. Common freelancing careers include copywriting, graphic design, web design, accounting or anything else you can do remotely and on a project by project basis. A second option is starting your own business. This tends to be more work, as you’ll need 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’re going to do or sell

Whether you decide to freelance or start a business, you’re going to have to decide what you’re going to do or sell. Freelancing tends to be more straightforward in regards to this decision, as you simply choose a skill you have and an area you are competent in. However, when starting a business, you’re going to have to take longer deciding. If you have an idea for a product or larger scale service in your head, you’re going to need to complete market research with your target demographic to determine whether people would actually be interested in what you’re offering. You can also find out further information, such as what price they’d be willing to pay for it, how they’d like it packaged, how they like to be advertised to and more. There are countless market research methods you can use, ranging from questionnaires to surveys, group discussions and more.

Creating a website

Of course, to freelance or to 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, this means creating a website. When people look for goods and services, they generally carry out a Google search to find what they’re looking for near to them. You need a website that can show off what you’re offering and allow people to get in touch or make purchases online. Creating a website yourself will involve a whole lot of work learning web design and even coding. So, you should generally get in touch with professionals who can complete this on your behalf. Most people choose to get in touch with web design services and a web developer who can create your actual site for you. You may then want to reach out to 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 ensure potential customers and clients have a good experience on your site and anyone else who can make your site functional and look great!

SEO

It’s all good and well having the best products or services in the world and the best website in the world. But if nobody reaches it, you’re not going to make any sales or create professional relationships that can secure clients. This is where SEO comes in. SEO stands for search engine optimisation and involves getting your website to rank as highly as possible in search engine results. Why do you want to achieve this? Well, when you’re shopping online, what do you do? The majority of us will type some 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 appears first, more people are likely to click it first, which gives you the best possible chance of enticing them to shop with you, rather than having them walk into the arms of your competitors. SEO is a complex area of business operations, so the majority of freelancers or small businesses tend to outsource this work to an SEO agency, who can take care of optimising your site and its content on your behalf.

As you can see, there really is a lot to think about when it comes to diving into a work from home career of your own making. Whether freelancing or starting your own business suits your individual needs and preferences better, one thing can be certain. You can look forward to having more control and choice in your own career – with working from home being just one element of this. Hopefully, the tips above will help you to get the ball rolling in the right direction!