Successful Blog

Working From Home without the Distractions

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woman-working-homeWho doesn’t dream of working in their pajamas at some point?

With the plethora of jobs these days that you can do at home, it’s not so unheard of.

Even if only part of your time is spent at home, many jobs offer the opportunity to do some or all of your work at home, and of course, there are the ones where you, yourself, are your very own boss.

Some Jobs Where You Can Work From Home

Not every job translates well to working from home, but you may be surprised at how many do.

Here are a few jobs that you can do in your pajamas:

  • Postsecondary or Virtual Teacher – If you have teaching in your background, think about being a virtual teacher. Whether it’s for postsecondary education or middle or high, there’s a demand for virtual teachers, even home school ones, and yes, you could work in your pj’s.
  • Writer or Editor – Whether freelance or working for someone in particular, there is a lot of work out there for writers or editors. You can be a guest blogger, newsletter editor, contributing writer … the list goes on. The more you get yourself out there, the more you’ll get noticed.
  • Transcriptionist – There’s a big demand here for medical transcriptionists. Other fields, like law, need transcriptionists as well, and this can be done easily at home.
  • Online reseller – You may or may not be able to make a living off of reselling, but working selling on sites such as eBay can bring in a lot of extra income. You’d be surprised what you can find around your own home, garage sales and thrift stores.

Be Your Own Boss

Maybe you don’t want to work for someone else, so think about being your own boss.

If you have specific skills, ranging from writing to decorating to a law degree, you can definitely work from home.

Sure, you may have to have a meeting every so often, but the majority of work can be done. Don’t discount the possibility of being your own boss at home.

Avoid the Distractions

A key to being successful at working from home is to avoid the distractions. Hmmm, you think, maybe easier said than done.

Here are a few tips for getting your work done sans distractions:

• Have a set area to work, and only work.

• Have set times to work. Sure, you may need to adjust them as needed, but don’t overlook the art of scheduling.

• Let the phone ring. If it’s your personal one, that is, and leave your personal email and Facebook page alone, too. Focus on work when you’re working and then you’ll have time for the other things, too.

• Maybe every so often, step into real clothes instead of your pajamas. If you have an important call or virtual meeting, brush your hair and put on some work clothes. It may inspire you to be more professional.

Though it may take some creativity, discipline and structure – you can probably find a way to work from home, at least some of the time.

Please share any tips and insight you have on this concept.

Photo credit: socialmoms.com

About the Author: Heather Legg is a work from home writer who covers topics on small business, social media, education and mindful living.

Connect to Better Business Service with VoIP

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avoiperBusinesses can utilize modern technology to become more efficient and increase cost savings while providing better customer service. One of those technologies is VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol phone systems.

With that in mind, why should your business consider switching?

More than Just a Phone Service

While VoIP offers the same features that you get with regular phone service, it gives you much more.

You get voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding, and other features. But other features enhance your business that you can’t get with traditional phone companies.

Many of these features can allow your business to be more productive.

The ability to transcribe your voicemail messages to email allows you to record important information without having to replay the message.

It also permits you to receive your messages in a convenient fashion even when you are away from the office and contact customers more quickly.

Improved Customer Service

Coaching tools on VoIP allows managers or supervisors to listen in on phone conversations their employees are having with customers without disturbing anyone. They can even whisper instructions and advice without the client overhearing. This not only makes a good training tool but can help employees deal with difficult clients.

Auto attendant allows customers to be connected with the right extension without having to be transferred. This saves them the time and hassle of going through a live person when they already know where they need to go.

Improved Cost Savings

Using VoIP helps save businesses money because VoIP providers are cheaper than traditional telephone companies.

It also allows people to connect to the system from anywhere as long as they have a VoIP phone. You can access the system through email, which is ideal when you are traveling.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money or change your system completely to switch over to VoIP. Just use a VoIP converter and connect it to any standard phone.

You can find systems such as the Ooma Telo VOIP phone system from major retailers like Walmart.

Improved Staff Relations

A VoIP service allows you to hold conferences with your staff even when you are away.

Just connect an IP phone and you can hold meetings over important topics from anywhere.

It’s also ideal for the staff members that are working from home full-time or even a day or two a week. It’s much easier for them to keep track of what is happening at the office and to feel part of the group. They also receive calls as if they were in the office and no one can tell the difference.

As more businesses offer the option for staff to work at home, a VoIP system becomes even more valuable.

It is one way of making employees feel like they are part of the team while giving them the flexibility they value.

As you can see, a VoIP system provides numerous benefits to a business whether in employee relations, customer service or with cost savings.

See how it can help your business and implement your own VoIP telephone system.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Joyce Morse is an author who writes on a variety of topics, including SEO and technology.

Making a Healthy Choice When It Comes to Insurance Plans

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ahealthcheckSmall business owners wrestling with the decision of whether to offer group health coverage to their employees have several more months before Obamacare’s small business insurance marketplace is fully operational.

Under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, businesses with 50 or fewer full-time equivalent employees, or FTEs, are not obligated to provide such coverage for their workers.

However, many companies, both large and small, find they can better attract — and keep — top-quality employees if they offer health coverage as a benefit.

SHOP Postponed

The multiple problems following last fall’s launch of open enrollment for individual health coverage prompted the federal government to postpone for a year the opening of SHOP, known officially as the Small Business Health Options Program.

In the meantime, small businesses that want to move ahead with group health coverage can continue to purchase health plans that meet Obamacare standards from insurance brokers.

Also, businesses in states that have their own Obamacare exchanges can buy coverage in those marketplaces.

Guidelines for Eligibility

If you’re among the small business owners who are opting to wait until SHOP is fully operational, here’s what you need to know about the qualifications necessary for participation in the marketplace:

  • You must have a principal business address within the state where you’re seeking to buy coverage or have an eligible employee with a primary worksite within the state where you’re buying coverage;
  • You must have at least one common-law employee on your payroll other than the business owner, sole proprietor, or their spouses. A common-law employee is defined as anyone who performs services for you wherein you can control what will be done and how it will be done;
  • Your business must have 50 or fewer FTEs, including part-time employees, in order to be eligible to purchase health plans within the small business marketplace. Two part-time employees are equal to one FTE. A couple of years down the road, SHOP eligibility will be expanded to include businesses with 100 or fewer FTEs.

Pay o to 100% of Premium

Interestingly, small businesses that purchase health insurance plans through SHOP are not required to pay any of the premiums for such coverage, according to a Forbes analysis of small business options under Obamacare.

Employers can pay anywhere from 0 to 100 percent of the plan’s premium, and employees must pay the rest. This rule applies only to health insurance plans purchased through SHOP, which is the federal marketplace for small businesses, and is not necessarily applicable to coverage purchased through state-operated exchanges.

For example, employers purchasing coverage through California’s state-operated exchange must pay at least 50 percent of the premiums for such coverage.

No matter whether you plan to pay 100 percent, 50 percent, or none of the premiums for health coverage offered to your employees, there’s a significant tax benefit to buying through SHOP.

Premiums for all such plans are paid with pre-tax dollars. This means that whoever pays the premium — employer, employees, or both — gets a nice tax break.

Control the Coverage

Choosing a health insurance plan from SHOP allows the small business owner to control the coverage that is offered to employees and, as we’ve already seen, to decide how much, if any, to pay toward employee premiums.

If your small business has 25 or fewer FTEs and you decide to pay 50 percent or more of the premiums for health plans purchased from SHOP, you may be eligible for a small business tax credit for the premiums paid.

In order to be eligible for this tax credit, your employees must average less than $50,000 per year in annual wages. Forbes reports that many employers that are eligible for this tax credit are forgoing it because the calculations involved are “slightly cumbersome.”

4 Levels of Coverage

As a small business owner, you can select the level of coverage that will be available to your employees.

As for individual health plans, the four main levels of coverage are Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

According to HealthCare.gov, these categories have nothing to do with quality of care but rather describe “the way your employees and the plan can expect to share costs for health care.” In other words, bronze plan coverage would require a higher copay for health services than would be charged under the other metal categories.

HealthCare.gov points out, however, that all plans available through SHOP must provide a set of essential health benefits.

Such benefits include ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, prescription drugs, rehabilitative services, laboratory services, preventive and wellness services, and pediatric services.

When evaluating health insurance plans in SHOP, you can compare side by side what services are available under the four levels of coverage.

As noted above, all must provide for the essential health benefits, but higher level plans are likely to have additional benefits.

And, of course, higher level plans cover more of the costs of services and thus have lower copays, if any.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Don Amerman is a freelance author who writes extensively about a wide array of business and personal finance topics.

Having Inconsistent Contact with Customers?

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acontact

You have a fantastic website that gives customers all of the information they need about your product or service. You may even have a blog to go with your website to provide further information or to answer questions.

However, many businesses often overlook the importance of one page: the Contact Us form.

Even if they include it on the site, they fail to maximize its potential.

Call to Action

Businesses often lack the knowledge on how to use call to actions to convert more customers by making the contact form a bigger part of the website.

It’s commonly added to the menu along with the other pages on the site. However, a link to the form should be included with all of your calls to action.

At the point where you invite customers to contact you, there should be a link that makes it easy for them to do just that. If they have to navigate from somewhere else, they may get distracted and forget to complete the action.

What Makes a Good Contact Page

After viewing your website, the Contact form is the next “first impression” that you make.

If someone is taking the time to contact you for any reason, you want to make it a positive experience for them. It should be easy to access and have personality, but it should not be cluttered. You don’t want your visitors to get bogged down with what is on the page and forget to actually make contact with you.

The problem with many standard Contact pages is that they are designed solely for functionality without thought about the people that will be using them.

As Howard Yeh, founder, investor and president of ContactUs.com says about the process of designing a contact form, “We approach the problems that websites face not just as web developers, but as online marketers, experienced lead-generators and sales account managers. And with that mindset, we’ve built both features and data solutions to make those jobs easier.”

You want to look at your Contact page as a marketer.

Does it provide a warm welcome and then a call to action that visitors will understand?

It should also be short and efficient.

Collect the necessary information to provide an accurate and thorough reply but don’t waste your visitors’ time filling out unnecessary fields.

Multiple Avenues to Reach You

While some customers will feel more comfortable with the idea of sending out a message or email, others still prefer a phone call.

A contact link should be visible on all pages right in the area where it does the most good.

On some pages, this may be as a sidebar while on others; you might want it right below a product or list of services you provide.

An effective Contact Us form is one that converts your visitors into customers. It is included as a way to help you establish new relationships and continue to grow current ones.

Make sure your contact page is working for you.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Joyce Morse is an author who writes on a variety of topics, including content marketing and small business.

Is Your Home Office What You Want It to Be?

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aofficeMore and more people are working from home.

Maybe it’s telecommuting for an international multi-billion dollar company, or it could be running your own small business from home where you are your only employee. Maybe sometimes you’re in a company’s office, other days you’re at home.

Whatever the case may be, it’s becoming more the norm for people to be working at home.

According to a Forbes piece, at least 30 million Americans work from home at least one day a week. This number is growing and is expected to continue to do so over the next few years.

One of the main reasons people do opt to work from home, and why companies are supportive, is because work productivity is shown to increase for those who work from home.

Not only do home officers save time (which means money) by skipping the commute, they also can be more productive at home by working in more personalized comfort.

When it comes to that personalized comfort, which is conducive to productivity, how do you get the optimal home office for an affordable price?

Take a look at some of these tips to find what works for you and enhances your own space:

• A designated space – It’s important to have a designated work space aside from your home life. Keep the doctor bills and PTA forms somewhere else. Make sure this space stays all business and your productivity will increase. It’s not cost prohibitive to do this, you just might need to do some organizing.

• A comfortable space – If you are at your desk for any extended time, you need to be comfortable. Major retailers, including Walmart, offer great specials on affordable and comfortable office desks to make working from home a positive, comfortable and productive experience. Along with the desk, you need a comfortable chair to keep your posture and back healthy.

• A well-lit space – You will be happier working in a space with good lighting. If you can’t have natural lighting, find some lamps that offer good light. Even the paint color on the wall adds to the lighting feel; choose a color that works well for you, makes you happy and that you find positive energy from. Paint is an affordable way to make a big change in a space.

• A clutter free space – Even if you’ve banished all your home clutter from your work space, make sure you continue to keep it clutter free. Toss or file old documents, organize material on a regular basis and keep what you can electronically, toss the hard copies.

If you can set up your work space when you first start your home office experience, your productivity will shine. It’s beneficial to do it the right way from the start so you don’t need use valuable time to make changes.

But if you do need to change something, do it – it will be worth it for your comfort and productivity.

Photo credit: decoist.com

About the Author: Heather Legg writes about small business, staying within a budget and making the most of what you have.

 

Should You Give Out Raises?

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araiseIn 2013, the average company gave out a 3 percent pay raise. That average is expected in 2014, as well.

As a business owner, how do you know how much to give and who to give it to? And how can you keep everyone happy in the process?

The job market is tough, and fortunately your employees are aware of your company’s overall circumstances.

New graduates learned in college that one of the challenges they would face after school would be answering how to position yourself for best paying careers, so they, too, know what it’s like to be out in the real world.

How to determine who deserves a raise

As a small business owner, giving out raises at the right time to the right candidates is an important aspect of your job.

Employees like to know they’re doing a good job and they like to be recognized for their hard work, most likely in terms of more money.

Employees that may potentially deserve a raise are those that:

  • Consistently work hard – Do you have an employee that is willing to stay late or work overtime when needed? Does this employee do so with a smile on their face? Employees that go above and beyond their normal job responsibilities are the first that should be recognized. They care about your company and want to see it succeed. Hard workers almost always deserve raises, assuming your company can afford it.
  • Offer something unique to your company – Maybe this particular employee isn’t the hardest worker, but maybe he or she does something valuable and irreplaceable for your business. For example, if you run a small construction business and have one drywall specialist who consistently gets rave reviews from customers, offering a raise to keep the employee around is worth it. It shows you value their work and know it would be hard to find a replacement.
  • Meet or exceed their goals – If an employee regularly meets or exceeds sales goals, for example, they are most likely deserving of a raise. Without good, hard-working employees who sell your product or service, you wouldn’t have a business. Reward them.

How to keep everyone happy

When it comes time to give out raises, employees may start to gossip on who did or didn’t get a raise. This can cause tension and jealousy in the workplace, and may cause some valued employees to leave if they feel underappreciated.

To keep everyone happy, hold a one-on-one meeting with each employee, if possible.

Go over their position in the company, why they are or aren’t getting a raise, their strong points and what they can do to improve. Explain your position as a business owner and what your goals are long-term.

By making the employee feel like a part of a team (which they are), employee gossip should be decreased whether or not you offered them a raise.

For those that didn’t receive a raise, you could consider offering additional incentives.

These can include a few extra paid vacation days per year, allowing them to work from home one day per week or offering a more flexible schedule in the office.

Some employees would rather work four 10-hour days, for example, than five 8-hour days.

See what would be valuable to those employees and offer it to them, especially if you wanted to give them a raise but simply could not afford it.

Photo credit: businessnewsdaily.com

About the Author: Sarah Brooks is a freelance writer living in Glendale, AZ. She writes on personal finances, small businesses and travel.