How to Manage a Home Business

By Neel on February 21, 2012

small business How to Manage a Home Business

Running a home business can be very rewarding but it is important to compartmentalise your daily roles correctly.

Although running a home business can be very rewarding, it’s important that your work and personal life don’t mesh into one.  Home and business lives need to be kept separate, even when you work from home.

Banking

Running a home business means that you will be responsible for paying your own taxes, making your own super contributions, and managing cash flow. The first step for successful business cash management is to open a separate business account for your business income. This income should not be treated as spending money. Instead, you should take a wage out of the income on a monthly basis and leave an increasing pot of money within the business for future investment. Small business bookkeeping can be complicated but it is the most fundamental requirement for keeping your business on track with necessary payments and invoicing.

How to Manage a Home Business

Regular Working Hours

When working from home it is far too easy to press the snooze button on your alarm for another hour and think that it just doesn’t matter. This couldn’t be further from the truth because this attitude will damage your ability to work effectively and efficiently. If you start work an hour later than you should then you will be behind from the start of the day. Working from home does not make every day like a weekend so be sure to set regular ‘office hours’ and stick to them diligently.

Separation of Responsibility

When working from home it is very easy to get distracted by other responsibilities. Grocery shopping and cleaning should not encroach on your working time because this will just be reducing the quality of the work that you are doing and give you less time in which to do it. Separate your house keeping responsibilities from your business responsibilities just as you would in an office environment.

Prioritise Workload

Organisation is central to all successful business practices. It is very important to prioritise your workload so that you are able to meet all deadlines to a high level of quality.

Childcare

Just because you are working from home doesn’t make it possible to carry out full-time childcare at the same time. Remember that you are being paid to offer a service to your clients, which needs to be completed professionally. It is not feasible to carry out full time care and run a business because the demands are too great. Take your children to childcare when working so that you can concentrate properly on the task at hand.

Contact Details

The contact details that you use say a lot about your business to potential clients. Using a private telephone number, a gmail account and a private address immediately tells potential customers that you will be working from home. A small amount of expense will provide you with a hosted email domain, a toll free or 1300 number (Australia) and a PO Box address. These three simple changes can be enough to make a huge amount of difference to your business.

Relaxation

At the end of each working day it is important to take an opportunity to unwind. Close the office for the evening and unwind as if you have just got back from a full-time job in the city. If you have been inside all day then take the opportunity to go outside and get some fresh air. Relaxation is as important after a day in a home office as it is after working elsewhere, so do not let yourself drift back to work in the evenings.

Managing a home based business has its challenges, but it also has many rewards. By following the tips we’ve listed above you should be able to run your business effectively and enjoy the freedom and autonomy that working from home supports.

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Hostigation: Awesome VPS Hosting at a Great Low Price

By Richard on February 20, 2012

hostigation Hostigation: Awesome VPS Hosting at a Great Low Price

This month you may have noticed an improvement in performance and speed of the website.  That’s because we upgraded our hosting.  My friend (and brother in law) found an awesome VPS hosting plan from Hostigation and recommended the service to me.  With his help, I was able to transfer Riches Corner to Hostigation’s VPS server without a hitch.

Hostigation offers unmanaged VPS hosting starting from $20 a year.  Check out their plans:

hostigation plans thumb Hostigation: Awesome VPS Hosting at a Great Low Price

They’re simply unbeatable!

My biggest debate was whether I wanted the $6 or the $10 a month plan.  I went with the $6 plan, which is still lower than what I was paying for a shared hosting service.  (I was previously with Hostgator, which I still recommend for shared hosting.  It’s still the best for the novice webmaster)

Hostigation comes with a great reputation and is considered one of the top ten low cost web hosting providers.  They’ve made a name for themselves by ensuring steady, reliable service for the servers and awesome support.  One of their policies is that they don’t over sell their hosting services.  It’s not uncommon to visit their site and find that they are out of stock momentarily.  Although, they get new stock in quickly, so it’s wise to check in every couple of days.  (They sell out really fast!)

This is actually a benefit as their servers won’t get overburdened by too many users.

The only disadvantage to their hosting services is that they keep the cost low by being completely unmanaged.  This won’t be a problem for someone with network administration or a computer background.  However, others will have to learn the nuts and bolts of setting up a web server.

If you are willing to set up and manage your own server, then you’ll love this service!

Since I transferred my site over, I ‘ve found that my page load speed has increased, my google page speed has improved, and my bounce rate has dropped drastically!

My google page speed rank has gone up to 68 from 33.  That’s double the improvement.

Here’s what my bounce rate looked like when I made the change:

 

bounce rate thumb Hostigation: Awesome VPS Hosting at a Great Low Price

Isn’t that just awesome!

Benefits of VPS Hosting vs. Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is a great option when you are just starting out.  Everything is managed for you and you really don’t need any technical expertise to get started.  The prices are kept low because you are sharing the server with thousands of other people.

While sharing does have the benefit of lowering your costs, the downside is that if someone on your server has a popular website, they can cause your service to slow down.  Some services try to limit that by throttling high resource users.  Of course that can affect you negatively as well if your site becomes popular.  Afterall, you always want your website operating at peak performance.

At some point, you want to upgrade so that you can ensure a resource availability and performance for your website.  That’s where VPS hosting may be a good option for you.

VPS hosting is one step down from having a dedicated server.  VPS hosting allows you to have your own dedicated allotment of resources on a server.  This way you get a guaranteed amount of server resources for your hosting needs.

With dedicated resources, you get a few benefits over shared hosting:

  • Stability – You are no longer affected by the traffic and activities of other people on your server.
  • Performance-  Your website’s performance is more stable as well.  Having dedicated resources ensures that your visitors get faster load times.
  • Dedicted Resources – You have a dedicated amount of RAM and CPU, as well as the disk space that you need.
  • Flexibility – You can use the operating system and control panel of your choice.  Also you have the ability to upgrade as your website grows.
  • Security – Your website’s security is your own.  You can secure your website to your own specifications without worry about someone else’s security holes on a shared server.

I’ve found that Hostigation has really come through in providing a great VPS service that offers all of these benefits at a really great price.

Final Thoughts

Unmanaged VPS hosting may not be for everyone.  Truthfully, if my friend didn’t help me out, I would have been hesitant to make the change.  However, now that I made the switch to Hostigation, I’m really impressed.  If you know how to do it or are willing to learn how to set up your own server, then I wouldn’t hesitate to take the plunge.  Heck, you can even outsource the setup!

It’s completely worth it!  You’ll save yourself some money and see an improvement in your website as well.  If you are considering upgrading your site to VPS hosting, I would definitely recommend Hostigation.

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Choosing The Right Business Phone System

By Neel on February 20, 2012

business phone Choosing The Right Business Phone System

Whether you are a small or large business, your telephone is the greatest link to customers, clients and suppliers. So it makes sense that you have the right business telephone system that suits your needs.

Whether you are a small or large business, your telephone is the greatest link to customers, clients and suppliers. So it makes sense that you have the right business phone systems that suit your everyday needs and will stand up to the rigours of modern communications and service expectations. The right system will improve efficiency and it is worth considering a range of different options, including those that have the ability to make use of VoIP technology.

Identify your needs

It is important to recognise just what your telephone system needs to handle before committing to a particular product or option. A lot of it will depend on the size of your business as well – a small business is going to have very different needs to a major corporation. Things to consider include how many users the system needs to support and where those users are (such as in a head office, branches or on the road). Also analyse the volume of simultaneous calls your business handles. This will help determine how many lines will be required – the last thing you want is for clients to receive an engaged signal or get no response at all.

What kind of phones are needed

There is a big choice of phones and features available for businesses today, so it makes sense that you pay for something your workforce will use – fancy features that have no place in your workplace will only cost you money. But in saying that, it is also important to plan for the future. It is cheaper to get the right phone system set up now rather than having to go through an upgrade process or down the track. Many workers need only a line out, the ability to transfer calls, and maybe voicemail. But there are plenty of other options that can enhance and streamline your business, such as hands-free operation, video calling, instant messaging and call management.

Cost versus calling

A factor that goes hand-in-hand with the number of users and volume of calls is calling patterns. Having an efficient telephone system is one thing, but paying through the nose for all of your calls is counter-productive. It is worth analysing your call patterns before committing to a phone system because it can have a significant influence on your final purchase. If you are just a small business who deals locally then there will be a host of cost-effective plans available. But bigger businesses that deal with local, national and international clients and suppliers will want to look at ways of cutting down on their call costs. It may be that in this case a phone system with a VoIP component will go a long way to reducing costs. It will also offer other features such as video calling and conferencing and instant messaging.

Choosing The Right Business Phone System

Talk to an expert

Small businesses with few employees will find setting up a system far easier than big corporations, so it pays to seek out advice from the experts. Research is an important part of this and while the number of options may seem overwhelming, a little knowledge can go a long way. Speaking to experts in telecommunications will help put your mind at ease, help you understand your needs and help put you on the right path to the most appropriate system.

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