A few days ago I was talking to my mom about how she sometimes feels like a career change. “Can you think of anything else I could do instead?” she asked me curiously. I just stared at her for a bit before replying, “You do know what I do for a living, don’t you mom?”
One of the internet’s true wonders is that it allows people with little time, low start-up capital and minimal experience to create a business that would be impossible in the offline world.
And as Blog Tyrant grows I notice more and more stay-at-home moms subscribing and emailing me about how they can make an income while their kids are at school or asleep for that hallowed 30 minutes.
This post is dedicated to you.
The next 3,182 words are all about how stay-at-home moms can make good moneywith online businesses, blogs and websites. I hope you read this article and leave thinking that it is possible.
HELP: I would love it if the amazing Blog Tyrant community could drop by the comments section and leave any tips you can think of that would help stay-at-home moms fast track their blogging business. Think time saving. You could really help a new family out.
Not just for stay-at-home moms
Obviously this article is not just for stay at home moms. As I mentioned in the opener, my mom has a job that she really doesn’t like. It causes her a lot of stress and I’m told she often comes home with a massive headache and struggles to sleep at night. I often think that she, a passionate, creative and clever woman, would do extremely well running an online business.
Not for everyone either
And while this post is not just for the moms out there, I also have to warn that it is not for everyone. Some people do not have the material to make an online business work. Part of this article is going to be dedicated to discovering whether or not you think you could make it work. It is a very important question to ask yourself.
Why stay-at-home moms can still be successful business owners
I started this article after by being inspired by the sheer amount of moms who email me and subscribe to my list wanting to know how they can start, develop and grow and online business or profitable blog. Their quest for some independent financial freedom, while still devoting their whole life to their young kids, really touched me.
When I was born my mom quit her job as a teacher to stay home with my brother and me, but still continued to sell crafts and artwork at local fairs to earn a bit of cash. I’ll never forget going to those fairs with her and watching her earn all this pocket-money and then spend it mostly on us kids. I thought she was superwoman.
And that is why I believe stay-at-home moms are extremely good candidates for running successful online businesses: they have huge levels of discipline.
I started my online businesses when I was in high school. I’m now 25 and only just really understanding how to work a proper work day. The moms I know, on the other hand, just get it. The delegate authority well, arrange the daily tasks extremely naturally and create an automation in the household that just gets things done. Most of all, they utilize whatever time they have extremely efficiently. This might not be true of all moms but every single mother I know fits this description.
So can you make it work?
While I know that every mom has the qualities and ability to run an online business, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can make it work. Distinguishing between the two are very important. Can you:
Dedicate an allotted amount of time to the business every single day? Good business owners are consistent in their efforts. Does your lifestyle allow you do allocate a strict amount of time to the business each day? It might only be 30 minutes before bed.
Deal with failure? Dealing with failure is a massive part of being in business. Are you mentally tough enough to deal with failures, pick up the pieces and start again?
Generate concepts and carry them through? Are you able to generate new concepts and ideas and then have the stability to carry them all the way through to the end without getting distracted by life or other commitments?
Reinvest a portion of the money you make? One of the most important points. Can you set aside 20% to 40% of the money you make and reinvest it back in to the business? This can often be the difference between failure, a minor success and a very successful business.
If you just know that you can do all of these things then you are actually further along than you think. The hardest part of starting a business is often developing the qualities and discipline within yourself to make it work. If you have these skills then you are more than half way there.
Okay, so where do I start?
marnienterprises@gmail.comSometimes the hardest part is knowing where to start things off. You feel like you are ready to do something, to throw yourself into a new pursuit, but you aren’t sure how to kick off. I’m here to tell you that it isn’t that hard – you just need someone to point you in the right direction.
1. Start at the end
At least three times a week I get emails from people asking me how they can monetize their blog or website. Often I look at their sites and think how easy things would have been if they had just considered this at the beginning. And that is the important point here, start at the end. Before you jump in to your new blog or website you should think about exactly what will be the end product. Do this by considering things like:
What will I sell? What final product are your going to sell on your blog? Will it be your own product or someone else’s?
Who am I targeting? Are you targeting a specific group of people? Who are they? How big is that target audience?
Have I got the material? What are you going to do to get them to your site? If it is blog posts then do you have enough material to attract enough people to keep going?
Rather than just starting and hoping you find some direction down the track, you should begin by thinking very carefully about what you will sell, to whom and how. This is very important.
2. Stay exclusively with your passions
The second most important thing to remember is that you need to stay exclusively with your passions. Whether you start a blog or a product website or some other form of online business you need to make sure it is about something you love.
This advice can often seem really wishy washy but I wish someone had hammered it in to me as a young lad. The reason is simple: if you start an online business that you don’t loveyou will soon give up.
Let’s be clear here. Running an online business can often be tiring and frustrating. Sometimes you have to get up and instead of checking your bank balance you need to find out why your servers have been down all night. Or instead of looking at your new email subscribers you find that your account has been suspended. And if you are tired from being up all night with your baby or looking after the troops you will soon throw it away.
Start at the end but don’t start at all unless you love it. Think carefully about something you are passionate about, something you know and something you can see yourself doing every single day. That is a sure-fire way to make sure you succeed through the tougher times.
3. But are my passions popular enough?
A very common question that new website owners or bloggers ask is whether or not enough people are interested in what they want to write about. And the answer is, 95% of the time, a resounding yes. Why? Because Google is sending so much traffic to every little corner of the world. If you collect bark pieces that look like Elvis you can bet there are other who want to connect with you.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t do some solid and comprehensive research in to the target market first. You should. All I am saying is that you should try and make your passions fit in to a business and not try and turn a boring business into a passion. It won’t work.
The different ways stay-at-home moms can make money online
What I want to do now is go through a few of the main ways that moms can make good money online. By no means is this an exhaustive list. Rather, what I have done is thought about the most efficient and time saving ways that moms can explore. The idea is to get online for 30 minutes to one hour a day and make some good money after a few months.
1. Product review sites and blogs
The first online business model I want to talk about is product review sites and blogs. This is a fantastic way to gradually build up an income over the weeks, months and years. A good portion of my residual income comes from this method.
How does it work?
Basically what you are doing is setting up small mini-sites or blogs that are focused on reviewing a type of product or products that fall within a particular category. For example, if you know a lot about prams you might want to start a pram review site where you look at all the different prams that get released and review them based on common features like:
Look and feel
Materials
Safety
Price range
Etc.
You would be surprised at how many different products you know about. You don’t really even need to try each product once you know what you are looking for. For example, if a fantastic new pram comes out you can look at a bunch of different reviews on Amazon.com and the other big websites and base your review around what other people are saying.
How does it make money?
After a while you are going to find that Google indexes your posts and you will be getting visitors who are interested in your reviews. Because you have focused your articles on reviewing products you will find that your visitors are all ready to buy – they are in a shopping mentality. For this reason you can make money with:
Amazon.com links and stores Amazon pays a commission for every visitor you send that buys something, even if it isn’t the actual product you sent them to. For example, if you have reviewed a new pram and have a link to that pram so people can buy it on Amazon but instead they buy a new Kindle then you will make money on the Kindle.
Adsense Although I never really advise people to use Adsense, product sites are one place where it can work quite well. By placing Adsense ads at the bottom and top of each product you review you can get highly relevant ads that pay as much as $1 to $5 every time someone clicks them. This can equate to several thousand a month, especially if you have many reviews or review sites.
Advertising If your review site gets big enough you might start attracting real world advertisers that want to be associated with your store. I know of several camera review blogs who get paid $2,000 a month to place a tiny advert at the top of their sidebar.
As you create more content and review more products you will find that the income gradually increases and increases. This is a trickle down effect where it starts off slow and builds up as you go.
2. Expert sites and blogs
The second type of model I want to talk to you about is an expert site. This is very similar to what I do at Blog Tyrant and is a wonderful way to develop a long lasting and sustainable source of income with just a little bit of work each day.
How does it work?
With an expert site you are basically writing about a particular topic that you are an expert in. For example, if you went to College and did a marketing degree you might want to start a blog about marketing in an area you are interested in. Or if you cook the most incredible dinners you could start photographing them and sharing recipes, ideas and cooking tips.
The thing about expert blogs and websites is you can make them about really narrow topics as long as you put your own spin on it. For example, I know there are blogs out there which are solely about walking. They discuss shoes, walking tracks, iPod playlists, funny walking stories, different dog leads, etc. With even a very narrow topic you can find a myriad of things to write about. And if you put a personal touch on it you will find that other people are really interested.
How does it make money?
The interesting thing about expert blogs is that you can make money with all the same methods as the review sites except you now have a second and much more powerful method to tap in to – email marketing. Sounds confusing I know but it really isn’t. It is an extremely simple, hassle-free way to make a long term income that can drastically change your life.
Here’s how it works:
Start an expert blog Get your own domain and web host and start an expert blog as your “home base” for making an income in whatever form it might take.
Sign up for Aweber and install it on your blog Aweber is an email service that allows you to capture people’s email addresses and then send them out your blog posts and follow up email automatically. Growing this list the main aim of your expert site.
Grow a community The purpose of the blog is to grow an active community of like-minded people who love your work. If you can be perceived as an authority you will have a good chance at making a long term income. Make sure you read this post on developing trust.
Connect with other bloggers In order to expand your reach you should start writing high quality guest posts and then submitting them to other bloggers in your niche. This is a great way to get new visitors to your site.
Launch a product The final stage is to launch a product to your readers and email subscribers. If you have a list of a few thousand people that love your work you will be able to promote services and products to them quite easily. This can be a very complicated process so make sure yousubscribe to my list because I am going to be sharing some tips and secrets in this area very soon.
The wonderful thing about this style of blog is that it eventually gains some momentum of its own. Many of the larger blogs found that after about a year they could step back and let other people (guest posters, community, etc.) take care of most of the promotion and content. It is hard in the beginning but does gain traction over time.
3. A journey blog
The final blog model I want to discuss is all about sharing your journey with the world. It is very similar to an expert site except that here you are sharing your experience along the way, as you do it, as opposed to positioning yourself as an expert. This style of blog has some very distinct advantages:
It is easier These are easier posts to write because you don’t have to research and make sure everything is correct. You just write about your experience.
You can be yourself While you should always be yourself, when you are sharing a journey you can write straight from the heart and just let other people become branded to your style. It is a very natural platform.
It is easier to get a community If your journey blog is centered around a particular topic (and it should be) you will find that people in that niche naturally become quite loyal to you. For example, if you have just got braces and start writing about that journey you will find a lot of sympathetic braces-owners out there who want to read what your have to say.
How does it make money?
This type of site typically does well from growing an email list and the marketing related products to that list. These are called verticals.
For example, if you have a blog about your new pet Beagle you can write emails to your list promoting products like Beagle-proof toys, weight loss food and high quality training guides. As long as you are adding value to your readers’ lives you will find that they can be quite active purchasers.
Some simple but inspiring maths
The last thing I want to leave you with is some very simple maths. The idea of this post was not to give you a complete step by step tutorial but rather to inspire you with a few ideas and motivate you to get moving. This simple maths always helps me get through the tough days.
1. Set up costs
Set up costs for an online business are close to zero.
For less than $60 you can start your own professional blog that can, after a few months, earn you a consistent amount of money. This is a massive difference to doing anything in the offline world.
Why Blue Host? The reason I recommend Blue Host as your first blogging host is because they have 24/7 LIVE SUPPORT that will help you install WordPress and get started. That takes a lot of stress out of it all.
Still confused about how the set up works? I made a short video that attempts to explain how it all fits together.
2. Potential earnings
Now let’s take a look at some potential earnings from an expert style blog like Blog Tyrant.
Get 100 visitors per day (very easy after two or three months)
Convert 5% of visitors into email subscribers = 1825 subscribers per year.
Sell an eBook for $37 to 20% of your list = $13,505 in your first year.
To be honest these numbers are very conservative because if you write a lot of articles on a consistent basis there is a good chance you will get a lot more subscribers. Blog Tyrant, for example, is far far ahead of this monetary schedule after only a few months.
Do you know anyone or anything?
If you know any moms or moms-to-be who might like this article I would really appreciate if you emailed it to them.
Long before the internet, retail was well established as one of the most competitive industries to enter. The internet has given new entrepreneurs the ability to launch their business with more ease, but it can still be difficult to find a foothold.
Even though there are tens of thousands of retail websites online, a few major brands continue to dominate, much like traditional high street retail. By some distance, Amazon is the largest online retailer of all.
The simple truth is that very few companies will ever be able to compete with Amazon. So why bother? The best thing that you can do if you want to start an online retail business from home is to get involved with the Amazon brand and turn it to your advantage.
Read on to learn the basics of getting up and running with your own Amazon business. You’ll find out that by treating Amazon as an ally, not a rival, you too can start earning a great living from home.
Why Start An Amazon Business?
Understanding how you should sell products in the retail environment means understanding what customers look for when they buy them.
Of course, every customer looks for the highest quality products at the lowest possible prices. If you can offer something truly innovative, or enter an existing sector with lower prices, you can certainly attract a large amount of interest in your business.
But this interest is only worthwhile if it turns into revenue. Unfortunately, this means a big leap of confidence for your visitors.
Online security is better than ever, but retail trust is about far more than stolen credit cards. In fact, it can take years for potential customers to learn that you offer good products, you package them well, you dispatch them on time and you follow up with great customer service.
Amazon is the biggest online retailer because it is a brand that customers trust. If you’re selling on Amazon, they’ll trust you too.
How Does Selling On Amazon Work?
First, you need to sign up for a seller account with Amazon. There are two types of account available.
The standard Basic Seller Account is free, and offered to those retailers that sell less than 35 items a month. Products can be listed in up to 20 different categories, and you will simply pay a fee for each product sold. A significant limitation, though, is that you can only sell products that are already for sale on Amazon.
As your business grows, you may want to upgrade to a Pro Seller Account. This type of account is charged at £25 per month, but includes the ability to create new products, and sell them across up to 25 different categories.
For more information on the types of account available, visit amazon.co.uk/services
What Can You Sell On Amazon?
As with any retail business, the first step in successful Amazon selling is deciding on your products. Amazon now has categories for just about anything. Generally, you have three types of products that you can sell on Amazon – which one is right for you?
Products That You Make – If you have a great product idea, or even just a talent for creating new things, your products could fill a niche on Amazon. With little or no competition, these kinds of products are potentially lucrative – but it’s incredibly difficult to be original! Products From Wholesalers – The traditional retail business model, you could source products from wholesalers or manufacturers and sell them with a mark-up on Amazon. But beware – having stock shipped to your home address usually means buying high volumes of stock in advance! If you plan to use this method, consider drop shipping, where stock is dispatched directly from the wholesaler. Used Goods – From second-hand books to DVDs, many sellers earn a living from reselling used goods. When a customer searches Amazon for a product, they will see your more affordable used version.
The best kind of product for you will depend on your talents, your goals, and the kind of products that you have access too. It’s great advice to simply make a choice – spend less time considering your first products and more time working on promoting your Amazon business.
One Amazon seller, Tedric P, did exactly this. He started out by selling video games and consoles that he would buy from high street retailers that were shutting down their stores. Now, his products cover numerous categories and he is earning 30% more than he was in his full-time job!
Choose Your Preferred Order Fulfilment Method
When you have selected your products, it is time to think about how you will get these products to your customers. Never rush head-first into selling without getting a clear idea of how the entire process will work.
When you start selling on Amazon, you have a range of options for fulfilment. Each has its own advantages and your choice will depend on the kind of products you are selling.
First, you can keep your business in-house and send out products yourself. This adds to your own workload, but in the early days of your work-from-home business is usually the best method. Another great advantage of keeping distribution in-house is that you can retain control of your orders, reduce your costs, and even include promotional materials with your packages.
Alternatively, you could partner with Amazon to have them dispatch orders on your behalf. Fulfilment By Amazon, or FBA, is a service provided by the company that is designed to reduce your workload and improve the experience of customers. If you sign up for FBA, you will be asked to send your inventory of stock to Amazon, who will store it for you. Then, when an order is placed, Amazon take care of sending your products – customers can even combine your products with the rest of their Amazon order, or use services such as Amazon Prime for fast shipping.
Finally, you may be able to reach an agreement with your wholesaler or manufacturer if you have one. Using a process called drop shipping, you can concentrate your attention on promoting products and delivering great customer service. All you need to do is notify the wholesaler or manufacturer when an order has been placed, and they will take care of sending it on your behalf. A drop shipping agreement is also a great way to secure arrangements with wholesalers without buying large quantities of stock in advance.
How To Make Your Amazon Business A Success
Starting your Amazon retail business is easy. Making it successful is not! As with any retail venture, promotion is everything. Amazon includes a number of features to help you promote your products, but there is a lot that you will need to do for yourself. Here are three tips to get you started:
1. Consider How You Write Product Listings
A product description is a difficult thing to write. It must convey useful information while persuading, enticing and attracting your potential customers. As you write, ask yourself what your customers would want to know, and how the product can help them. Does it make them look great? Does it save them time? Write benefits-driven product listings that persuade customers to take action.
2. Encourage Activity Around Your Listings
Take a look at any product available on Amazon and you will see product ratings and reviews. These are vital assets for your work-from-home business.
Ideally, your products will be so good, and your service so amazing, that customers will naturally flock to Amazon to leave a message. But don’t rely on that – always be proactive.
You could email your existing customers to ask for their reviews. You could offer freebies to established bloggers within your sector to encourage them to link to your product and review it. You could even get your friends and family to post reviews themselves. Every review lends credibility to your listing but, more importantly, can lead you to the holy grail of Amazon – The Buy Box.
3. Get In The Buy Box
The real results from Amazon selling come from getting yourself into the Buy Box. This is a complex, almost impossible task, but one that you should always strive for.
The Amazon Buy Box is the big ‘Add To Cart’ button that appears on the right hand side of every product listing. For the average user, it is the only place that they will click when they decide that they are ready to buy. If you sell a product that Amazon themselves offer, they will always remain in the Buy Box. But if you don’t, you should work hard to get yourself there.
Amazon uses a complex algorithm to decide which companies are in the Buy Box, and the details of this have never been revealed. Essentially, there is only one trick – to be the best retailer possible.
Give great service. Send shipments instantly. Use Fulfilment By Amazon so that Amazon can be confident that products will be dispatched correctly. Reduce your prices and be the most competitive seller on the site. By doing all of these things, there is a chance that you could find yourself in this lucrative and in-demand position.
The Secret Of Online Retail With Amazon
All too often, people venture online to find out big secrets about their chosen work-at-home profession. The reality is, though, that there is only one thing that you need to do to create a successful Amazon retail business: do everything that you would do if you opened a high street store.
I opened this article by saying that high street retail was competitive. The internet is exactly the same, if not more competitive. So be discerning with your products, be proactive with your promotion and be unrivalled in your sector. If you can do all of those things, a successful Amazon business is just a matter of time.
Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother of three, PR Consultant and Entrepreneur
Like many women on most days I seem to have to juggle all my roles. On other days just three or four. This is why I founded Homeforbusiness. I recognise what it takes to be a working Mum and how to set up an online business from home with all ‘pulls’ of everyday family life and work.
I have always been entrepreneurial and set up by first corporate communications company, EMA Productions, in my 30s working with big corporate clients such as Texaco, Rank and Boots. Whilst it was challenging and hard work, it was quickly successful. I could focus solely on winning contracts and meeting the clients needs without family distractions and with the support of a fantastic team and office.
I feel very passionate about HomeforBusiness as I believe that lots of people want to create a better work/life balance and work from home, either setting up a new business or working as a freelancer. There are hundreds of genuine opportunities for people but often people do not know how to start. I want HomeforBusiness to empower anyone who wants to work from home profitably. With a panel of guest experts I will share share genuine business opportunities, business ideas, advice on running a business, online marketing, and health and wellbeing tips. I have also put together my favourite free online resources.
Many of us want to work flexibly from home - but can you actually earn a living from the get-rich-quick schemes flooding your inbox? Ben Sillis spent a week online finding out
Can you make real money from the virtual world?
Demand for flexible working hours is growing. The internet is allowing more people to break out of their nine-to-five routines, and the number of homeworkers has soared 16% this year, according to a BT report published last month. What's the reason for this rise? Kindly bosses letting more staff work out of the office, or gullible mugs answering internet ads and spam emails promising easy money?
It can be difficult to distinguish between the legitimate businesses operations and the scams: the Office of Fair Trading estimates that £70m is lost to fraudulent work-at-home schemes in the UK each year. I decided to spend a week seeing how much I could earn from the comfort of my home. Day 1: E-business
Googling "make money online" churns out some choice offers (earn "£20K+ a month"), and if you're looking for a steady stream of income, several sites offer information on how to set up a killer e-business in a day - even if they do seem highly suspect.
I settle with one prominent, well produced site, therichjerk.com, after a friend forwards the $10 e-book it sells. I expected it to be useless rather than deeply cynical - "Don't forget, promoting products in industries well known for fraud is always a good idea" - and there's something rather pyramid scheme-like about the advice it provides, which is basically to set up your own how-to-get-rich website.
Still, it has definitely worked for the author, so I launch my own blog directing people towards several money-making scams. Predictably, the book understates how hard it is to drive traffic to a website without quality content - I hoped for a "If you build it, they will come" scenario - and after 24 hours, I got zero hits, zero click-throughs and zero commissions. Somehow I don't think any amount of work will kickstart this, but if you don't have any ethics, you could have made a killing on this eight years ago. Shame I don't have any initiative. Running total: £0.00 Day 2: Freelance bidding sites
The internet has completely changed the way freelance workers operate, including how they get commissioned. Sites such as peopleperhour.com and elance.com connect projects with providers all over the world - but of course, the web has also made it easier for everyone else to muscle in too, as I find out when bidding for writing jobs.
Unlike sensible auctions, here the object is to undercut one another, with the winner usually being the one who's prepared to do a job for the least money. I browse through the jobs on peopleperhour. Men's lifestyle writing required? I can do that. Budget range: £500-700. I play them at their own game and offer to do the job for £400. I don't win, and nor do I get the lucrative contract to write press releases about double-glazing either.
No freelances I have spoken to have had a positive experience with bidding sites, and most have given up the idea after being undercut one too many times by an IT whizz in India. It's no small wonder when the starting prices are a pittance too: one project on getafreelancer.com asks for 1,000 blog posts for $250, while another has a going rate of $7 for every 500 words. I can't bid here; I'm far too used to having a minimum wage in place. Running total: £0.00 Day 3: Online surveys
Success! I've struck gold. Or £4.75 to be precise, though it's taken more than a few hours. Customer survey websites offer a slow and simple method to earn some pocket money online. There are scores of them, offering everything from prize draws and vouchers to the princely sum of £2 for giving your two cents - so long as your two cents is agree, not sure or disagree, anyway. Even pollsters Yougov and Ipsos are taking the nation's temperature this way, handing down some of their commission to you at the same time.
Signing on for two schemes earns me £4 straight away, while a survey for valuedopinions.co.uk bags an extra 75p. Another survey has a bounty of £2, but after a few questions, it turns out I don't fit the demographic and I'm banned from answering it.
So what's the catch? The sites only pay out once you've reached a high target of £50 or so, and given that I'm only offered three surveys during the entire week, that could take some time. I'm still counting this one though. Running total: £4.75 Day 4: Posting on forums
This seemed like a winner before I started. The idea that new websites needed to pay people to post to populate their forums and get the ball rolling seemed a logical one. One site, paidpostingtools.com, states that it vets its contributors beforehand for literacy and general common sense, but after jumping through far too many hoops (post 15 times on a supposedly unrelated forum) and then hearing nothing from them ever again, or any other similar operations, I become highly suspicious.
Trying to trace anyone in the real world who has actually made money from these schemes proves impossible, so I turn to a pay-to-blog site, PayPerPost.com, which is actually operational. Although the site insists you disclose that you're on its payroll, it's widely hated online, with high profile bloggers such as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch waging war on it. Sadly, like the dodgy e-business I tried, it also requires you to have a blog with steady traffic in place, and since only pitying friends and relatives have gone to mine, I'm not eligible for any contracts.
What I don't realise until after I've signed up and slapped their advertising badge on my site is that PayPerPost has been blacklisted by Google, with any sites opting into the scheme having its all-important page rank removed - making PayPerPost traceable only by the handful of web users who don't search with Google. Zero again. Running total: £4.75 Day 5: Poker
Ignore those banners telling you how to make £500 in 15 minutes at online casinos - they're fakes set up by shady casinos themselves. The only way is to hit the virtual floor and play for real. Al McClenahan, a graduate from Cricklewood, London, funded a year out entirely by playing poker online, averaging about £1,800 a month in winnings. He gives me some tips to try and max out my earnings. "Maths and patience are key," he reveals. "There's generally a correct thing to do."
Taking his advice to steer clear of Scandinavians ("very good, very aggressive"), I take a seat at a low stakes Texas Hold'em table at PokerStars with my £4.75. Things start well, and I even scoop $1.40 with my first hand, but I'm definitely one of the chumps semi-professionals make a sum off. Mangoman1000 keeps beating me every time I have a good hand, and I win far fewer times than there are players. I call it quits after a full house, leaving me with $6.06, which converts to £3.51. For the experience, poker is definitely the best way to make some extra cash at least, but unfortunately to get that experience you'll have to lose a lot first. Grand total: £3.51
Having made just shrapnel after a week's work, I speak to Tony Neate, managing director at Get Safe Online, a Home Office-sponsored advice organisation, about where I went wrong. Are others trying to make money the same way? "Definitely," he agrees. "People are feeling a bit of a crunch happening, and are looking around more for money."
So how can they succeed where I've failed, and sort the scams from the real opportunities? Neate is an ex-policeman specialising in hi-tech crime, but his advice is simple: update your common sense for the digital age. "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," he says. "Be aware: they can be very engaging and sound very genuine. Look for a landline telephone number and a physical address." Follow that advice, and who knows? You might even start earning the cost of your broadband bill each month. Possibly.
Many people have explained what one can learn from Steve Jobs. Guy Kawasaki was there with Jobs, launching the Macintosh and absorbing everything he could from Jobs' singular collection of talents. Here's Kawasaki's list of the top 12 lessons he learned from Steve Jobs.
1. Experts are clueless Experts—journalists, analysts, consultants, bankers, and gurus can’t “do” so they “advise.” They can tell you what is wrong with your product, but they cannot make a great one. They can tell you how to sell something, but they cannot sell it themselves. They can tell you how to create great teams, but they only manage a secretary. For example, the experts told us that the two biggest shortcomings of Macintosh in the mid 1980s were the lack of a daisy-wheel printer driver and Lotus 1-2-3; another advice gem from the experts was to buy Compaq. Hear what experts say, but don’t always listen to them. 2. Customers cannot tell you what they need “Apple market research” is an oxymoron. The Apple focus group was the right hemisphere of Steve’s brain talking to the left one. If you ask customers what they want, they will tell you, “Better, faster, and cheaper”—that is, better sameness, not revolutionary change. They can describe their desires only in terms of what they are already using—around the time of the introduction of Macintosh, all that people said they wanted was a better, faster, and cheaper MS-DOS machine. The richest vein for tech startups is creating the product that you want to use—that’s what Steve and Woz did.
3. Jump to the next curve Big wins happen when you go beyond better sameness. The best daisy-wheel printer companies were introducing new fonts in more sizes. Apple introduced the next curve: laser printing. Think of ice harvesters, ice factories, and refrigerator companies. Ice 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Are you still harvesting ice during the winter from a frozen pond?
4. The biggest challenges beget best work I lived in fear that Steve would tell me that I, or my work, was crap. In public. This fear was a big challenge. Competing with IBM and then Microsoft was a big challenge. Changing the world was a big challenge. I, and Apple employees before me and after me, did our best work because we had to do our best work to meet the big challenges.
5. Design counts Steve drove people nuts with his design demands—some shades of black weren’t black enough. Mere mortals think that black is black, and that a trash can is a trash can. Steve was a perfectionist, and he was right: some people care about design and many people at least sense it. Maybe not everyone, but the important ones.
6. You can’t go wrong with big graphics and big fonts Take a look at Steve’s slides. The font is 60 points. There’s usually one big screenshot or graphic. Look at other tech speaker’s slides—even the ones who have seen Steve in action. The font is 8 points, and there are no graphics. So many people say that Steve was the world’s greatest product introduction guy. Don’t you wonder why more people don’t copy his style? 7. Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence When Apple first shipped the iPhone there was no such thing as apps. Apps, Steve decreed, were a bad thing because you never know what they could be doing to your phone. Safari Web apps were the way to go until six months later when Steve decided, or someone convinced him, that apps were the way to go—but of course. Duh! Apple came a long way in a short time from Safari Web apps to “there’s an app for that.” 8. “Value” is different from “price” Woe unto you if you decide everything based on price. Even more woe unto you if you compete solely on price. Price is not all that matters—what is important, at least to some people, is value. And value takes into account training, support, and the intrinsic joy of using the best tool that’s made. It’s pretty safe to say that no one buys Apple products because of their low price. 9. A players hire A+ players Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players—that is people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly—my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It’s clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called “the bozo explosion” to happen in your organization. 10. Real CEOs demo Steve Jobs could demo a 'Pod, 'Pad, 'Phone, and Mac two to three times a year with millions of people watching, why is it that many CEOs call on their vice president of engineering to do a product demo? Maybe it’s to show that there’s a team effort in play. Maybe. It’s more likely that the CEO doesn’t understand what his/her company is making well enough to explain it. How pathetic is that? 11. Real CEOs ship For all his perfectionism, Steve could ship. Maybe the product wasn’t perfect every time, but it was almost always great enough to go. The lesson is that Steve wasn’t tinkering for the sake of tinkering—he had a goal: shipping and achieving worldwide domination of existing markets or creation of new markets. Apple is an engineering-centric company, not a research-centric one. Which would you rather be: Apple or Xerox PARC? Unique + Valuable = Has a market 12. Marketing boils down to providing unique value Think of a two-by-two matrix. The vertical axis measures how your product differs from the competition. The horizontal axis measures the value of your product. Bottom right: valuable but not unique—you’ll have to compete on price. Top left: unique but not valuable—you’ll own a market that doesn’t exist. Bottom left: not unique and not valuable—you’re a bozo. Top right: unique and valuable—this is where you make margin, money, and history. For example, the iPod was unique and valuable because it was the only way to legally, inexpensively, and easily download music from the six biggest record labels. Bonus: Some things need to be believed to be seen. When you are jumping curves, defying/ignoring the experts, facing off against big challenges, obsessing about design, and focusing on unique value, you will need to convince people to believe in what you are doing in order to see your efforts come to fruition. People needed to believe in Macintosh to see it become real. Ditto for the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Not everyone will believe—that’s OK. But the starting point of changing the world is changing a few minds. This is the greatest lesson of all that I learned from Steve. May he rest in peace knowing how much he changed the world.
The number of people working from
home has risen to its highest level since records began, according to the Office
for National Statistics (ONS).
There were 4.2 million UK home workers in the first three months of 2014,
amounting to 13.9% of the workforce.
The ONS said that was the highest proportion since measurements started in
1998.
But the TUC said too many UK bosses still did not trust staff to work from
home and forced them into the office.
The
figures include those who work at home, and those who use their home as a
base, but work in different places.
About 1.5 million actually work in their home, or in studios or workshops in
the grounds.
Nearly double that number - 2.7 million - say they work from home, but travel
on a frequent basis to meet customers elsewhere. Well-paid
The proportion of home workers has risen slowly, from 11.1% in 1998.
It was in the 1990s that many big companies - such as BT - began encouraging
staff to work from home if they could.
But the TUC believes many companies have failed to embrace home-working on a
large enough scale.
"Too many bosses still don't trust staff to work from home and instead force
them to trudge into the office so they can keep an eye on them," said Frances
O'Grady, the TUC's general secretary.
"Employers' attitudes to new working practices must change to make a much
better use of modern technology in all workplaces," she said.
But according to the ONS analysis, the majority of people working from home
are self-employed.
In all, 63% regarded themselves as self-employed, compared to 34% who were
employed by a company or organisation.
Home workers are also likely to be well-paid and highly skilled.
Just under 15% of home workers are managers or senior officials, while 35%
are professionals.
Median wages are £13.23 an hour, compared with £10.50 an hour for other
workers.
. “Can you think of anything else I could do instead?” she asked me curiously. I just stared at her for a bit before replying, “You do know what I do for a living, don’t you mom?”
