Full time

The type of business you’ve decided on - or your individual circumstances - may imply that you want to take the plunge and jump straight in full time.

Benefits:

• You can dedicate all your time and enthusiasm to your enterprise.
• You can react to new developments as they arise.
• If your business depends on a gap in the market or a new idea, time will be of the essence.

Disadvantages:

• You will have to, whilst your business is developing, temporarily manage without any income.

If you decide to go into business full time you have a few options to help you over the initial days:

• Live off your spouse or partner’s income - however, it can be difficult to live off one salary if you’ve been running the household on two.
• Use your savings - if you’ve been saving up money aside for a rainy day, this could be it. Ask yourself if you have the appropriate amount of money to cover your living expenses and fund your business and for how long? Will you have anything to fall back on if your business fails?
• Get a loan - banks will often help new businesses with a loan. Nonetheless, they can be inflexible. You may have to pay back the loan immediately if your business fails, and there will be expensive penalties if you don’t make agreed repayments.
• Use your home as capital - if you have capital within your house, you could use it as security. However this may be risky considering that your house may drop in value and if you cannot keep up repayments, you risk losing it.
• Borrow money from family or friends - you can save a lot of money if your friends and family don’t charge you any interest. Although if your business doesn’t work out, it could put a big strain on your relationship with them.

Part time

If your business gives you the choice, you could choose to work on it part time, fitting it in with your current job or other responsibilities. Then, when the business is robust enough or circumstances change, you can move over to it entirely.

Benefits:

• You can still receive income while you’re getting your new business off the ground.
• Technology such as answer phones, the Internet and email make it possible for you to communicate out of hours when you’re not around due to working elsewhere. 
• It can make it easier for you to juggle your other commitments - such as home life - by allowing you to choose when you work.

Disadvantages:

• It can be difficult to handle the extra hours you need to put in.
• Putting in very long hours can be stressful and tiring.
• It could take much longer for your new business to take off.
• You’ll have to pay tax on both incomes if you continue with your other job.

Many people who start up their own business decide to work on a part-time basis to allow them to balance their home and working obligations.

Some people believe that the safest option is to continue with their current job whilst starting up their new business. Legally you don’t necessarily have to tell your employer that you are starting up a business, although there may be a clause in your contract preventing you from doing any other work.

You might want to ask your employer for more flexible working arrangements. These could involve reducing or re-arranging your existing working hours.

Tags: business

Do you want to start a small business but you do not know how? What are the different tips for staring a small business for someone who have no experience on business?

You may think it is hard to put up a new business, well it is sometimes very tricky but if you know the different guidelines for building a small business, your venture will be as easy as one, two, three. Do you want to know how? Read on and learn how you can handle and manage a small business.

The first thing you need to do is to plan for your small business. The plan includes the ideas and thoughts that you like to put into your business. Your planning must be strategic and systematic to start a business wisely. You also need to find a place where your business will be a success. Of course, if you want to start a small business of beach gadgets, you need to find a place near the beach so you will be available for those who search for it and can literally make your business a success. You need to find a place where most people are found and also a place where your business is related to.

United Kingdom is the best place for small businesses. If you will assess the lifestyle of the people living in United Kingdom, you will notice that most of the people prefer living a simple life with few efforts on living. They prefer buying instants other than wasting time on manual products.

If you are planning for a business in United Kingdom make sure that the people around the place needs the products you are going to sell. Never sell ice cream during winter or coats on summer. You should also know what products are needed on a particular season.

Of course, in every business you need a capital or money for business expenses. You can start by looking for banks or other financial institutions that will offer you loans. However, you will need to find those who offer low interest rates. Also, choose a bank that will help you with your expenses not to give more expenses for your business ventures.

Your family, acquaintances, friends and relatives can help you with your small business by lending you money and paying them after your business has accumulated income. It is better to borrow from these people because they do not ask for interests. However, you will need to pay for them if they need it.

The best source of financial assistance is government grants. United Kingdom got a lot of grants available for small businesses for a prospective entrepreneur such as yourself. They are willing to help those who want to start a small business but do not have enough money to invest in one. Grants that United Kingdom are giving away are from the funds allotted for the citizens who needs financial help on schooling, housing and putting up a small business.

However, you will need to apply for this type of privilege. Grants are open for everybody but it only qualifies only a few applicants. You will need to pass on their requirements and qualifications so you can receive the grants you need.

With the availability of the different agencies in the government of United Kingdom, you will have a problem in choosing which one is the best. Focus more on agencies that can qualify your application.

United Kingdom can be the best place for your small business. You only need to choose which type of business will be the most successful in this place. Of course, proper education is a major requirement as well.

Tags: business

When you’re dealing with customers, sometimes things can go wrong. It might be your fault, it might be their fault or it might be no-one’s fault — but if you didn’t make a contract, then you’ll all suffer.

Why Do I Need Contracts?

A contract gives you a sound legal base for your business, and some guarantee that you’re going to get paid for your work without you having to ask the customer for payment in advance. In the event of a dispute, the contract lays down what the agreement was so that you can point to it and say what was agreed. If you ever end up having to go to court (let’s hope you won’t), the contract is what the judge’s decision will be based on.

Without a contract, you leave yourself vulnerable and open to exploitation. Someone could claim that the terms they agreed with you were different to what you say they were, or that they never signed up for anything at all and so they won’t pay. It’s especially common to see big businesses mistreat small ones, thinking that they won’t have the knowledge or the money to do anything about it. Essentially, contracts take away your customers’ ability to hold non-payment over your head, and give you the ability to hold it over theirs instead.

Written and Verbal Contracts

It is important to point out the distinction in the law between a verbal (spoken) contract and a proper, written one. A verbal contract is binding in theory, but in practice can be very hard to prove. A written contract, on the other hand, is rock-solid proof of what you’re saying.

You might think that you’re never going to get into a dispute with your customers, but it’s all too common to find yourself in a little disagreement. They will often want to get you to do some “small” amount of extra work to finish the job or make it better, not realizing that doing so would completely obliterate your profit margin. For this reason, you should be very wary of doing anything with nothing but a verbal contract. On the other hand, if you were incautious or too trusting and only got a verbal contract, it could still go some way towards helping you, especially if there were witnesses.

Won’t It Be Expensive?

Written contracts don’t necessarily need to be formal contracts, which are drawn up by a lawyer with ‘contract’ written at the top and signed by both parties. These kinds of contracts are the most effective, but can be expensive to have produced, not to mention intimidating to customers. The most common kind of written contract, oddly enough, is a simple letter. If you send a customer a letter (or, indeed, an email) laying out your agreement before you start work, and they write back to agree to it, that is enough to qualify as a written contract, with most of the protections it affords. If you are doing high-value work for some clients, though, it could be worth the time and trouble of having your lawyer write a formal contract, or at least of doing it yourself and getting a lawyer to look it over. Formal contracts will give you more protection if the worst happens, and there’s nothing to stop you from making it a one-off expense only by re-using the same contract for multiple customers.

Contracts for Small Purchases: the Terms and Conditions

Obviously it would be silly to expect everyone who buys some $10 thing from you to sign a contract, or write back indicating their agreement to your terms. In this situation, you should have a statement of the ‘terms and conditions’ that your customer is agreeing to by buying from you, and they should have to tick some kind of box indicating their agreement before you send anything. Luckily, it isn’t usually so necessary to be paranoid about contract law with small purchases anyway, since customers will be paying you first and receiving the goods or services afterwards, not the other way around. If you plan to offer any kind of payment plan or other long-term agreement, of course, this should always be backed up with a signed contract.

Tags: business

One of the most ignored aspects of working at home is safety. Business offices go to all sorts of lengths to avoid any injury or harm to their workers (they don’t want to get sued, after all). Meanwhile, you might not even know that it’s possible to injure yourself with nothing more than office equipment. If you’re going to avoid a lot of pain in your future, you need to read up on home office safety now.

Your Chair

The chances are that you’re going to be sitting on your chair for quite a long time each day. If you have a bad chair, or you haven’t adjusted it properly, you could give yourself a back injury — and they’re painful, not to mention expensive to treat. When you’re choosing your chair, make sure you sit on it for a while in the shop, giving yourself a chance to get used to the way it feels, and be prepared to walk away if it starts to get uncomfortable quickly. Don’t pay a ridiculous amount, but don’t get the cheapest and worst thing in the shop, either.

Your Mouse and Keyboard

If you’re using a computer mouse a lot for your work or doing a lot of typing, you can give yourself some pretty nasty injuries. This is because doing the same thing over and over again can give you a repetitive strain injury (RSI), such as carpal tunnel syndrome or tendonitis. This is one of the most common problems amongst office workers, home workers included.

You might have an RSI if you notice pain, weakness and fatigue in your muscles. One of the most common symptoms is pain when you’re lying in bed. People tend to think that they must just be sleeping in an awkward position, or that they need a better bed or pillow, not realizing that their office equipment is to blame. If you think you might be an RSI sufferer, go and see your doctor. Massages tend to be the most effective treatment, when given by a trained therapist.

To protect yourself against RSI, there are a number of things you can do. You should take regular breaks from using your computer, and stop immediately if you start to feel any kind of pain. You may also wish to invest in an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, which are laid out differently to normal keyboards and mice in an effort to make them more comfortable and less dangerous to use.

Clean and Tidy

Silly as it might sound, the second most common problem amongst home office workers is that they make a mess. Your home office might become cluttered with wires, open drawers, and various objects all over the floor. It’s quite possible to trip and fall over all of these things, and if you walk around enough in a confined space then eventually you will. Do as much as you can to keep your home office uncluttered: always close drawers, keep wires in one corner of the room and don’t put anything on the floor.

Strangers in Your Home

An aspect of safety that many people don’t think of is the fact that you could be letting strangers into their home when you agree to meet clients there, and this can be risky for you and your family. You might be especially worried if there will be children at home with you while you’re working. The simple answer, of course, is to always meet new customers in a public place, until you know and trust them. Coffee places are good for this. As a bonus, you’ll inevitably look more professional if they don’t realize that you’re a home business, and having a coffee each gives you something to do during any lulls in conversation other than just sitting there and looking awkward.

First Aid Kits

Finally, one last note if you’re doing manual work: you really ought to have a first aid kit in your workshop, as well as one that you carry around with you. You really shouldn’t be doing anything physical as a business unless you’ve taken a first aid course — they’re quick, easy and inexpensive, so there’s no excuse. It could save your life someday, after all.

Tags: business

An often-neglected part of home business is the pricing of your services. You know what you can do, you know there’s a market for it, but do you know how much you can get away with charging, without putting the customers off? Here are a few tips to maximize your profit margin.

Find Out What Your Competitors Charge

Ring round some of your competitors (you might want to use a fake name), and find out what they’re charging for the services you offer. You can then make a price comparison table. If you’re working in an industry where price isn’t a big thing customers look at, you might charge around the average of your competitors’ prices. If price is a big factor in your industry, play aggressively — put your table in your advertising materials, and price yourself so you beat everyone on the list (you might not be able to do this in some industries, however).

Be aware, though, that you might not always want to be the cheapest out there. Somewhat strangely, you might find that you can take away a competitor’s business in some industries simply by moving into that sector and charging a higher price than they do for similar products. One of the biggest secrets of pricing is that people assume price means quality, and purchase accordingly. There’s jewelry out there, for example, that is priced at thousands of dollars but only really worth a few hundred — what people pay for, oddly enough, is the status that comes with buying something with such a high price.

An Easy Formula: Cost Plus Time Plus Margin

If you’d like to be more scientific about your pricing, here’s a way to do it. First, work out your costs. This is any materials that you use for your work, as well as your overheads, such as electricity, advertising, lawyer’s fees, and so on. Once you’re done, you should have figured out how much each product you offer costs you, before you include the price of your work. You should overestimate this number, but not by too much.

The next step is to factor in a charge for your time. Basically, work out how many hours it takes you to provide a product, and then work out the pricing so you’re getting a satisfactory hourly rate. It’s up to you what kind of rate to set for yourself — start at minimum wage, and then work out how each increase would affect the price. A good guide is how much you would expect to pay an employee to do the job for you if you ever expanded to the point where employees were needed.

This is also a good opportunity to see if there are any efficiency savings you could make: if there’s a service that would take two hours off the time needed for one product, and it would only cost you one hour’s pay to get that service, you should do it.

Finally, once you’ve added cost and time, you need to add in a margin. This should typically be about 30-50% of the price you’ve come up with so far. This money will be good for investing in expansion, paying taxes, and covering yourself against anything else that comes up.

Don’t Get Emotional About It

If you’re selling something that you’ve put a lot of work into — especially something that you’ve worked hard to make — you might feel that the market price doesn’t represent the value you feel it has. This is a terrible trap to fall into, as you’re very unlikely to ever be able to sell anything if you’ve priced it too highly out of emotional attachment. You need to accept ahead of time the kind of prices you’re going to get for things, and think of them as being worth that much.

Always Be Willing to Negotiate

You will get customers who want to negotiate with you over your prices. Play them at their own game. Make it look like you’re making silly negotiating errors so that they feel like they’re getting a really good deal. Just make sure that you know the minimum price you’re willing to take before you meet with them, and don’t take any less.

Tags: business