Finances

Self-Employed? Here’s How To Boost Your Credit Score

May 18, 2023May 19, 2023 JayneLeave a comment

Being self-employed is fantastic because you are the boss, and you decide when to work, whom you work for, and how much you earn while controlling every aspect of your business.

However, the only downside to being self-employed is that financial institutions hesitate to lend you money. Why? The answer is simple: they don’t see self-employed people as having a stable income and, thus, are more likely to default on their obligations.

Thankfully you can boost your chances of getting loans, mortgages, and credit cards through a few simple concepts and tips. Here’s what you need to do:

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Fun Ways to Make Money Without Huge Investment

March 10, 2020August 5, 2020 JayneLeave a comment

While many of us love the daily routine of having a set place of work and defined working hours, for others, having a flexible way to make money is the only way they can work around their family. Obviously, we’d all love to be able to run successful, and more importantly, profitable businesses, but most businesses require some form of investment to get up and running, and that’s not always available. With this in mind, I thought I’d take a look at some ways that you can make money without needing to make a huge investment first.

Personalised Gifts

There are companies which allow you to make custom-made gifts and merchandise to order. Dropshipping is becoming a really popular way for people to make money and basically just allows you to act as the middle-man between customers who want things and companies who make them. You don’t pay for anything until someone has ordered it from you and the potential to make money is pretty decent.

Blogging

A lot of bloggers aren’t that open about how they make money, but it’s simple. When you start a blog, your website starts to gain “authority” from Google. In time, this authority will make you valuable to other websites if you link to them. SEO companies will pay you to post links on your site and sometimes companies will send you items to review and write about, which you can either keep or sell.

Write an eBook/Course

Do you have a particular skill that would be valuable to other people? It could be anything; writing, gardening, baking, parenting, car mechanics – if you’re enough of an expert to teach other people then writing and selling an ebook or online course could be a lucrative way to make money. Some publishers ebooks will tell you that there’s no money to be made without a significant investment, but this isn’t always the case. It’s also what’s known as “passive income” because once it’s done, you just have to sell it and thee things often simmer quietly in the background.

Virtual Assistant

If you have good admin or organisational skills, becoming a Virtual Assistant (VA) will allow you to ue this skills from your own home. A VA does everything that PA or admin assistant does, but virtually. You’ll often have a weekly Skype call with your clients to see what they need you to do that week, and you’ll usually share documnts through something like Google Docs so that everyone has access to the work being done.

Sell Photos

If you’re a decent photographer and already have a good camera, selling stock imagery online could be another good way to make cash. There are number of big sites like Unsplash, ShutterStock, Fotolia, iStockPhoto and Photobucket where you can submit your photos. Whenever a customer wants to purchase your photos, you will get paid as per the price you fix and the best part is, you can get paid multiple time for the same photos.

Business · Work

Work and Home – Five Ways to Keep Them Separate

September 22, 2019 Jayne2 Comments

How to Separate Home and Work Life — Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

As someone who works from home, I’d be the first to say that there are a lot of pros to the arrangement. I get to work in a familiar environment, Maureen the Pup doesn’t have to be left by herself and I get to dictate my own hours (and eat lunch whenever I want!). However, there are also downsides, and it can be difficult to create separation between home and work life – I say this as I sit here typing on a Sunday afternoon, between cooking dinner and doing loads of laundry!

There are, however, ways to ensure that work and home don’t bleed together – here are a few of them:

Invest in Office Space

This might seem counterproductive if you want the freedom of self-employment, but there are lots of small office spaces where you can work, distraction free, which don’t cost a fortune. Click Offices London guide can help you to find serviced office space in the City, which will fit your budget and help you to look more professional to your clients.

Set Work Hours

I’m very guilty of taking work at a moments notice, which means working at times when I should be with family. Set yourself hours in which you’ll accept work and don’t do anything outside of this. You could even set yourself an out of hours notification for your emails so that clients won’t expect to hear back from you until the next day. It can be daunting, thinking about losing work, but setting parameters like this is good for everyone.

Ditch the Work Phone

For those of us with work phones, consider implementing a ‘no phone’ policy at home. There’s nothing worse than a fun time with the family being spoilt by a call from work about something that could wait till Monday. Of course, there are some exceptions to this but in most cases, the job can wait till you’re on the clock.

Delegate as Much Work as Possible.

If you have others that work with or for you, make sure to assign a reasonable amount of tasks to them, instead of trying to do everything yourself. Give your assistant or team members tasks that are lower on your priority list, but that you can trust them to accomplish. You may also think about assigning tasks or activities that will build and enhance their skills.

Keep Your Social Media Separate

If you’d like to separate your work relationships from your personal ones, it’s a good idea to keep them separate online as well. The easiest way to avoid overlap is to use different social networking sites for different purposes. For example, Twitter and LinkedIn are excellent tools for developing your professional network, whereas Facebook is often better suited to sharing photos and news with your family and close friends. If your business page is linked to your profile, there’s temptation to answer questions doing downtime, but you should try to keep notifications off at weekends, at the very least.

Work

Starting Your Own Business as a Stay at Home Mum

July 30, 2018 Jayne1 Comment

Being a stay at home mum can seem like a full-time job. Sometimes, though, you want or need a paying job alongside minding your own children. Luckily, you don’t have to give up being a stay at home mum to have a job.

Instead, you could always try starting your own business as a stay at home mum. You’d be surprised how many options you have when you are trying to choose what business model is best for you. Here, we will look at just 7 options to help you get inspired.

1. Child Care Service

If you don’t mind watching more children than just your own during the day, you could always start a child care service. After all, you already have things that a child around the age of yours or younger would need such as toys or sippy cups so you won’t incur too many starting costs.

You can make a lot of money off of this idea because there are plenty of mums and dads that have to work during the day. With this business model, you aren’t dependent on people making purchases on a whim, you’re serving a necessity.

2. Etsy Store

For those mums who love to craft or sew, something like an Etsy store might be the best option for you. Here, you can sew clothes or craft anything you can think of and sell it to interested persons.

Running a shop is like a running a business. Therefore, branding your Etsy shop is important. Logo, header image, product photography, social media presence, SEO are all important parts of your Etsy marketing strategy. Moreover, when creating your handmade goods, you will want to make sure to add a tag with your own logo or classic printed ribbon to the items you make. This way, they are marked as uniquely yours. This also helps to cut down on someone buying your items to simply resell them as their own handmade items later.

3. Virtual Assistant

A virtual assistant is exactly the same as any other assistant. You would do things like handle phone calls, scheduling, or anything that a standard assistant would do. The major difference is that you do it from a distance. Instead of being at your client’s side all day, you would be in near constant contact with them via phone or the internet and you would take care of the tasks they set out for you.

4. Financial Planning

If you have a knack for numbers, you could also start a business in which you help others work a budget and live the best they can within their means. You’d be surprised at how many families would appreciate a little help planning their finances.

A great idea would be to learn to help others budget for college. After all, this is one of the biggest financial decisions a family has to make and they might see some help planning as a wise investment.

5. Teach Music

For those mums who are interested in music, you could always consider being a teacher for private lessons for the instrument of your choice. Not only is this a great way to make some extra money, you’ll probably get some enjoyment out of it too!

In addition, teaching music will help you to keep your own skills sharp. This is because you will be teaching the basics and the theory behind an instrument to someone else, forcing you to practice these rudimentary skills once again.

6. Pet Boarding

Much like child minding, if you love animals, you could always consider animal boarding as a stay at home business. With this business, you would take in other people’s pets and watch them while the owners are away.

You might want to have some restrictions on the animals you’ll take in, though. For instance, you could only take in trained pets. After all, you don’t want to accidentally allow an aggressive animal into your home when you have children around.

7. Freelance Writing

For those mums with writing as a passion, you could always write from home. This is a job with a lot of open opportunities. Whether you want to dedicate your time to writing novels or articles, there is a market for it.

It might take time with freelance writing, as with the other business ideas on this list, to build up a client base. If you’re patient, though, you will find these business ideas can become quite lucrative.

Business

Ways To Save Money if You Run Your Own Business

October 16, 2017May 7, 2021 JayneLeave a comment

Running a Small Business With rising living and childcare costs, more people than ever seem to be looking at ways that they can work from home so that they can limit their expenditure and maximise their income. Starting a business and becoming self employed may seem daunting but there are a lot of advantages to flexible working and many people have huge success. Although it may seem like you’re spending more than you make when you first start, it’s all part of getting started, and we’ve got some tips on how you can save money as a small business owner.

Do Your Own Accounts

Unless your accounts are really complicated (which is unlikely in your first years as a small business) it’s actually really easy to do your accounts yourself online these days, which cuts the need for accountancy fees or an external payroll service. This could save you a lot of money in the long run and is also a great skill to have under your belt for the future.

One way to streamline your expenses process is to think about purchasing a fuel card. Fuel cards allow you to keep track of how much fuel you’re purchasing, and gets rid of those pesky paper receipts, so that filing your travel expenses is super easy.

Online Printing

If you need to use flyers or posters for promoting your business, using an online printing service like https://www.helloprint.co.uk/ could save you a small fortune. Their service is really easy to use, they offer free delivery on all products and they print on an incredibly diverse range of media – you could even print your company logo on a load of umbrellas!

Negotiate

Here in England, so many of us seem uncomfortable with the idea of bartering on prices but it’s common practice throughout almost the whole rest of the world! If you’re doing business with other people, never accept their first price as bartering could save you a lot of money. Many small businesses offer services as part payment for things too, so if you have a valuable skill you could offer this instead of cash.

Check Your Tarrifs

If you use your home as a place of business, check to see if there are better tariffs available for your energy costs, broadband supplier or telephone contract. Many companies offer special business rates, or even if there’s no money off, some companies will prioritise repairs if they’re for business users, so it could be worth a call to find out if it makes a difference.

Learn New Skills

If you’re looking to save money then taking a few courses could be an investment which saves you money in the long run and give you even more autonomy over how you want your business to run. Need to keep marketing costs low? Take a course in social media marketing and run your campaigns yourself. Need to save on accounting costs? Some companies like Sage offer day courses in small business accounts and payroll which will be a lot cheaper than years of services from an accountant or payroll person.

Luke from Caelum Communications said: “Having a quick and reliable internet connection is a basic essential for a running a business. Failover services and other installations are also great considerations for small and large businesses.”