How To Start Your Own Profitable Home-Based Computer Business
Anyone who owns a computer has the means to earn a sizable
full-time income from the comfort and privacy of his/her own
home. That's because, practically anything you can do for
yourself on a computer, you can also do for someone else --
for money! Therefore, the hundreds of services which can be
provided with a computer present the opportunity of a
lifetime to achieve independence and financial security.
Of course, starting your own homebased computer business
will require careful thought and planning. Some services are
more feasible than others and you'll need to be as certain as
possible that there is a demand for the services you intend
to offer. The first thing to consider when picking a
computer service to offer are what you do best and what you
enjoy doing. You'll need to be certain you are capable of
providing a quality service.
After all, your success will largely depend on the quality of
your work. Therefore, you should stay away from offering those
services for which you are not qualified.
After you decide on what service(s) you want to offer, there
are several other factors to consider before taking the big
step of actually starting up. The first of those factors is
profit potential, or how much income you can reasonably
expect. The particular service(s) you provide and your own
personal initiative have a lot to do with how much money you
can make, but you should also be aware that service business
income can be limited by the number of hours you can
realistically work each week.
It may be difficult to bill more than 30 hours a week when you
are not only doing all of the work, but you are also "soliciting"
work, running the business, and keeping your own books and
records. With that in mind, it's usually a good idea to try to
provide services for which the hourly fee is high. Of course,
once you've established a sound reputation, you can also
begin taking in more work than you can handle alone.
This extra work can be subcontracted out, and your total
income increased.
The next consideration is what kind of demand there is for
the service(s) you plan to offer. This will require some
basic market research on your part. Find out for yourself,
as best you can, just how many people there are who are
interested in your proposed service, and would be willing to
pay a "fair" price for it. It's important that you be able
to define your market and pin-point your customers.
Once you've conducted 2 to 3 months of market research
and, to your satisfaction, feel that there is indeed a
potentially profitable market for your services, your next
step should be toward "fleshing out" your overall business
plan. Your business plan should outline how much capital you
will need as a start-up investment, monthly operating
expenses and procedures, an advertising plan, and a detailed
breakdown of your work schedule.
The success of your computer business will come a lot more
easily if you have a specific and detailed plan before you
actually start up. Too many home-based businesses fail
because their operators "jumped in" before they understood
that the costs involved and the time required were beyond
their means and abilities. If you have everything down on
paper before you start, you have a much better chance for
success.
You should also have a good idea of how well your business
will do in especially tough economic times. In order to
achieve long-term success, your business will need to be one
that provides economic security even during periods of
recession. It's essential that the computer service(s) you
plan to offer will have a stable demand throughout any type
of economic conditions and, in fact, have a good growth
potential.
After all these considerations, before you start your
business, you must be certain that you have the capital and
time to sustain your business throughout the first six to
twelve months of operation. In order for your business to be
profitable, your living expenses must not come out of your
business until it is on solid financial ground. And that
usually takes 6 months to a year. Generally, once you have
been in operation for 9 months, you can start giving
yourself a monthly salary. Until that time, all the money
you make from your service, should be re-invested in your
business so it will grow and reach its planned profit potential.
Obviously, no one home-based computer business will excel in
all the areas described in this report. That's why choosing
the business that is best for you may require finding one
that is the most desirable in light of the importance of
factors such as what you are qualified to do, what you would
enjoy doing, profit potential, demand, capital required to
start-up, and resistance to low economic cycles. And, as
mentioned before, there are hundreds of such computer
services from which to choose.
Some of the more standard home-based computer businesses
include desktop publishing, tax preparation, resume writing,
word processing, and freelance writing. Starting up any of
those services is relatively easy. As long as you already
have the necessary computer and equipment, your biggest
expense will most likely be in advertising your service.
Once you have your market targeted and you know who your
customers are going to be, you'll need to determine exactly
how you are going to reach them. In general, your most
effective advertising for computer-based services will come
from classified or display ads in national magazines, and
less frequently, newspaper ads.
Some other computer-based businesses that currently present
viable long-term opportunities include computer consulting,
mailing-list service, medical-billing service, collection
agency, and a brokerage service. All of these businesses
have excellent income potential, good-to-high demand, good
resistance to recessionary periods, good-to-excellent growth
potential, and relatively modest start-up costs. While a
medical billing service requires a special knowledge, the
other businesses listed above have only moderate
qualification requirements.
You may also want to investigate the possibility of some
other relatively new computer-based businesses such as
desktop video production, an export agency, a medical
transcription service, real estate appraisal service, and a
temporary-help service. All of these services are
experiencing increased demand, and present home-based
entrepreneurs with above average profit potential.
Whatever computer service(s) you decide to offer, you'll
need to have your business plan properly organized before
you begin. Once you've implemented and followed your plan
for about one year, you may be able to consider hiring other
people to take over at least part of your workload. Of
course, that decision will be entirely up to you. Operating
your own home-based computer business should ultimately
give you the independence and the financial security that will
enable you to choose between running the entire operation
and doing all the work yourself, or hiring other people to
do the work for you while you relax and collect a regular
income from your original investment.
Depending on the type of computer service(s) you offer, you
can realistically expect to make an annual income of $20,000
to $100,000 and more. Your desire and initiative will go a
long way in determining just how much profit you make. The
opportunities for success in operating a home-based computer
service are expanding every day. Any enterprising person who
has a computer and who is willing to do the necessary
research and planning, can achieve success and financial
security with a home-based computer service.
