Join in if you are self-employed and work from home

Horace

I hate this time of year because I have too many spends: car service, MOT and tax (and now FSB membership), bills need to be paid too and then next month the car insurance is due to be renewed. Then I have had some other business spends..guess I shall have to live on baked beans on toast for several months:rolleyes:

This weekend, I intend to work on my final assignment so that I can submit it by Monday at the latest:D

Have a good weekend all...jenny, hope you manage to get some sleep.

absolutelynomoney

Hi, I know I'm a little late, as this thread has been running for a long time, but I wondered if I could join, as I am self-employed and could really do with some encouragement and support!

I'm a pianist and piano teacher. I work for myself, but at the moment I'm sub-contracted by a piano school, which is where all my students come from. They take a very large percentage of my pay as commission though, so I would really like to try and start getting students through me, without a connection to them, as that would mean I keep the whole amount of money and in the long-run is much more profitable.
I've already designed and ordered business cards and advertising flyers free from vistaprint.co.uk and I've put them in a couple of places. So far only had 1 caller from these, who didn't show in the end, so my challenge is to really get myself known/seen ... easier said than done I guess, as I really don't know how to go about this!

My other challenge is to be more disciplined about practising regularly - as I have my piano in my room (I rent), it's all too easy to put it off and do other things and do errands from home and then end up not practising enough, which needs work on!

I also do 3 hours of admin work a day for my professor, in exchange for free piano lessons, as I can't afford them. I'm not very good at this work because I'm not very organised/disciplined, so I need to be better at that.

Do others find it hard to work from home?? There are so many distractions and it is so easy to put off business work while yu do domestic work (cleaning, groceries, general chores... ) - this is my biggest downfall!

Anyway, goal at the moment is to get more students so that I can afford to live (!) and to get some playing engagements (weddings, anniversary and birthday parties, corporate functions, etc) over the summer to bring in some extra income. I'm also going to try and get involved with mystery shopping and I would like to somehow get some typing/data entry/writing work, as this is what I used to do for employment and I'm sure it would be very helpful for some additional income.

Horace

Hi and welcome

Working from home isnt easy but it does help if you have a separate room that you can use as an office and shut yourself in there (come out when you need the loo and to make a drink or lunch)...or split your day into manageable chunks and do your paid work at the time of day when you perform best and do the rest at other parts of the day or even night.

To get work for weddings, you need to visit wedding fairs maybe have a small stand and give out sample CDs of your performance. Facebook can be a good place - its free, and look for free wedding website blog thingies so that you can advertise your business on there. I try and spend as little as possible on advertising. I have also heard that gumtree is supposed to be good and advertising is free.

Is it possible to re-negotiate the commission with the piano school? I know its sneaky but why not put a few business cards and flyers on top of the piano where the piano school customers can see them, it may mean that they come direct to you instead of via the school especially if you are competitively priced.

absolutelynomoney

horace wrote:

To get work for weddings, you need to visit wedding fairs maybe have a small stand and give out sample CDs of your performance. Facebook can be a good place - its free, and look for free wedding website blog thingies so that you can advertise your business on there. I try and spend as little as possible on advertising. I have also heard that gumtree is supposed to be good and advertising is free.

Wedding Fairs? Good idea - I don't suppose you know anything about where they might be, do you?!
I'll have to get looking on that straight away - I didn't know they existed.

horace wrote:

Is it possible to re-negotiate the commission with the piano school? I know its sneaky but why not put a few business cards and flyers on top of the piano where the piano school customers can see them, it may mean that they come direct to you instead of via the school especially if you are competitively priced.

hmm... I have been thinking along these lines for a while, but it is very tricky. You see the situation is a little complicated:

When I first started working for them, the students paid directly to them, as they were on an old payment system, and I invoiced the company for my fees each month. As far as I was aware, the student fee was £35/hour - £15 to me, £10 studio rental, £10 commission (to cover comapny admin as well, as they do all the management). Now though, students pay direct to me in cash and the school invoices me at the end of the month for their commission and studio rent.

However, a few months ago, I found out by accident that our regular studio gives the company a discount, so they only pay £5/hour studio rental. I had never actually been told offical studio rental costs for the company, so I let it go. After that though, they gave me some students that I had to travel to their homes to teach. Not only does this mean that there is no studio rental to pay for these cases, but also I incur travel costs. When I said this to them, they weren't bothered at all and just said that I am paid £15 in the contract, so the other money is for them. This really annoyed me, but I don't really know what I can do about it, since without their students, I don't really have a job.

The business cards ... I could well entice my current students to come to me privately, very good idea ... but it says in my contract I need the company's permission to continue to teach any students provately if I stop working for them. Now technically, I wouldn't have stopped working for them comletely, so maybe it wouldn't be a breach ... !?

Horace

wedding fairs are advertised in your local papers as they take place in hotels usually. In fact that's another idea, ask a hotel if they want a resident piano player to play in the evenings.

If you have to travel to a students home to teach then you have to charge mileage - HMRC rates for mileage are 40p per mile. You are permanently out of pocket if you don't charge mileage - the company treat you like this because you let them. Maybe its time to put your prices up a bit? If you have no studio costs then there is no need to pay the company for that time because if they are billing you for it and you are visiting the student at home then surely it is obtaining money under false pretences?

I happen to know a couple of sound engineers who run their own business but also a run an entertainment business as well, according to their website it is free to register your act with them. I will find out their web address and send it via PM to you. Although they are based in Birmingham they have entertainers from all over the country and provide entertainment for corporate events, weddings, etc. (stupidly they have omitted to put their web details on their business card:rolleyes:).

Have you considered offering blocks of lessons? e.g. buy 9 lessons and get the 10th free or something? You need to make your business as attractive as possible to gain new students.

moneymabel

Just made a page for my business on Facebook-I am very proud of myself as i am a computerally challenged idiot lol

Next step-getting some sort of vinyl/decal made up for the back window of my car.

dippykitty

sinderella wrote: »

Would anyone recommend a writing-to-get-published' kind of course? And is it essential to have a website as a therapist/counsellor? If so how much do they cost to host and make?
Sorry for the questions - I must say that all this talk at the beginning of the thread about the west coast of Ireland makes me long for Galway and Connemara!
all the best, will keep reading the thread now I've found it
Sinders:D

Welcome to the thread!

I'm a freelance writer and write a lot on health & fitness and lifestyle type topics (so not a million miles away from the kind of writing that you want to do). I have absolutely no prior training in that field and it hasn't been a problem for me so I'd say that your therapist/counsellor work would be a big bonus. I've never done a writing course or got any journalism training either so I'd say that it isn't essential. I looked into those sorts of courses before I went freelance and decided not to bother as I didn';t feel that the expense would necessarily lead to anything that I couldn't do myself with some hard work and dedication.

Re websites: I have one for my writing business and it's not very expensive to host. I set mine up on Moonfruit and bought a domain name for it, and I think that the total cost is around £35 per year for hosting it. If you want to see one example of the type of website that you make/host through them, feel free to check my profile as there should be a look to my site there. There are plenty of other themes though. If you want to design your own site without templates/themes, you'd need to get a web designer which I imagine would be a lot pricier and you may have less control over editing the content that way. As I'm adding links to published work every so often, I like to have that control.

Hope this helps a bit!

sinderella_2

thanks dippykitty
you do sound like you are writing in a similar vein to my own topics -thanks for advice re writing course. I just set up a 'webs' hosted free site for my therapy work, so that's some of the 'bread and butter' catered for, now need to maybe venture out and write a few articles about my subject (which is my passion) and submit to various magazines. Be great to move towards writing...
I appreciated your response
good luck all

moneymabel

Just ordered a nice car back window decal from vistaprint, also got another 100 postcards that I'm using as flyers, including delivery £15. The window decal is really nice, think they are meant for side windows but as the design I ordered has a lot of transparent areas I think it will be ok. Looks a lot more professional than my old one which was just plain white lettering in a strip. Am aiming to do one thing a day to promote the site, done a facebook page, got this decal- need to look into wedding directories, contact magazines and deliver some flyers :-)

moneymabel

I emailed Brides Magazine (Condenast) yesterday and attached some photos using the help that i received on here with wording!.
Had one back this morning saying thankyou but the email is too big to keep on the system so could I send a disc or photographs by post. I'm thinking this is quite positive..surely if she wasnt interested she wouldnt have bothered that she couldn't keep the email!!?? or am I just being optimistic lol.
Am going to send some prints as I think that having something actually in front of you is better than a disc where you actually have to put it in your comp. Am sending 3 7x5" prints and an index print of all my jewellery plus a postcard that I use as a large business card which also has pics on-this should be enough shouldn't it? I dont want to overkill :-)
Oh and a short covering letter which i shall type and print out in my best professional stylee :-)