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

downshifter

My god, Sashanut, that's amazing. Congratulations, we have some real budding tycoons on here don't we. £700 in a day is wonderful, it should cover the roof work and plenty left over.

I was offered some work yesterday, s/e but working with people with problems - literacy and mental health issues. I'll end up with £170 or less after 20 hrs work. Why on earth is work in the caring professions so poorly paid? To me it should be the best paid. Atrocious. I'm going to do it anyway as they're a bit stuck for help and it's such a good cause.

... and I'm going to buy a lottery ticket too, as I'll never be in your league. Well done again.

Purpleroses

afternoon all.

Got some work done this morning and decided to take the rest of the day off since it's been such a hectic week. Have managed to spend a small fortune buying jewellery supplies. Been offered a shelf at a local shop for easter and summer. Had to set a strict budget as i have a habit of buying more beads than i need as they're so pretty! lol

Hope everyone is having a productive day!

moneymabel

Hi everyone, I work part- time in a craft shop and also have my own small business making wedding jewellery, have been selling through wedding shops but am now having a website built in the hope that I will be able to do that full-time ( hey I can dream!)
Have been reading this thread with interest so thought I'd say Hi :-)

wigglebeena

Darth_Trader wrote: »

So far I've used other companies' platforms for selling, in order to avoid tying capital up in inventory (eg eBay thru Squidoo, Amazon, CafePress); and published on equivalent sites (eg Squidoo, Hubpages, Triond etc). .

Not quite following this (d'oh!) How does selling through other sites rather than your own spare expenditure on inventory? & what does 'Ebay thru Squidoo' mean? I know you can set up their affiliate prog through Squidoo, but can you sell your own items via Ebay on there? Or do you mean promote your Ebay items on there? Do you mean affiliate sales/promotion for Amazon & Cafepress too?

Bear of very little brain here (and, handily, I got the Winnie the Pooh audio CD in the Guardian today. Must go and listen to it for tips).

itsnowtime

Hi Everyone,

Decided to join this fab thread!!

I've been self employed since 2003 and hold a full time job. However, due to many events in my life my business was great and then I lost interest so it all went down hill..

I always had a dream that I would work for myself and I know working for others feels very restrictive for me... Recently I've had a life changing experience and I'm very lucky to be here so it's only increased my desire to build a quality life and work for myself.

So... its now time for a fresh start, blank sheet of paper and look at building a successful international online business - and build on the existing foundations I already have.

I'm looking for new products/ideas particularly within the health and wellness industry so I would be grateful if anyone has any contacts / websites / products that I may be interested in to get in touch...

I know that working for myself will not be easy and as such I need to build this business whilst working so that I can maintain my security and a regular income but within the next 12-18months I want to break free...

I'm fortunate enough that I have the ability to build websites etc... I just need to get on and do it now - but I want a fresh image / brand and revitalise my own desire!!

Good luck everyone with your ventures and if you know of anything that might be of interest please get in touch...

Horace

itsnowtime - join your local chamber of commerce as they have great networking events (some of which are free) and you come in contact with all types of businesses even ones who make and sell wellbeing products. Your local chamber should also be able to help you with international trade as well.

Good luck.

Essex-girl_2

Back again.

Have now read the whole thread and really really like it, have seen that others have exactly the same issues as me and have picked up motivational tips - roll on Monday.

Off now to investigate on amazon Nelski's recommended books - cheers Nelski!

Wordsmith

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Sunshine girl, Darth Trader (thanks for the book info), Nbedin, Bootsalebabe, Essex-girl, Boo80 (good luck with sorting your debt – I am in the same boat; being freelance can make planning difficult, can’t it?), Duchy, Josephine1 (I would avoid free hosting as personally I think it looks more professional to have your own domain name and hosting of this need not be terribly expensive), Moneymabel, and Itsnowtime.
Thank you Nelski – you wonderful feminine, womanly and ladylike girly person (sorry for the assumption) – for the book list. When I have a moment I will collate all book suggestions into one list.
Purpleroses, that’s fantastic news about the order – congratulations. :T
Skintjenny, it’s been said by others but I would reiterate that it’s important to have a separate account for business finances. I have a “proper” business account, but regret not just opening up a separate personal account – business charges are higher, although if you might want a business loan at some time you will probably be required to open a business account.
BlondeHeadOn – well done that woman for getting your filing done. :T
Lexxx – it’s great that you’ve got going again. Let us know how things progress.
I went to do filing for lady yesterday – all went well and there’s more to do. The lovely lady offered to give me a stage payment and I fear I was a tad unprofessionally eager to accept! Didn’t get any shop bookkeeping done as lovely boss-man was late getting back (had a fearful headache so was actually quite pleased). Have been in the shop all day today and meant to work on a client’s web site tonight, but had a pizza and a couple of glasses of wine when I got in at 9 o’clock and work didn’t really then figure in the evening’s activities (I use the work “activities” in a very loose way, since nothing that I did after a couple of glasses of wine could be considered even remotely “active”).
Am about to go to bed as I have to be up to open up the shop at a horrible early o’clock and we are losing an hour tonight. Won’t get home till 9-ish tomorrow night and I really have to do a bit or sorting out of work as well as pack in order to leave home at 4.30 on Monday morning :eek: to catch flight to England. Have booked a hire car but am very worried that there’s not going to be enough on my credit card to pay for the insurance when I pick it up. Have been in this horribly embarrassing situation before and found the car hire staff to be very unhelpful and unaccommodating – offered them cash and all sorts of things but they stubbornly refused to be remotely sympathetic and in the end had to be an elderly friend to drive 30 miles to use his credit card to pay the insurance (and then I immediately gave him the cash) – very frustrating. I put extra on my card on Friday but I am not sure it will have been reflected in the balance by Monday morning.
Reference broadband, I can’t get landline, mobile or wireless (from a mast) where I live (and, trust me, I have tried). Someone in the village tried satellite but found it excrutiatingly expensive and not very good, so it is not an avenue I can or wish to pursue. My landline provider is Eircom, and whenever I have spoken to them they have been extremely unhelpful and can only suggest that I pay for a new physical line “which may still not be suitable for broadband”. :mad: My blood pressure rises whenever I press the first button the number to phone them.

Darth_Trader

wigglebeena wrote: »

Not quite following this (d'oh!) How does selling through other sites rather than your own spare expenditure on inventory? & what does 'Ebay thru Squidoo' mean? I know you can set up their affiliate prog through Squidoo, but can you sell your own items via Ebay on there? Or do you mean promote your Ebay items on there? Do you mean affiliate sales/promotion for Amazon & Cafepress too?

Bear of very little brain here (and, handily, I got the Winnie the Pooh audio CD in the Guardian today. Must go and listen to it for tips).

Hi Wigglebeena - sorry for delay in answering, but I had a Windows Update today that nearly killed my laptop! Had to do a system restore using yesterday's setpoint. But anyway....

....You're right. I sell other people's stuff, especially on Squidoo, and take the commission, so I don't need to hold stock, take orders, do customer service, dispatch items etc. So for Amazon, I have a UK affiliates account, but for US orders (where customers are unlikely to want to pay massive delivery costs from the UK - remember each Amazon geographic region is a separate company!) I make a page in Squidoo. Of course Squidoo takes half the commission, but because Squidoo folks in total sell millions of units, that doesn't make any difference to me as it will be on the top commission level due to sales volumes; whereas my own Amazon aStore is probably on the bottom rung.

I don't sell on eBay specifically, but do sell other people's eBay stuff on Squidoo if the prod is relevant. Again, I get commission from Squidoo, via eBay, via the sellers fee (I guess). Nothing to stop an eBay seller using Squidoo to promote their own auctions (and hence claw back some of that fee!) So this is what I meant by 'Ebay thru Squidoo'.

CafePress is similar to eBay. Other modules that work like this are Etsy, Lulu, Orbitz and Netflix. For some of the posters on this thread, Zazzle might be a good one also. It can be used in Squidoo, but only benefits your own Zazzle store - it's a print on demand co like CafePress, and has a com and a co.uk version. Good for the artists amongst us if they have designs that would look good on t-shirts, mousemats, mugs, bags, badges etc. Again, you're not holding stock, or printing or dispatching goods yourself.

Squidoo also benefits its publishers via Adsense (in a roundabout way). So you make pennies even if you don't actually sell anything. Using external affiliate programmes (where appropriate) is the most beneficial financially though.

Hubpages allows affiliate sales through ebay and Amazon, and is also an Adsense site (though it works differently to Squidoo). Triond is simply a 'paid for visits' article site - roughly 1 US cent per 10 visits. Of course, even if the pay here isn't great, I write on niches that I also Squidoo on, so can backlink into for Squidoo sales.

But as you can imagine, all of these involve a lot of work to end up sharing profits - definitely more beneficial to pick good niches and set up my own sites, so all the profit is mine. I like diversification though, so I won't be stopping the other third party platforms.

Sorry for the long answer!!

sashanut

downshifter wrote: »

My god, Sashanut, that's amazing. Congratulations, we have some real budding tycoons on here don't we. £700 in a day is wonderful, it should cover the roof work and plenty left over.

I was offered some work yesterday, s/e but working with people with problems - literacy and mental health issues. I'll end up with £170 or less after 20 hrs work. Why on earth is work in the caring professions so poorly paid? To me it should be the best paid. Atrocious. I'm going to do it anyway as they're a bit stuck for help and it's such a good cause.

... and I'm going to buy a lottery ticket too, as I'll never be in your league. Well done again.

Gosh thanks for the positive raps - now I feel guilty because I'm not creative like a lot of people on here; & not in a caring profession either. All I am doing really is selling things that I collected in the last 10 years on a dedicated website, & have been too demotivated even to do that lately. However, the support on here is fantastic & whilst everyone has such diverse businesses, they all have the guts to go it alone which is far from easy :eek:

I'm going to do some work today - this morning I've already amswered a few emails; after breakfast I aim to download some photos I took the other day, take some more & then add some more stuff to the site. I think I get put off - & this will sound MAD:rotfl: - because as soon as I put ONE doll on for sale, I get a few enquiries & have to disappoint people & email to tell them so........sometimes I have a similar doll I can offer, but mostly not & since they were last made in 1986, there are no more. Good luck today everyone, will report back later to make sure I have done something :A