10 Necessities For Your Home Based Ghostwriting Business

When you make the decision to earn income from the internet there is a set up process you will need to go through before you are ready for business.

Listed below are some basic steps that will help you to set up your home business for success.

1. Attitude

The key to your business success is your attitude.

You need to treat your business like a business.

This is critical whether you are working part-time or full-time.

One of my colleagues is a mother who works from home. She does this around her family life. She puts her family life first but still develops her business at the same time. She says, “I work part-time, but I have a full-time attitude.”

Put another way, “If you have a hobby attitude you will have a hobby income, if you have a business attitude you will have a business income.”

You can be successful working part-time and you can be successful working full-time but it is highly unlikely that you will be successful working in your “spare time”.

2. Working Environment

You need a space that you can call your own. This space should be free from distractions and be used for your scheduled work time. What you should have in this space will include:

A comfortable chair
A well organized desk.
Stationery supplies as required. For example:

- pens
- high lighters
- stapler
- hole punch
- sticky tape
- note book(s)
- a simple filing system
- ring binders
- manilla folders

You should also consider the value of a broadband connection. Your time is valuable and a broadband connection will allow you to get more done in your given time frame.

3. Schedule

Develop a schedule that works for you, your family, and your business. When you allot a block of time for work, make sure you use that time for work. Equally important is to schedule time for your other commitments – family time, self education ( reading, listening and viewing), “health time” (exercise, cooking and eating), and leisure time. During these other times don’t work. After all if one of the reasons to work
from home is to spend more time with your family then you don’t want your working at home time to consume your family time.

You are working for yourself and your schedule (by your choice) is your “boss”. You may need to make it clear to others that calling around or dropping by unexpectedly can interrupt your work schedule and you would prefer it they would call first. If this seems like a problem you need to ask yourself. Are you committed to your own business success? What will be your choice in these situations? Only you can decide what is important to you.

In a family environment you may need to negotiate with your partner and children before determining your scheduled work time. You may decide to work when the children have gone to bed and if so you need to ensure that your partner will not feel left out.

Once decided, put this schedule somewhere so all family members can see it and are aware of your work schedule.

4. Describe Your Business

You should be able to describe your business concisely; a powerful one or two sentence description that someone can repeat when they are describing your business to others. A unique and memorable tag line can also be invaluable for promoting your business.

5. Know Your Product or Service

When ghostwriting you need to fully understand the service that you provide. You need to be able to inform potential clients about your service and what benefits it will have for them. You need to be able to sell yourself and your services effectively. If you are selling yourself as an e book ghostwriter you need to know everything there is to know about compiling and writing e books. You should also have some samples to show clients. If you are promoting yourself as a press release ghostwriter you need to be fully educated in the art of press releases and again have samples of your work and be able to show how they performed.

Basically you need to know what you are doing “inside out”. By doing this you will develop a reputation for providing a quality service and your clients will recommend you to others.

6. Administration

Use good record keeping practices.

This may involve a consultation with a tax adviser who can let you know about the optimal way to set up your financial records and what records you will need to keep. Your adviser will also recommend record keeping systems and you can find out what software may simplify this aspect of your business. Additionally you may need to obtain advice on the best arrangement for your bank accounts. You will most likely be advised to have a separate bank account for your business.

You will also need to keep track of your various logins, usernames and passwords for the different marketplaces you subscribe to. A very handy little software tool for this is Treepad available as either the free Lite version
(without password protection) or the commercial Plus or Biz versions. http://www.treepad.com

There are other useful tools for this also from a simple paper notebook to free and commercial password keepers. One popular solution is Roboform that will remember your login details and can automatically fill out your login and other registration forms. http://www.roboform.com

7. Computer Protection

Your computer is the lifeline to your business dealings and must be protected. This will include the data that you have stored on it. You should create file backups at least once a month.

You will need a virus scanner, personal firewall, anti-spyware and anti-adware, and preferably an email scanner with the ability to delete any suspect spam email from the server before it is downloaded to your computer.

Some suggestions are:

AVG Anti-Virus: http://www.grisoft.com
Spybot S&D: http://www.safer-networking.org
Microsoft Anti-Spyware:
www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Adaware: http://www.lavasoft.com/
Mailwasher Email Scanner: http://www.mailwasher.net

8. A Domain Name

You will most likely need a domain name for your business and one of the most cost effective registrars is GoDaddy, World’s Largest Registrar – GoDaddy.com

You will also need hosting for your domain name and the best place to get this is Hostgator, they have hosting plans to suit every business although you will probably only need the baby plan.

9. Payment Processing

You will need a way to accept payments for your work and the best method for this is paypal.

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This is the most economical way to get started. Once your business picks up you may need to look into your own merchant account for credit card transactions.

10. Email accounts

Once you have your own domain you can use an associated email account. This can also help in the promotion of your business and it also appears more professional than using a free e-mail address such as yahoo, or hotmail.

One final note for producing a successful ghostwriting business is to conduct your business ethically. Provide an extraordinary service and be proud to put your name to it. By doing this you will be on track to developing a sustainable long term ghostwriting business.

Until next time,

Keep writing

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