4 New Year’s Resolutions for Home Based Workers

Are you a home based worker? Whether you operate your own business or work from home as a contract worker, you lead a busy life. For that reason, there may be a lot that you want or need to do. The New Year is the perfect time to set and achieve your goals. So, if you haven’t made a New Year’s resolution yet, do so now. If you need a few ideas, continue reading on.



1 – Create a Home Office

Many home based workers work right from their family computer or their kitchen table. This does work, but try to develop a workspace for yourself. If you have a spare bedroom, transform that into your home office. Keep the spare bed in the room should family visit, but add a computer, desk, office chair, phone, and so forth. If you are limited on space, you need to think outside of the box. Do you have a walk in closet that you rarely use? Install a good light and transform it into your home office.

When you have a home office, which is a private secluded place that you can work, you are likely to improve your productivity.


2 – Look for Other Moneymaking Opportunities

As previously stated, home based workers come in a number of different formats. Regardless of whether you work for yourself or for someone else, always be on the lookout for other moneymaking opportunities. With today’s economy, there are no guarantees. People who believed they had a secure job are now finding themselves in the unemployment line. Just because you work from home, it does not mean that it can’t happen to you. So, secure your financial future.

In terms of examining other moneymaking opportunities, always think outside of the box. Do you do customer service work from home? Consider putting your skills to use by writing reviews for companies, starting your own website or blog, and so forth. Do you do web content writing from home? In addition to writing for clients, write for yourself.

3 – Create a Schedule for Housework

Working from home is nice, but it presents many challenges. Those who work outside of the home don’t have to worry about that sink full of dishes, but you do because you will see it every time you turn around. All home based workers should have a separate schedule for housework so it does not impact their work at home. If you do not have one, make it your New Year’s resolution.

4 – Give Your Family More Time

Most start working from home to spend more time with family, but it doesn’t always workout as planned. Some are so amazed to see how easy it is to make money online that they don’t want to stop, but you should. If you have a problem with working too much, use your New Year’s resolution to put a stop to it. Shut your computer off by a set time each day.

Choosing a Niche

Alright, the first thing you need to do is choose a niche to focus on. This method is so much easier than the micro niche method, because it doesn’t involve hours upon hours of researching products, affiliate networks, and keyword tools. You just pick a niche and go.



Okay, so it does involve SOME research, but the research is faster and easier using this method, and using a few free tools you can complete this in an hour or less in most cases. The first thing to do is figure out a niche that has voracious buyers but NOT a ton of competition. This is the toughest part, because most markets with voracious buyers are insanely competitive. (Some competition is good, but too much competition makes your job much harder.)

Golf, for example, is a popular niche for internet marketers to get into. This is especially true for beginners. Yes, golfers do tend to have excess income to spend. Yes, they do tend to spend a good chunk of that excess income on their on their hobby. But because pretty much everyone knows this, competition is ridiculous. There are just too many established golf websites for the average marketer to compete.

Is it possible to compete? Absolutely. But unless you are extremely good at marketing and/or have a huge budget for advertising and content creation, you’re not likely to make a whole lot of headway in this niche. It’s just far too over-saturated. A great idea is focusing on a broad interest group rather than a more competitive niche. Take a look at DIYReady.com (http://www.diyready.com), for example.

They have a niche—DIY—but it’s broad enough that they have a huge number of topics they can focus on within the DIY spectrum, which also gives them a broader range of products they can promote. Because there are so many individual topics under the DIY umbrella, virtually anyone can compete in this particular niche.

People who enjoy this type of content typically frequent multiple DIY websites, and those users are easy to access because they are prevalent on Pinterest and other social websites. This is the type of niche you should try to locate. You want something broad—but not too broad—with voracious buyers and fans that are easy to locate.

Some examples include:

The great thing about this method is that if you discover one aspect of a particular niche isn’t working for you, it’s easy to switch to another one as long as you get a domain that covers the whole, broad niche. For example, if you decided to market to model builders and want to focus on model cars, you might want to register a domain like modelbuilders.com instead of modelcarbuilders.com so you can branch out into planes and ships later. (I’m sure those domains are taken, I’m just using them as a basic example.)

Worst case scenario, if you create a large amount of custom content in a niche and it doesn’t pan out the way you hope, you could sell the website or articles to someone else in the niche to recoup some of the costs you incurred, and probably make a good profit. Once you’ve chosen a niche and bought a fairly broad domain, it’s time to move on.

Why You Need a Website If You Are a Fiction Writer

If you are a writer, you need a website or blog. There are three main reasons for this:

1. You Can Showcase Your Writing

Having your own website is like a shop window online, where people can read your writing and follow you as a fan. A lot of people have turned to social media for writing and marketing, but the truth is that social media is here today and gone tomorrow.



In addition, the social media sites set the rules, not you. Even if you have 5,000 fans on your Facebook page, for example, you might notice that you only get a tiny fraction of views. This is because Facebook rewards pages that have a lot of likes, shares and comments, and shows their content to more people. If your fans are not showing these "social signals", your great content might not get seen by anyone at all.

With a site or blog, on the other hand, you can publish regularly and then let your follower know what’s new.

In addition, you can sell directly from your own site, cutting out all of the publishing middlemen. All you need is:

You can also link to content you are selling on Amazon. Amazon will take a percentage, but they are:

a) The largest bookstore in the world
b) A search engine for shoppers
c) A safe and secure digital marketplace where you will get paid for your work every month
d) A place where you can appear side by side with top authors in your genre, such as romance, mystery or horror

Use your site or blog as the hub of all your activities.



2. Fans and Publishing Professional Can Learn More about You

As you build your reputation as a writer, more and more people will want to know who you are, including:

...and more. Make it easy for people to find you, get your biography, and see your full list of works.

3. It Can Be a Writing and Resource Tool for Yourself and Others

If you start a WordPress blog, you can showcase your work to the public if you wish. You can show off your creative writing, blog about topics important to you, share writing industry news, and more.

WordPress also allows you to password protect content, or make it completely private. If you’re like most writers, you probably have a lot of favorite sites, works in progress and more. If you participate in a lot of contests, put your work on your blog with the name of the contest, deadline date and so on to keep track of your success and publish it once the winners have been announced.

Store links, writing tips, your resume and more. Update your writer’s portfolio and biography any time you wish.

Use your blog as the hub of all your writing and promotional activities and watch your career grow.