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How to Make a Living From Home: a free course

You see a lot of scams about how to make a fortune while working from home.  The truth is that millions of people really do make a living as their own boss while working from home.  The sad truth is also that you’ll never be able to do this by taking a $250.00 seminar meant to get you excited and fired up.

So, because I’m a generous soul, I’ll tell you how to do it, and I’m going to tell you for free.  Why?  Because scams get on my nerves.  I’m not selling anything here.  This is my personal blog.  I’m writing it mostly because cheesy sales techniques and promises of riches get on my damn nerves.  I believe in real, so real is what you’re going to get here.

I am confident that if you follow these rules faithfully for a year, you will make a living.  You might or might not get rich.  But you’ll make a moderate living.  I’m not going to promise you the world with this.  I’m not going to wave as a success story all the people who made millions working from home.  Yes, they exist.  They’re also rare.

What’s not so rare, and is quite possible, is to be able to be self-employed and make an adequate living from it.   This course will not tell you how to do taxes, get you to decide on a business form or any of that stuff.  It’s important, yes.  Crucial, in fact.   But most of the books on self-employment out there talk about it.  I’ll be listing books I think are useful.  But for this piece it would be like having a cookbook that tells you to make a grocery list.   What you need to understand are the principles behind making self-employment work before you start trying to set things up.

I know whereof I speak with this.  Almost 20 years ago, I wrote my first (and for about a decade and a half, my only) professional piece for a client.  It was a book on how to open a mailing and packaging business.  It was a fun project, not only because I was writing something, but because I was researching how to open a small business and learning a whole lot from a small business owner.  It was great!

A few years later, I started a business with three other people.  We were very focused on incorporating, setting up the tax stuff and all that.  Now, that wasn’t wrong.  But the problem was that we got so into the administrivia that we didn’t spend nearly enough time on the parts of the business that would make the tax stuff relevant.  We were nerds and found structure cool.  What can I say?  It made enough money to pay for the toys of a household of geeks and wound up being a pretty good tax shelter, which was nice. But it was never a way to support the family as we had been hoping.

We were not thinking like entrepreneurs and we were not focused on why we’d started the business in the first place.

Some years later, after having spent about six or seven years as an administrative assistant, I realized I have about as much talent for being an admin as a rock does, but that I enjoyed it less.   My living situation had changed and I was in a position to take a bit of a risk.  So I spoke to my housemate and said, “You know I don’t want to be supported by you, but if I have to face another day of being an admin, I am going to go bonkers.”

“And this is a change how?” he asked.

I shrugged.  “Okay, fair enough. But I’m not happy.  I just figured out how much money I’m committed to bringing into the household and I don’t think there’s really a chance in hell I’d fail to do so.  I wanna quit my job and make my living being a bum.”

“Okay,” he said.  “If you’re willing to take the risk, I have faith in you.”

Two years later, I’m still making a living as a bum[1].

This information isn’t really new, though.  You’re going to read a lot of it and go, “But that’s just common sense.”

If you say “Yes, but I can’t do it that way because I’ve got a Special Problem” to more than one of the major lessons of this piece and are not already making the living you want from home, you might wanna examine why this might be the case.

If you’re already making a living from home and making enough to suit yourself what the hell are you wasting your time on this for?  Go back to your success and enjoy it, dewd.  I’m not trying to preach to the choir here!  Congratulations on making it work in your own way.

The next lesson is going to be, “Have the sK1lZ.”

As a prep exercise, think of 20 things you’re good at.  Not just the big exciting stuff.  Write down the little, dumb stuff, too.

The next lesson will be next Wednesday!

[1] My children scold me when I call myself a bum.   “Mama, you work,” they protest.  Kids…

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Yet More Reasons Never to Get Television

Sci Fi Channel Aims to Shed Geeky Image With New Name

‘Syfy’ Will Announce Name Change, Other Plans at Upfront

I would say that television executives are stupid, but ya know… They’re not.  Thing is, they tend to be very, very good at generating money in an incredibly competitive business.  We call them stupid because we say we want quality entertainment.  But when we don’t get it, we’re still often in front of that damned box, watching the ads and thinking we’re immune from buying the products.  I’m not going to give myself airs here. There is television I’ve followed, even though I tend to watch TV through Netflix DVDs these days.  I did get sucked into the new Doctor Who pretty quick and really enjoyed Firefly.  I’ve seen every episode of the Sopranos up to Season Six and every season of the X-Files through Season Three.  I followed Dark Angel and South Park pretty religiously when I had broadcast TV.   When we had TV as long as the History channel wasn’t running Yet Another WWII Documentary, chances were good I’d be watching it.  I think the only thing I ever watched on the SciFi channel was Andromeda.  That was on the SciFi channel, wasn’t it? Except for Andromeda, which I really did watch to oggle Keith Hamilton Cobb as Tyr, the rest of the shows had good writing in common (Well, Season II of Dark Angel was pretty bad).  I don’t think network executives take good writing into account for their market research.   Why should they?  The public hardly demands it!

But the point is, even I, who am not a huge fan of television in general, do watch shows produced for TV — albeit a few years late.  So, yeah, I’m  a consumer, too, even if I’m to cheap to pay for cable.   The point is, none of us have stopped consuming and our consumption patterns are such that the network executives might be making a smart call for the population at large — never mind we minority who eyeroll the change and don’t find the geek image a negative.  Many of us will still consume the product.

However, they did miss a rather salient point about science fiction when trying to remove themselves from the “geek” image.  Liking SF is almost the defining characteristic of a geek!

Thanks to patgundpatgund for pointing this article out.

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Mini Laptops

I was checking out the mini laptops when a friend of mine from online was reporting on her new one with squeeing positivity.

Now, I have a laptop.  It’s my only computer.  I don’t use a desktop at all, and don’t really need one.   But the idea of a lighter, more portable laptop sounds good to me and I’ve been thinking about a mini laptop for my next computer.

There are those who would say, “What about computing power?”

What about it?  There are mini laptops that have as much as my present laptop does.  That’s not my complaint about the laptop I have.  I use a low-end Inpiron.  Lousy battery power and a propensity for overheating so bad I have to use a notebook cooler if I use the machine for any length of time.  Also, I figured that 40GB would be PLENTY of disc space.  (Not for my music collection, it’s not!)   There are mini laptops with much larger hard drives than mine.

I don’t play interactive online games.  The most complex tasks I do on a laptop mostly involve text.  I could almost do my job on a smartphone,  though would hate to have to.  The smartphone versions of Office do have irritating limitations.  I do sometimes watch movies on my laptop and have a pretty decent collection of Doctor Who on my external hard drive.

What I actually use a computer for is to write, bid on jobs and do research.    I also travel as much as I can manage.  Something I can slip into a purse, feel comfortable opening on an airplane that has lots of battery power and won’t overheat sounds like bliss to me!  Firefox with a lot of tabs open is a far worse resource drain than any actual program I run to do Real Work.   I was looking at the Asus EEE 1000HD recently. (And by the way, Mom, if you’re reading this, you might wanna check it out. The screen and keyboard are small, but this has about the same power as my machine, is a lot cheaper!)

I’m not buying one right away, mind.  For all its limitations my present laptop is plenty useful for what I do and there’s no need to blow money away on a Nifty Gadget.  But when I need to replace this one?  Yep, I might consider going small.

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Household Council

ME: Boy! Come downstairs!
[info]muscle_boy: Yes, Mama?
Me: Son, I was trying to get out of cooking dinner.
[info]muscle_boy: Thanks for being honest.
Me: (laughs) But in my contemplation, I thought that maybe we could make it a group effort. I’ll make a spaghetti sauce, if you’ll make the pasta.
[info]muscle_boy: (punching the air) Yes!1 But, what about Daddy?
Me: Daddy usually cleans up and I think that’s a valid contribution to dinner.
[info]muscle_boy: Okay.

It was the “Thanks for being honest” part that got to me…

1[info]muscle_boy is fond of his own home-made pasta.

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Leechblock and Time Analysis

Yesterday, I commented that I’d been told about a blocking add-in for Firefox called Leechblock. You enter the sites you think you shouldn’t visit and when (or for how long). I mentioned that I was going to do an experiment and see what happens.

I’m gonna be honest, I’ve only been doing it for a morning and the results are already embarrassing. I’ve discovered that for a woman in my profession, I permit myself to context switch far, far too often! See, context switching kills concentration, and what does a writer do most of all, boys and girls? Right.

While I didn’t get a whole day’s worth of work done in a quarter of the time, I certainly did get a lot more done than I ordinarily would if I were hanging out on LJ, Tribe, Twitter, and Facebook all day – jumping online between paragraphs. I’ll probably finish up the day a little early, but I’ve got a project that’s been hanging fire for weeks that I’m going to get to, anyway. It’s not paying work, but might turn into paying work, and if I’m gonna set myself strict office hours, I suppose I’m allowed to work on projects when I’m done with my paying work, right?

I have also been using Rescuetime to analyze my computer usage and have discovered that what they call time-wasters are actually often genuine research for me. I’ve also found that I’m spending considerably less time on email than I’d estimated – less than an hour a day. That shocked me, but I realized I won’t have a clear picture until someone starts a heated discussion on PolyFamilies again!

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Need Some Help with Self-Control? Try Leechblock

A friend of mine on LJ1 turned me on to a Firefox plugin of epic usefulness – Leechblock.  It prevents you from accessing sites that, in your judgement, are timewasters during specified periods of time.  It’s not like a nanny software that blocks sites forever, but gives you the option of limiting time on a specific site or banning those sites from being accessed during certain hours.  If you’re really worried about self control, you can also choose to set it to prevent you from accessing options until the banned time is over.

Now part of my job really kind of is to screw around on the net.  Most of my clients want me to write for the web, so I have to be aware of web trends, understand what makes a good blog post or not, and other things of that nature.  Not only that, but I do use the Internet for research.2 However, when you’ve hit refresh for the fiftieth time in an hour on Livejournal, are grinding your teeth at the stupidity Facebook’s latest TOS fiasco, or have posted that you’re clipping your toenails on Twitter, things have gone a bit far.

I consider myself reasonably self-disciplined.  I meet deadlines.  I finish my to-do list for work.  I manage to scrounge enough money to keep me from having to get a “real job” and that really does take some self-motivation.  But I’m going to try an experiment.  For the next week, I’m going to block some sites from my browser during office hours3 with an hour break for lunch and see what it does to my productivity and client base.

I’m guessin’ we’re gonna see some positive results.  Whatcha think?

1 (Thanks sheelangig!)
2You’d be amazed at how inexpensive a single PDF download of an article from a technical or medical journal can be sometimes!
3 6:30-3:30 is usual for me to work.

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Working Out

I’ve resisted posting about working out lately until I was properly back in the swing of being active again. I’d noticed so many posts about how I have to get my butt in gear and likewise until I was tired of writing it. I decided I’d shut up mostly until my butt actually was back in gear where the working out was just feeling like a normal part of my daily routine.  I know I’ve gotten there when I pack my gym bag right before I go to bed, and realize I haven’t used my bathtub at home all week because I’ve been soaking in the hot tub at the gym and showering there.

I’m still wishing I could find some good waterproof earphones so I can listen to audiobooks or music as I swim.  Then again, I’ve always found that I had to tweak technique when I did that, so maybe it’s just as well to concentrate on what I’m doing when I’m working out.  Though it’d take a crowbar to get my iPod away from me when I am lifting.  Dream Theater’s Learning to Live at the squat rack is a holy, deeply spiritual experience1.

Tomorrow, it’s lifting.  I’m still sore as hell from Tuesday’s session, but I really want to get in at least two full body workouts this week.  Next week, it’s gonna be three, and my muscles are just gonna have to stop whining.  Thank God swimming is a good recovery workout.

I’ll be glad when my strength comes back, too.

1Not a joke. Music and physical activity is a direct contact with the Numinous.  I’m sure it’s why I love to dance so.

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New Album Release!

frontSquee!!!!!!!!!

On March 7, my cousin and his band have an album coming out!  I already have a copy, nya nya nya!

Click on the image to check ’em out and listen to some clips.

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Knitting and Taking Control

Someone once commented that spikes in knitting come with stressful times.  I’d buy that.   I knit and sew more during stressful times than otherwise.  There are a lot of theories on why this might be so in general.  Part of it, I am sure, is the soothing nature of a repetitive physical motion (rocking a baby, anyone?).  But I think it’s more than that.  Sewing has a similar effect on me, and that’s not quite as repetitive as knitting.

Most crisis intervention therapies have routines to promote a sense of competence and mastery to the patients.  Basically, if you can’t feel in control of something or accomplished about something, you run out of cope real, real fast.  That’s a very normal human reaction.   While you can’t necessarily plot a curve from one point, I know the kick I get out of sewing my own wardrobe or knitting a garment for someone.  It’s a sense of accomplishment.   It’s a way to restore a sense of competence.  Knitting and sewing are relatively simple skills to learn.  Elizabeth Zimmerman, the Ur-geek of knitting, put it this way:

Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course, superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage.

You can learn to knit a garter stitch scarf relatively quickly. And at the end of the project, you have something physical, tangible, and dare I say  useful as well.  That kind of thing can do a lot to restore a sense of competence.

If it seems goofy to say, “I can’t control the economy, but by God, I can make this sweater!” don’t be too quick to sneer.  That sense of competence can and does fuel intelligent action in other areas.  Anyone who engages in a repetitive but ultimately useful and creative thing like knitting1 will tell you that in the process of creation, your mind relaxes.  You enter a meditative state and often that relaxation of the mind engages the creative centers that allows you to come up with the creative solutions you need in other areas of life.

It also has to do with how the brain works and how it encodes stressful experiences.

Psychological theory suggests that when we’re exposed to a horrifying situation, we take it in through two channels. One is the basic, primal sensory channel: the sights, sounds, sensations, and smells of the situation. The other is an intellectual channel: our brains trying to make sense of what’s going on, and putting it into words and a context that we can talk about.

The experimenters wondered what would happen if you specifically blocked one of these channels while the traumatic event is going on. And they found that if you were pre-occupied with a “visual-spatial task,” like typing a pattern on a computer, you didn’t encode the images and sounds of the traumatic experience as strongly. As a result, subjects who kept their hands busy had fewer flashbacks.

— http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.cfm?DocID=209

Does make for an interesting take on the old saying, “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.”

1Or woodworking (ever sanded a bookcase?), or cooking, or even scrubbing a floor (see Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett for an interesting discussion of the principle). It needs to be physical, but not too mentally demanding.