Starting a home-based business

Staying at home—watching overhyped afternoon game shows and telenovela reruns while waiting for your spouse— is not the ideal model of being financially productive. While taking care of the house is essential for the family, letting the family’s financial resources be dependent on a single person is a great risk, even if the working partner holds a high position in his company.

True, washing and ironing piles of clothes, preparing your children’s baon, buying the groceries for the week, and making sure the house remains spotless are just as exhausting, as important, and deserve the respect similar to those who have jobs. But again, being dependent on your spouse to bring home the bacon is financially risky for your family. If for some reason you cannot simply stop being the designated housekeeper of the family and apply for a job, why don’t you start your own home-based business?

Starting a home-based business is a lot of fun and very rewarding. Aside from being able to work at home and getting to manage your own time, you can be as creative as you want. Here are some things you need to know for your home-based business:

Make your interest a part of your business. Being your own boss means you get to decide what the business will be—what the business does, how the business transacts with other people, and how the business will expand. For those of you who have that creative touch in designing things like notebooks, mugs, and even shirts, why not learn silkscreen printing? Products like customized T-shirts, tumblers, fridge magnets, ballers, ID laces, and the like can fall under corporate giveaways. Corporate giveaways have a very large market, if you play your cards right.

For those of you who are never happy with the jewelry designs sold in stores and have your own idea of what you like, why not try learning how to make your own beaded jewelry? Learning how to make beaded jewelry is actually very easy and can be learned within a few hours. If you love perfumes, lotions and scented soaps, why not learn how to make these? You may not be as big as the leading brands, but you still get to craft them with your unique preferences. From there, you can build your own niche and look for your own set of dedicated customers.

There are a lot of resources and reading materials available on the Internet, and even demo/instructional videos from YouTube. You can even find your suppliers over social networking sites.

Learn Internet marketing. I can never stress enough the importance of Internet marketing in this day and age. In fact, Internet marketing has built, or at the very least helped build empires of companies, enabled SMEs to go head to head with bigger competition, and linked thousands of businesses and business owners together. Your home-based business can become a part of this ecosystem.

Build relationships. Marketing your own product by yourself is not impossible. It’s quite challenging, however, so learn how to build relationships that would help. Build relationships with prominent bloggers by contacting them and giving them free samples to try on their own and see if they like them. You can join forums and online groups that may be discussing the same topics involved in your company. You can even partner up with different home-based businesses and help each other out.

Start small, but think big. Do not settle for single purchases. For now, you may be selling small novelty items, but eventually, you may want to add specialized giveaways for debuts, weddings and corporate events. Being a home-based business has its limits, but before you even hit that limit, you could find yourself competing with SMEs. Work your way up from being a small scale business—you can start in your own neighborhood—until you reach the next barangay, next city, and eventually a whole new market you may not have even imagined from the start.

Starting a home-based business may be the best option for those who cannot leave their home or do not have sufficient capital to buy or rent a commercial space. Truly, the determined entrepreneur can find starting a home-based business a promising venture.

*Originally published by the Manila Bulletin. C-4, Sunday, July 13, 2014. Written by Ruben Anlacan, Jr. (President, BusinessCoach, Inc.) All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or copied without express written permission of the copyright holders.