Leading blogger and mumpreneur Erica Douglas gives her top tips for starting your own at home business
In 2009 I suddenly found myself without a job. It was the height of the recession and the news was telling me there wasn’t much work out there. My husband is a bus driver so he’s the main breadwinner, but we needed my income, too.
As our daughter was then aged three, working from home seemed like the best option, so I decided to look for something flexible.
After doing quite a lot of research online I realised that if I had lots of different sources of income, it would mean I always had something to fall back on if one of my ‘income streams’ failed.
The advantage is that you can choose the kind of work you do and fit it into your home life – making cupcakes, party plan, crafts, selling at car boot sales or dog walking, for example. I already had a successful mummy blog, littlemummy.com, so this seemed like a good starting point for me. I started selling ads, and within three months I'd achieved my first income goal, and I've continued to move the goal posts ever since.
If this sounds like something that would work for you, here are my top tips to get you started:
1. Sit down and work out a monthly income target. Divide it by the amount of income streams you think you can manage. If in doubt divide by five.
2. Make a list of your skills, hobbies and passions. Write down three ways you could make money from each. For example, maybe setting up your own cake company, or selling at car boot sales.
3. Pick just one idea to begin with. Pick the idea that you think is most likely to succeed or the one you can take action on immediately.
4. Write down the steps you need to take to start creating an income from that idea, bearing in mind you need to make a profit.
5. Take at least one step every day and take your first step right now.
6. Track your progress in a notebook or in a spreadsheet.
7. Once you've either achieved your target income stream for that idea - or you've realised it doesn't work - go on to the next idea. Keep going until you meet your income goal.
You can read more tips from Erica about starting your own business at becomeamumpreneur.com
