Archive for October, 2007
Friday, October 26th, 2007
Working as a pet
sitter can be the ideal job for someone who loves animals. For
some people, the idea of going to an office and working all day with other people
is stifling. These people may find that the freedom of working as a pet sitter
is perfect. As a pet sitter, you get to spend more time with animals than people
and you have a significant amount of freedom to do as you please during the
day. Of course, you’ll need to be a responsible person to work as a pet
sitter since people take the care of their pets very seriously. If you have
the kind of personality that allows you to be responsible when you aren’t
being watched by a boss, then you can probably stand out as a pet sitter and
gain the trust of a growing clientele.
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If you want to work at
home as a pet sitter, you’ll need to determine what exactly
this means to you. Some people run pet sitting services out of their home.
This means that the client will bring the dog or cat to your house and
you will provide all of the care there. This may be done daily on an ongoing
basis for a client who works all day and doesn’t want to leave their
pet home alone. Alternatively, it may be done day-and-night for clients
who are going out of town. If you are going to be working from your own
home, you need to determine how you are going to restructure your house
to accommodate your news business. Find out if there are city rules dictating
how many pets can be in your home at one time and take care of other such
legalities.
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If you want to be a pet sitter but don’t want to do the care in your
own home for one reason or another, then you can work as a pet sitter
that cares for pets in other people’s homes. You might stay overnight
at the home while a person is on vacation or you might be a pet sitter that
just checks in on the pets a few times a day to provide food, water, personal
attention and exercise for the animals. You might be on a tighter schedule if
you do out-of-home pet sitting because you’ll have worked out a time frame
of care with your clients. However, you’ll also have less hassle in some
ways because you won’t have to worry about the upkeep of your home in
relation to the pet sitting business.
After you’ve determined which kind of pet sitter you want to be, you
can start looking for jobs and advertising your services. To get a good amount
of work as a pet sitter, you’ll want to approach the job search from both
of these angles. Look online and through classified ads for people who
are seeking a pet sitter. These people are already looking for someone
like you so you stand a good chance of getting a job with them if you can present
yourself as a qualified pet sitter. Don’t stop with the available jobs,
though. You should also set up a website, create fliers to leave at places like
vets and groomers and otherwise market your pet sitting services to pet owners
who may not even realize yet that they want the service that you can provide.
Being a pet sitter lets you have a fairly relaxed job. You can wear jeans and
T-shirts to your job, talk on the phone while you are working and to some extent
even come and go as you please. However, you shouldn’t mistake this for
meaning that you can be irresponsible. Make sure to always present yourself
professionally to clients in your appearance and behavior. Doing this from day
one will greatly assist you in establishing yourself as a qualified
work-at-home pet sitter.
How to start
a Pet Sitter Business
Posted in How to Become, Pet Sitter Business, Work at Home Ideas | No Comments »
Sunday, October 21st, 2007
“Become a Mystery Shopper”. We’ve all seen
those advertisements in the backs of weekly newspapers or in the online classifieds
but most of us have never followed through on answering them. Being a Mystery
Shopper can be an ideal work-at-home job for the right person. It allows
you to bring in an income without having to stick to a set working schedule.
And it lets you get that income by doing something that you probably love to
do – shopping. But being a mystery shopper requires a little more skill
than just going out and buying things. And if you’re looking into working
as a mystery shopper for a company that doesn’t require more skill than
that, you’d better watch out because you might be getting scammed. If
being a mystery shopper sounds like a great job to you, you should definitely
go for it. Just make sure that you go for it carefully so that the job works
for you and doesn’t backfire.
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The main thing that you should
look for when applying to become
a mystery shopper is the terms of your employment including
what is required of you and what kind of compensation you are going to
get. You should be getting paid to do this work, not paying a fee to be
part of it. Places that scam you are places which require you to purchase
shopping goods out of your own pocket without reimbursement. Some places
may even request fees for you to work through their agency. These are
not genuine places and you shouldn’t be lured in to them by your
desire to work as a mystery shopper. There are legitimate secret shopper
jobs out there so hold out for a good one.
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To find one of these jobs, you simply need to start registering with legitimate
secret shopper sites. You can find them by looking for “secret shopper”,
“mystery shopper”, or “quality assurance” in your favorite
search engine. You can register for these sites online and begin working
as a secret shopper. Just make sure that you understand all of the
terms in advance. Always get the contracts of your employment in writing and
keep a copy for yourself. Once you’ve registered, you will slowly begin
getting jobs as a mystery shopper. To get better and more frequent jobs, you
should make sure that you do a superior job on all of your initial assignments.
This means that you work hard to meet your deadlines and provide good information
to the company employing you.
You should also be aware that there is a new market for doing some mystery
shopping on your own, without going through one of these companies. This will
require investment on your part but if you want to work entirely for yourself,
then it’s something to consider. The way to do this is to learn about
how to make revenue from blogging. Then, you can do mystery shopping on your
own and set up a blog to report your findings. If you develop this blog into
a revenue-earning blog and gain a good following for the consumer information
that you’re putting out there, you can effectively be
a self-employed mystery shopper.
Click Here
to Discover How to Become a Mystery Shopper
Technorati Tags:work at home, home business ideas, mystery shopper, secret shopper>
Posted in How to Become, Mystery Shopper, Work at Home Ideas | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
Earlier this month I wrote a post about my obsession with Social Media….
"Social
Media - The New Bad Boy". I had so much fun writing it and it was a
very successful post for me. I love Social Media and Web 2.0…. truthfully,
I am totally addicted to it. If I’m not actively participating in Sphinn,
StumbleUpon, Facebook,or
any of my other Social Media addictions then I want to be writing about it.
I have decided to creat a Blog that will be exclusively about Social
Media and Web 2.0. The Blog is named Social
Desire….. named for the strong desire I have for everything relating to
Social Media.
Please come join me there. If you are as obsessed with Social Media as I am,
you will not regret it. And, please don’t forgot to subscribe to SocialDesire’s
feed.
Technorati Tags:social media, blogs, web 2.0, shana albert
Posted in Blogging, Networking, SEO, Social Media | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
Have you seen those television shows in which a professional organizer comes
in to a home and cleans up all of the clutter in a matter of hours? If you get
a tingly sensation inside when you see shows like that, thinking that you’d
be terrific in a similar job, then you might want to consider starting
a business as a professional organizer. Obviously, you need to be organized
to work in this kind of job. You also have to be a self-starter if you’re
going to create your own professional organizer business. If you have both of
those qualities, there’s no reason that you can’t get started in
work as a professional organizer. There is relatively low start-up cost and
a lot of need out there for these kinds of services.
The first thing that you’ll need to do is determine exactly what kind
of professional organizer services you want to offer. Some professional organizers
are hired specifically to clean up a messy home. However, there are many other
things that professional organizers might do. They may organize offices or home
offices which can include setting up a paper filing system and assisting with
computer organization. They may offer not only organization services but also
ongoing assistance in helping an individual or family develop organizational
skills of their own. A personal organizer may come in to a home just once or
may do work on a semi-regular basis for the same people. Figure out which services
you want to offer, how you will provide them and what your rates will be. Determining
this is going to set the foundation for your personal organizer business.
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After determining this basic
information about your work, you can begin marketing your new
personal organizer business. Set up a website that promotes your
services. Consider starting a blog providing personal organizer information
to others so that you can rapidly grow your credibility in the industry.
Get business cards that have your website on them. Develop fliers, brochures,
newsletters and other marketing materials that explain and promote your
services. Basically, you’re going to want to make sure that other
people out there know how you can help them organize their lives. |
As you are beginning your personal organizer business, you will want to make
sure that you aren’t forgetting any of the legalities of being a business
owner. Go get a business license for your business. Make sure you know about
the tax laws related to your new personal organizer business. If you are going
to be hiring others to assist you with the business, make sure that you get
an employer ID and understand about employees taxes. Put your organizational
skills to use in making sure that you have all your I’s dotted and T’s
crossed in the business department. After all, the first thing that people are
going to see about your business is you. What would you think if your personal
organizer didn’t appear to be very organized in his or her own life?!
Technorati Tags:home business, work at home, professional organizer
Posted in How to Become, Professional Organizer, Work at Home Ideas | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
Many people have begun shying away from trying to break into the self-employed
real estate business. This is because changes in the housing market across the
nation have made people think that this is a bad industry to get into at the
current time. That’s actually not the case. If you are willing to put
in some effort to learn about changes in the industry and how to help serve
your clients, you can do well these days with a home-based real estate business.
If you’ve always wanted to work for yourself as a mortgage broker and
have been holding off because of the market, you should stop waiting and start
thinking about getting that business up and running.
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Before you start your
home-based business as a mortgage broker, you will want to make
sure that you understand the market that you are getting in to. A lot
of things have happened in recent years that a mortgage broker must be
aware of. For example, the sub-prime mortgage bust has greatly affected
the housing industry in different parts of
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the country. You will want to be well-aware of the ups and downs of the industry.
This isn’t just so that you can know it for yourself but so you can share
this information with your new clients.
In fact, as you begin your home-based mortgage broker career,
you will want to establish your credibility in the industry by letting clients
know up front about the research that you’ve done into the field. When
you set up your website, you should include articles which you have penned about
the mortgage industry. This increases your credibility and will help you gain
business. If you can get some work like this published on other sites or in
magazines, you will do even better for yourself in your new career. People these
days want to know that they are working with a mortgage broker who is knowledgeable
and trusted.
You’ll also want to make sure that you have the credentials you
need to be a mortgage broker. This means that you’ll have to
take some Mortgage
Broker classes to get some certifications. The actual certifications
vary depending on your geographic location. Make sure that you look into this
as you launch your mortgage broker business and get all set up with the things
that you need. You don’t want to launch a business and start to get clients
only to find yourself shut down due to legalities. You’ll want to join
the National Association of Mortgage Brokers for assistance with these kinds
of details as well as for additional credibility. In addition to the mortgage
broker certifications, you will need a business license and business tax ID.
Working with your government licensing agencies will help you get all of this
taken care of.
You’ll have a lot of decisions to make when you start a home-based mortgage
broker business. You’ll need to determine what neighborhoods
you’re comfortable working in, what types of clients
you want to take on and which types of mortgage loans you most
want to work with. You’ll also need to decide how you are going to market
yourself within the community and how you are going to network with real estate
agents and lenders. But one decision you won’t have to make anymore is
whether or not to become a mortgage broker because you’ll already be one!
Posted in How to Become, Mortgage Broker, Work at Home Ideas | 2 Comments »
