There are lots of options these days if you want to make use of your skills and work for yourself. Thanks to the internet, there are plenty of people out there hiring people with good skills in all kinds of sectors to work for them from home on a freelance basis. Whether you are a writer, a marketing expert, a designer, a programmer or an accountant, with the right approach you can make a living working as a self employed freelancer.
Setting up this kind of business is actually fairly simple, and requires very little capital. Here, we take a look at what the bare minimum things you will need to start your own freelancing small business are:
Technical Set Up
To be able to work online from home you do, at the very least, need a reliable internet connection, a computer that can do all of the things you need it to do consistently for the kind of jobs you want (a writer can, for example, work on a basic PC, but someone doing coding, data analysis or design may need a higher end computer), and a comfortable home office.
A home office may seem like a luxury and you may think you can just make do with working at your dining table or on your sofa, however this is not sustainable comfort wise, and will be bad for your health. Make getting a good desk along with a proper five wheeled office chair part of your business set up plans, along with space for other things you may need like printers. You’ll be spending most of your day in your home office so it needs to be a conducive place for working!
Admin Set Up
The other main cost when starting up a new ‘work at home’ business is the admin. As much as you need the technical equipment, you also need to know you are running the business legitimately to be able to have your clients hire you with confidence, and to know there are no nasty surprises coming when it comes to taxation.
Find out about how to properly register a business in your jurisdiction, and consider also getting business insurance from a company that specialize in this like Bizinsure. You may also want to think about getting a professional accountant and tax expert.
Marketing
When you have done the admin and set up your home office, all that is left is to win some business! There is a lot of marketing you can do for free using your usual network and social media, however it can often be worth making investments in things like your website and the content on it, to help more of the right people find you.
No business is completely free of start up costs, but a freelancing small business can often be set up with these things alone. Plan wisely and make sure everything you need is in place, and you can soon get the business into the black!
