So You Want To Work From Home? continued

2) Be picky about who you work with, or work for.
Avoid people who want to go cheap or who are having cash-flow issues. Avoid people who are control-freaks. Avoid people you don't really think you can help. When you're talking to them, tell them this.

You need to be comfortable (or at least capable) of giving people the real facts about what you see. This is business, not a cocktail-party friendship. If you tell them what you really think and back it up with facts, and then tell them why you don't want to work with them (or hire them, or buy wholesale from them, or partner with them) you will win more trsut and credibility in five minutes than you could in a year of trying to please them. Actually, than in a decade of trying to please them.

As I've mentioned, my second year working from home I had figured out #1 (specialize). In my third year, I dropped all my small clients and focused on only with clients who paid $5,000 a month and up. Being picky about your work from home clients or bosses works off of the old 80/20 principle. 20% of your work at home effort is going to result in 80% of your work from home income.

3) Don't be afraid.
Working from home, or for yourself, or for a home-based business can be pretty scary. You will probably have more than one month where you do not know where the mortgage is going to come from.

This fear can very easily drive you to break work at home rules #1 and #2. You may grab whatever work you can find (or even fall into a part-time work at the office/store job) and you will probably take less money for it than you need. This is bad not only because the work you just took out of desperation isn't going to meet your needs (either financially or in terms of your freedom), and because you just sucked a vast amount of energy and focus from what you really wanted: working from home making good money.

By the way, here's a related tip. Save money. Again: Save your money. Save it for taxes, save it for emergencies, save it for late paychecks, and save enough so that if your current work at home job goes away (and they can, without notice) you'll have plenty of time to find a new one. And be realistic about how long it will take you to find a new work at home job. Estimate it will take you at least one month longer than it took you to find your current work at home gig. That way, while you're looking for work, you won't break work at home principles #1 and #2.

Probably the toughest thing about working from home is the focus it requires. If you can't turn off that tv, or resist the urge to rearrange your sock drawer, you may still need to work outside of your home. But just weeding out surface distractions like that is the easy part. The real part of focus in working at home is identifying, finding and doing the work that you really, really want to be doing, and not getting too sucked into doing the familiar, low-return busywork that's going to show up.

By the way - this is the goal of my fourth year of work. I'm practicing it today by writing this article. And yes, I am aiming to triple my income again this year, simply my implementing this principle every day, in concrete and constructive actions.

Run From Work at Home Stuffing Envelopes Scams

Are Work at Home Psychic Jobs Just a Dream?

Make Work At Home Typing Work For You

Top 10 Work at Home Jobs

How To Find Legitimate Work at Home Jobs

5 Ways To Spot Work at Home Scams

A Work at Home Business Versus A Work At Home Job

So You Want to Work at Home?