If you’ve been wondering about starting a business at home especially since the pandemic hit, we have an easy-to-follow guide for you.

Since 2020, our lives have taken a different turn altogether. Corporate jobs which used to seem like a dream don’t anymore. Everyone is moving towards entrepreneurship and starting small businesses from home. In fact some of them are developing certain skills and have been able to start a business without any money.

This wasn’t a trend before 2020. People would be looking for jobs even if they weren’t fulfilling. Now everyone wants to achieve financial independence as soon as possible. Starting a business is definitely not easy but once established, can make your life so wonderful. It definitely takes a toll on your emotional and mental well-being in the starting years. That’s why always, always choose something that you love doing for your business.

Coming back to the article, these steps are crucial before you start a home business.

1. Write down your talents

And by writing down, I really want you to take a piece of paper and jot down your talents. But keep in mind that there is a difference between what you love to do and your talents.

You could love watching television but that wouldn’t generate any income for you. By talent, I don’t mean that you should sing like Ariana Grande. It means that you have any creative skill or maybe you’re good at a subject. Something that would help people and make a change in their lives.

Your talents must have the capability of turning into a profitable business, a business which you could start from home.

2. Plan on how much you can invest

This one’s obvious. You don’t want to spend your entire savings on your business at once. Make a budget on how much capacity you have to invest without going bankrupt. If you see potential in it, you can surely think of investing more.

Categorize the areas where you would need to invest like:

• Creation of a website
• Marketing
• Delivery costs etc

Come up with the costs that you’d like to spend every month and be ready to have these costs go up and down a little. Because as your business will grow, all these costs would too and so would your profits and you’ll look something like this.

3. Create a business plan for your at home business

Here’s a stepwise guide on how you can create a business plan/strategy:

A. Choose a unique and catchy name:

You want a name which people can easily remember and is easy to pronounce. Also, it should be available to use. Come up with something that defines your business in that one name.

B. Protect your business legally:

This is really important for your business because many times just a minor legal problem can lead to something serious.

C. Analyse your competition:

It’s extremely important to know your competition. Write down their strengths and weaknesses. Try to be stronger than their weaknesses and even stronger than their strengths. You don’t want to make the same mistakes as your competition. Learn from their mistakes and try starting a business which you’d like yourself to invest into.

Make sure your service or product has a good demand because having an amazing product with no demand is just useless. Having a good market is essential for any business. And don’t start practicing unethical business practices like these even if your competition is doing so.

D. Marketing and sales plan:

Marketing is sometimes even considered more important than the product or service itself. You need to have a strict pre decided budget for marketing too because many times we get overzealous with it.

4. Register your business

It’s time to register your business. If you decide to form your business as an LLC or corporation, you’ll need to register with your state to start and run your business from home legally.

The exact process that you’ll need to follow to complete this registration will be unique to your state. Therefore, you’ll want to consult your local Secretary of State or business bureau for guidelines on how to complete your business registration.

5. Daily marketing mantra

Daily marketing is absolutely important for your business as I said before. Initially, try to indulge in free marketing tools and promote your business everywhere you can.

There are so many ways to promote your business for free. Here I have listed the top 5 ways to promote a business.

You need to spend more than 50 percent of your time in marketing your business. You first need to grow your audience before they can decide if they want to buy from you. So invest your time in marketing as much as you can.

Conclusion

I know it can be quite overwhelming to start a business from home. But you don’t have to be perfect all the time. You will make mistakes naturally but learn from those mistakes. You’ll grow your business to heights you cannot even imagine. So goodluck in your entrepreneurial journey and keep believing in yourself. You’re going to make it one day:)