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Earning a Side Income While Working Full Time

You don’t have to quit your job to start earning a side income. In fact, I wouldn’t advise of it all. Instead you can start out slow, and keep it small while keeping the security and income of your full-time job at the same time. If earning a side income isn’t for you (and it’s not for everyone!) then you can easily stop and go back to your normal routine with little or no loss and regret.

Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a lot of great entrepreneurs, and the majority either had full-time jobs while earning a side income or had a full-time job at the time they started their side hustle.

Ensure that you do your research, make smart decisions, and be patient – you will ultimately be much wealthier in life than the rest of the 9-5ers.

Here’s my story on how I started making earning a side income all while I was still working full-time.

Your Passion

In order to enjoy doing something, and do it well, you need to be passionate about it. The extra money earned will not be enough to keep you going for a long period of time.

Determine why you want to earn a side income. Do you want to help others? Are you looking for a side income? or maybe you want to be your own boss one day. These are just of the thoughts that I asked my self when I started out. Soon enough I realized, even though I like the money, the biggest driving force for me starting a side hustle is that one day I hoped to turn it into a full-time gig and become my own boss.

How To Find Extra Time

You wake up early, go to work on time, and come home late. How the heck are you supposed to find time to earn an extra income? If you’re single, maybe you can spare a couple hours each night to work on a project. If you’re married and/or have children, finding even a glimpse of free time can be near impossible.

Here are a few helpful tips I learned over time. Most of these will help you find some extra time:

1. Join Activities

We often don’t realize how we can prudently use our time. We spend a lot of time thinking, rather than doing. When I first started out, I would drive to a friends house, out on a date or to my parents, and I would make a point of taking some flyer’s or business cards to drop off to potential prospects en route. This has worked for me and paid dividends many times over, and all because I planned ahead, gave my self some time, and combined two activities.

Let’s look at it another way.

You drive to work and you’re listening to tunes in the car. Later you may go for a workout and you’ll be listening to tunes again. Why not combine your activities or driving with some business learning. Rather than listening to tunes and boring repetitive commercials on the radio, you can listen to pod-casts about entrepreneurship, small businesses or other inspirational pod-casts.

2. Pay Attention To Your Time

Working full-time you’re bound to have long days, but even throughout long days, you’ll have some free time that you can use to your advantage. Maybe a few hours before bed or after the kids are asleep. I make very good use of 1.5 hours (twice per week) that I have after I get home from work, and the time I head to the gym. Usually I’m answering emails, doing research or creating invoices to be mailed out.

3. Cut Down On Your TV Time

If you’re a sports junkie like me, you probably watch a lot of TV throughout the week. Why not just cut down on your TV time? I haven’t cut out TV out totally, but I’ve worked hard to effectively use my free time to do work, research, and develop without watching TV. Thus far it’s worked very well for me.

Final Thoughts

The nice thing about not having to quit your full-time day job is that you put less pressure on your self. You’re not in scramble mode of, “I need to make money” or more importantly you don’t feel desperate. And when you feel desperate, you tend to take the shortest routes, rather than truly creating value in your product or service.

Readers, how much TV do you watch? Do you have a side income with a full-time job? How are you handling it?

Cheers!

Eddie

Photo Credit (listentothemountains)

Voip For Small Business

About 5 years ago, I expanded our business into an office location and brought on 4 staff. Being a life insurance brokerage working nationally, all 5 of us were on the phones all day long. Our phone bill had the potential to be a significant portion of the expenses of a growing business. My best estimate was about $2000+ per month in phone bills. By switching to Voip our monthly costs were frequently in the $250 range. Toll free number, ten lines with rollover, voice messaging and lots of Canada-wide calling, all included in that cost.

Are the saving starting to look worth it to you? I hope so, I believe you can realize almost 90% savings in your phone costs by switching your small business to Voip. The savings are realized in three ways:

  • You’ll pay $50-$75 per line for traditional phone systems. Plus an additional fee for rollovers between those lines, toll-free, voice mail, and call forwarding. This can easily add up to hundreds or thousands per month before you even pick up the phone. Compare to Voip where there are no real line fees and most of the features such as voice mail, call forwarding and conferencing are software driven and thus free. I currently pay $5 per month base cost for 5 lines with rollover and more features than I can use.
  • Long distance fees are reduced. I am currently paying 1 cent per minute for inbound toll-free calls and all my outbound calls. If I’m on the phone with someone in California for an hour, it costs me two quarters and a dime.
  • Equipment costs. While you will likely need new Voip telephones when you switch (figure $100-$150 per phone), the base system that runs all of this is normally done on some cheap computer you have lying around. And the software that controls all of this – again, free.

And because Voip phone systems are software driven, anything you can imagine can happen. Want to have an extension phone ring at your home or at an associate’s office across country? Voip phone systems will do this. Have unlimited local calling on your cell phone but expensive long distance? Call your office and route your cell phone back out through your voip system and now you’re getting long distance from your office, on your cell phone calls.

If the savings seem interesting but the technology seems overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. You will need a tech to set up the initial system, but it’s not that complicated – a local linux tech person can easily set up a small office Voip system in a few hours. And future control and maintenance you can do yourself, right through your browser. Allow me to show you an overview of the steps required to set this up and hopefully it’ll be a lot less intimidating.

What you’ll need:

  • an account with a Voip provider. I use unlimitel.ca and get 1 cent per minute phone calling, but there are other companies out there that are just as good.
  • A voip server. This is the computer that will plug into your network and connect your phones to the voip provider. The server consists of two things – a computer, and the Voip control software. For the computer, pretty much anything will work – an old PC gathering dust, an old laptop, whatever. You do not need fast or powerful for this at all, so a castoff computer is fine. I’ve used an old laptop in the past, I’m now using this: zotac computer. For the Voip control software there are a variety of options but the two most common are AsteriskNow and FreePBX. Both are similar, both are entirely free, just download, burn to a DVD and install on your cheap computer.
  • Voip phones. Unfortunately your old phones won’t work without modification. It’ll be easier to just buy new Voip phone handsets. For this there are two options. The first are to purchase actual Voip phone handsets. These are physical business phones with extensions, lines, hold buttons, all the standard business handset features. The second, less expensive option is a ‘soft phone’. A soft phone consists of a USB headset you can get at Staples for about $50, and some free soft phone software you run on your PC. The free software plus the USB headset plugged into your desktop PC effectively turn your PC into an extension. Put your headset on and dial using your mouse on your screen. Either way works, it’s up to you what type of system you prefer.

I’m going to provide only broad setup steps as I do recommend you bring in a tech to do the setup, so broad steps are all you’ll need. Here’s the basic steps:

  • Get an account with a Voip provider (again, I use unlimitel.ca). They’ll give you your userid and password for your account.
  • Download AsteriskNow or FreePBX.
  • Plug your Voip phone into your network, or install ‘softphone’ software on your PC and add in a USB headset.
  • Your tech will install AsteriskNow or FreePBX on your Voip server. During the setup they’ll also connect in your extensions/Voip phones, secure the your router/firewall, and use the userid and password from your provider to connect to them. The Voip server gets plugged into your computer network and connects your new Voip phones to your Voip provider.

That’s it – you should now be able to pick up your phone and start making calls! And saving huge amounts of money. Going forward, with a quick tutorial from your tech, you should be able to change music on hold, do call forwarding, call conferencing, and everything else you want to do all through your browser on your PC.

One more cool thing with Voip. Because your phone system is now terminated at that voip server you built, your phones will ring anywhere you have that plugged into an internet connection. That means that if you want to move locations there are no phone techs involved, no cost, and no downtime. You simply power down the Voip computer at your old location, drive to the new location and plug it in – voila! Your phones are ringing at your new location. If you have high-speed internet at your cottage, there’s nothing stopping you from taking your business phones with you on vacation and then back home with you again when you return.

Glenn Cooke is president of Life Insurance Canada.com and has been using Voip in his office for 5 years.

Photo Credits (ari, 46145831@N00)

Starting a One-Person Business

Starting a small business is hard work even when you have others helping you, but starting and running a one person business on your own presents even more challenges.

Maybe you’re exhausted from working for someone else, and have always dreamed of starting your own business. But, before you jump ship, let me share some wise words: Starting and running a business alone isn’t for everyone. You need to put in a lot upfront (mostly consisting of time and some money) in order to reap the rewards in the future.

A U.S. census from 2010 indicated that there are more than 20 million one person businesses in the United States, accounting for more than three-fourths of all U.S. businesses.

One of the biggest attractions for starting your own one person business is being your own boss, and setting your own schedule – at least in theory. This ideally works best for singletons and small families, where the man or the woman can put in the necessary time into the business, while the other parent focuses more on the family.

Running the show solo requires ample amounts of determination, discipline, and fearlessness.  I’ll never forget when I started my first business, and at times just wanted to bury my head in the sand and ask, What did I get myself into?

If you think you’re up for the challenge, and got what it takes, here a few tips on starting your own one person business.

Starting a One Person Business

Choose a business that involves something you know about. The less time you need to spend learning the business, the more time you will have to run it. Keep the future in mind when starting up your business – Do you want to sell your business eventually, or do you just want a change of lifestyle?

Another idea to keep in mind is how much cash you might need. There are some who will tell you that you need an ample amount of cash to start-up, however I disagree with this thinking. If everyone needed large amounts of capital for start-up, nobody would be starting a businesses. And just in case you don’t believe me, read this article:  6 businesses you can start for under $200.

Focus on the Big Picture

Time is a solo entrepreneur’s biggest friend. A hawk-like focus on your most important functions as a business owner is essential. Rather than spending too much time doing administrative work, you should be focused on marketing your business and driving sales.

Most sole proprietors say that their biggest challenge is finding the time and resources to generate new business. Being a double solopreneur I know first hand that time is tight most of the time, and without focus on the big picture it’s very easy to get sidetracked.

When you’re starting out, you’re trying to build from the ground up, so you need to be clear on who your customers are, because you don’t have any time to waste on those who aren’t your customers.

In the beginning I kept things pretty simple in marketing. I used web presence through Twitter, and our home page to establish the company online.

Keep It Small

There years since starting one of my business, I still keep it small as a home based business. I converted my second bedroom into an office in which I do a lot of work from, this way it saves me time and money by not having to rent a facility.

I’m also employed full-time, and as much as I enjoy seeing my business grow, I’m not interested in it blowing up overnight. Slow, steady, and gradual growth is what I’m after, this way I’m able to handle the work load, and perform the task at hand in best of quality.

Keeping Focus

Being a solo-entrepreneur isn’t for the easily distracted. To manage your limited amount of time effectively, you have to be disciplined. I try to do specific tasks on specific days.  One day of the week I really focus on doing a lot of business development. Other days in the week are for the business planning and the numbers side. Another day is heavily focused on customer service issues.

Taking care of small details is crucial for business success. For example, if you’re starting a cleaning company, having antimicrobial shelving units from a trusted company such as Schaefershelving.com would be a good investment for future business growth and to maintain the quality of your work.

If you want to succeed as a business owner, you need to put your business first and foremost. There have been many times that I backed out of social gatherings simply because there were more important things to get done. Sacrifice is key to your success.

Final Thoughts

Realize that you are the most valuable part of your business and take care of yourself. Without you, your business would not be able to survive. I’m the first one in line for hard work in order to reap the benefits in the future, but every animal needs a break once in a while. Work hard to reach your goals, but remember to find some time for living life as well.

Cheers!
Eddie

Photo Credits (leonrw, marcamos)