How to Start a Home Design Business - About.com

How to Start a Home Design Business
Excerpted from a Home Design Services startup guide, this in-depth look at home design businesses on Entrepreneur.com is a good read for anyone with a flair for design who is thinking about starting a business offering home design services.

The piece looks at a few different types of home design businesses:

* Interior Design
* Interior Redesign
* Professional Organizer
* Restoration/Preservation
* Faux Painting

The article then digs a little deeper into what's involved with each of these home design businesses, including what that type of home designer does, a day in the life, estimating, setting rates, getting certified (where it's required) and startup costs.

Overall employment of designers is expected to grow about as fast as the average for all occupations through the year 2012. Actually, with the increasing popularity of home improvement networks like HGTV, D-I-Y and others it's easy to see that there's a great deal of interest in making one's home the best it can be, which would suggest that demand will continue to be above the average for this type of business that lends itself to starting at home.

When economic times are good and home prices are soaring, homeowners can see an excellent rate of return on home design projects and have plenty of home equity they can use to fund their design projects. When the real estate market is struggling, like it is today, it gets increasingly difficult to sell a house and sellers look for ways they can stand out in an overcrowded home resale market. Either way, it sounds like a potential win-win home business opportunity.

How to Start a Home Design Business (Source on Entrepreneur.com)
Home Business Idea: Home Staging Business


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This Week's Work at Home Jobs
Here are the latest work at home jobs for this week. This week's job postings include opportunities to work at home for United Health Group (a regular) and the American Heart Association, along with other opportunities at both larger and smaller business concerns with various levels of experience needed. If the job number is important to the posting (some sites do not list jobs on individual pages) it's provided for you. Good luck!

P.S. - If you land a job from any of these postings let me know!

This Week's Work at Home Jobs

10 Best and 10 Worst State Tax Systems for Small Business
The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council has released it's annual Business Tax Index - Best to Worst State Tax Systems for Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

The study looks at 16 different tax measures and combines them into a single score in order to rank the 50 US states and DC in terms of their tax impact on small businesses and entrepreneurs.

How does your state stack up when it comes to taxes? Are you planning a move? The results may affect your decision to start a small or home business in your current state or in one you may have considered moving to. We all want to keep our tax bite to a minimum and a state's tax system can have a significant impact on an entrepreneur's bottom line.

10 Best and 10 Worst State Tax Systems for Small Business

Work at Home Scams Rising in the Face of Economic Woes
This article by Eve Tahmincioglu on MSNBC.com takes a look at how the number of work at home scams is likely to increase as the economy tightens. Because work at home scammers prey on people who are desperate for money but who don't want to or can't leave the house to earn the additional income, it's likely that a growing number of people will get scammed into believing that work at home jobs they see online or receive unsolicited email about are legitimate.

Tahmincioglu goes on to point out that complaints to the Better Business Bureau pertaining to work-at-home opportunities rose to 4,100 in 2007 from about 3,800 in 2006. Additionally, she tells us that work-at-home offers and business opportunities ranked 13th last year among fraud complaints received by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

While it's one thing to get conned into paying for the privilege to work at home with these scammers and perhaps have your bank account drained in the process, those who get scammed also need to be aware that they could end up getting arrested for activities they thought were legitimate but were, in reality, rip off attempts by crooks who convince the workers to repackage goods and send them on only to find out the unsuspecting home worker was actively involved in fencing merchandise purchased with stolen credit cards.

Some of the specific scams mentioned in the article include:

* An email saying you were randomly selected to become a mystery shopper and you can earn $500 to $800 a week.
* An unsolicited email, or a job post about a work-at-home job involving freight.
* Offers of training and pay for filling out medical bills. Typically the scam requires you to make an upfront payment for the "opportunity" and you never get paid for your work.

Additional work at home scam offers I receive nearly every day

Occasionally I save the scam email offers I get. Over the past year, I've saved 93 messages. And that was just those I decided to save that weren't blocked as spam. Many say they saw my resume on CareerBuilder or Monster. In nearly all cases the messages are poorly written and reflect the grammar of non-native English. Why have I saved them? Well, I'm getting so fed up, one day I may just start naming names. Here are the most common type of offers I see:

* An email saying my resume was found on a job site and the company would like to offer me a job as a Transfer Manager processing on-line money transfers.
* An offer to become a PayPal Account Manager to process payments from the company's clients through PayPal. I would get a percentage of each transfer (5% - 15%).

Often, the email has a noreply address. Other times I'm urged to go to a website and fill out information, providing my personal financial information. Typically, the only requirements are that you be US-based, have a US bank account, be over 25 and be good with computers. Since you need to have a US bank account, you can bet the scammers are going to insist on getting your financial information before they can agree to "hire" you. Don't do me any favors!

* Your Career: Don't Fall for Work at Home Scams (MSNBC Article)
* Beware of Phony Work at Home Job Offers
* Medical Billing from Home - Avoiding the Scams


What Kind of Home Based Entrepreneur Are You?
Entrepreneur.com/MSNBC provides an excerpt from Jeffrey A. Landers' book, The Home Office from Hell Cure. In it, Landers examines two types of entrepreneurs, what he calls Growth Mavens and Lifestyle Gurus. While I really enjoyed the article, it may be oversimplified because in reality there are probably many more than just two types of entrepreneurs.

Landers describes Growth Mavens as those who want to grow from a one-person business to a multi-employee corporation and beyond. He says Growth Mavens know there's no limit to the amount of money they can make. As a result, Growth Mavens are typically driven to move their business out of the house as soon as possible and into the corporate world. My argument would be that Growth Maven types are not really home-based entrepreneurs in the true sense of the word anyway, as so many of them go out to find venture capital and don't start their business at home in the first place.

I can relate more to the Lifestyle Gurus, and I suspect many of us with home businesses would. Landers says Lifestyle Gurus made their dream happen the first day they didn't have to go in to the office. "He is psyched to be his own boss, have a flexible schedule and decide for himself when to work and when to take time off. " Landers says that successful Lifestyle Gurus "Have a plan for making it work. They make themselves look big even when they're small. They outsource the things that both drain their time and aren't revenue-producing. And they get their customers' attention."

I agree that you need a plan to be successful. It may or may not amount to a formal business plan, but it's a plan nonetheless.

His categorization neatly breaks down these two types of entrepreneurs - maybe a little too neatly - into those who want to get big and those who want to stay at home and make enough money for a good living. Included with the excerpt is a quiz to see which type of entrepreneur personality you have - or at least which of these two groups best fit you.

What Kind of Home Based Entrepreneur Are You?
Do You Really Need a Business Plan?
Business Plan Basics
Is Starting a Business Right for You? (Quiz: About Small Business: Canada)

President Bush Issues Small Business Week Proclamation
President Bush

Photo by Getty Images

On April 18th, President Bush issued a proclamation officially marking April 20th through April 26th as Small Business Week.

In his proclamation, Bush states, "Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy, and my Administration is committed to fostering an environment in which the entrepreneurial spirit can thrive. " My question is, if your administration is so committed to small business, why so little notice? With some planning, events could have been planned to make the week what he says it's supposed to be: "A time to celebrate the many achievements of small business owners, entrepreneurs, and employees, who contribute to the vitality and prosperity of our Nation and create new job opportunities for our citizens."

The last sentence of the proclamation is, "I call upon all Americans to observe this week with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs that celebrate the achievements of small business owners and their employees and encourage the development of new small businesses." Well, isn't that special? With a whole two days of planning time, I wonder what meaningful ceremonies and programs could be pulled together. The other question I have is, why not make this an annual event?

Read the Small Business Week Proclamation
Home Business Resources

This Week's Telecommuting Jobs

Here are the latest telecommuting jobs for this week. Each week's job postings feature full and part-time work at home opportunities, most of which are 100% telecommute or provide the opportunity to telecommute after a brief training period. If the work at home opportunity requires that you live within a certain geographical area, that information is included. Some sites do not provide individual page addresses for job opportunities. In those cases, I've posted the job number so you can use it to find the exact job that's in the list.

Check Out the Work at Home Job Poll

Have you taken the work at home job poll yet? When this post went to press, the work at home job poll shows that a whopping 30 percent of those who telecommute say that their work at home job found THEM, far more than those who actively went looking for telecommute employment and found it.

* Check out the latest Telecommuting Jobs
* Search for Telecommute Jobs on About.com
* Work from Home as an About.com Guide


About Poll
Did You Find Work from Home or Did it Find You?
It Found Me - I Didn't Seek it Out
I Went After It and Got It
A Little Bit of Both
I'm Not Working From Home Yet But I'm Looking
Current Results

Article Marketing: How to Write an Effective Article
My guest, professional Network Marketing Trainer and Business Coach Lisa Willard shares some tips for writing effective articles for use in your article marketing campaign. Article marketing is an inexpensive and potentially very effective way to promote your home-based business online. Lisa tells you how to get the most from your article marketing efforts by starting with your articles: What you should watch out for and how you can get started, even if you thought you couldn't do it.

* Article Marketing: How to Write an Effective Article


This Week's 10 Work from Home Jobs
Here are the latest work from home jobs for this week. Each week's job postings feature full and part-time work at home opportunities, most of which are 100% telecommute or provide the opportunity to telecommute after a brief training period. If the work at home opportunity requires that you live within a certain geographical area, that information is included. Additionally, some sites do not provide individual page URLs for job opportunities so the job number is posted so you can use it to find the exact job referred to.

* Check out the latest Tuesday's Telecommuting Jobs
* Are You Pursuing the Right Work at Home Strategy?
* How to Find Work at Home Jobs


Real-Life Home Business Profile - Coastal Travel
Kris Russell and Karen D'Valentine share information about their home-based business, Coastal Travel Group, which is part of the popular Coastal Vacations home business opportunity. When you start the Coastal Vacations home business opportunity, you work through a Director, such as Kris and Karen who are featured in this profile. The Director you choose can have an important impact on your chances for success with the Coastal home business opportunity.

* Real-Life Home Business Profile - Coastal Travel
* How to Submit a Home Business Profile