Engage Brain Open Mind: The Pros and Cons a Home Based Blogging Business

The Pros and Cons a Home Based Blogging Business

via Kikolani by Brian on 7/21/10

This is a guest post by Brian Stephens of Moulin Website Design, a web design company supporting small businesses.

A home business sounds great, doesn’t it? Rolling out of bed in the morning when you wake, rather than to an alarm clock. No boss giving you grief for getting in late. You can do what you want when you want. Life couldn’t be better, or could it?

First of all, there are two ways to work from home. There is working for a company from a home base, and there is working for yourself, self employed and building your own business. Making money blogging as a business venture is a great example of a way to do this.

Working from Home for Someone Else

Lets discuss the working from home for a company option first. This is a real work at home job where you actually are working in your home – not out on the road servicing clients all over the country and not getting home until 8.00PM, exhausted from all the driving.

Here are the pros for a real ‘working for a company at home’ type job.

Save on the commute time to and from work.
Have some flexibility in your working hours.
No office politics to deal with.
Far fewer work clothes required.
You have a high level of autonomy on how you do your work.
You can enjoy a peaceful environment with little or no interruptions (assuming you don’t have others working at home or kids running around simultaneously).

So what are the cons of this type of arrangement?

You are still working for a company and need to meet their targets.
Yes, there will be flexibility on time, but the company will expect you to be available if they need to speak to you.
No human interaction – can you really work on your own or do you need to have contact with people?
Who is paying for the extra heating or cooling of your home now you are there all day? You need to be sure this is clear.
You are now responsible for getting your work completed so you need to be self motivated and disciplined.

In a word, working from home for a company will suit a lot of people, but not everyone. For some people, the crack of going to work is what makes life enjoyable: social interaction and having someone tell you what you need to do and when to do it may be your motivation, and you might find that you need that environment in order to function.

On the other hand, if you really can handle the cons of a work at home environment and love the fact that you can stay at home to work and enjoy the benefits that come with it, then it could really be what makes your working life enjoyable.

Working from Home for Yourself

So let’s take this to the next level – working from home building your own business. Clearly some of the pros and cons of working from home for a company will apply equally to working from home for yourself when you are building your own business.

So what are the additional pros and cons that come from building your own business?

First of all, you really are in charge and you really do get to decide what you do.
Now you have complete flexibility, if you want to sleep all day and work all night, it is up to you.
Any profit you make is all yours, and the amount of profit you make is down to your ingenuity.
The work you put into the business potentially increases its value, and it can become a disposable asset if and when you are ready to move on.

And what are the cons?

First of all you really are in charge and you really do get to decide what you do.
You have to provide all your own equipment and deal with your own technical problems.
You are responsible for your heating and or cooling bills now you are working from your home.
You have to formulate and implement your own business plan.
You have to identify what skills you need for your business and whether you require any additional training.

Now that you know the pros and cons of working from home, you can decide whether that is a lifestyle you aspire to. Before you make a final decision, it is possible to test the water. There are many fine home based business that were started on a part time basis with very small start up costs, and now provide considerable incomes for their owners.

Of course there are cons associated with any business development, it would be naive to think there wasn’t. But starting a home based business can be exciting and rewarding and as long as you are persistent and patient. It can be made to work, and sometimes to levels you would not have believed possible.

The Blogging Business

Going back to the ‘blogging for business‘ option that was mentioned previously – all you really need to get started is a computer and access to the Internet.

Many people actually blog using free blogging platforms like Blogspot, for example, to get started. You can see the appeal of this – you don’t have to pay for a domain name or hosting and you can get started straight away including placing ads on your site, promoting affiliate links, or even selling your own products directly.

A word of caution however, if you take the free platform route, you never have complete control of the site. There is no way to recover the value you add to the site and you could, heaven forbid, find that for reasons outside your control your site gets shut down and your income stream can be cut off.

That is why it is recommeneded that you commit a little funding to registering your own domain name and paying for your own hosting. This way, for a very modest cost, you can control the site and add value that is potentially recoverable if you decide to move on, as well as ensure that no one can decide to shut the site down outside of your control.

So to start a home based business as a blogger, using the Internet as discussed, requires you to know at least something about how to register a domain name, where to find a suitable hosting service and how you go about creating your first blog.

This is all described in a free ebook available via Creating a Wordpress Blog. So go take a look and find out how you can start building your own business through blogging, it may be the start of your dream lifestyle.

Your Experiences

Do you work from home for your company for yourself? Is your business based around your blog? Please share your experiences, both positive and negative, about these home based work options.