Home Office Design: Your Gateway To Make Money At Home

Making money is what you always want. But don't overlook the way you do it.Would you like to work in endless hours just to complete a simple task?Many time this is caused by lack of proper Small Office Home Office(SOHO).

When you design your home office, you should make sure it is going to be efficient, neat, and fun. The gateway to this success is by setting up a proper Small Office Home Office (SOHO). This article would not have enough space to review this huge topic. It just touches the imporant elements you should look when you setup your SOHO.

Your Workspace

To be effective, it is imperative to setup a dedicated room for your workspace. If you are serious about starting a business, a dedicated room would give you focus, concentration, and confidence. If you do too much casual office, you can easily get distracted.

For example, if your office is in the living room, you would be frequently annoyed by the sound of TV sets or the activity of kids. If you have no other choice but living room, make sure you turn off the tv set while you work. Or you can do your business work after your kids go to bed.

You can setup your SOHO easily by converting one of your extra room. For example, if you have an extra bedroom next to the phone lines, this is going to be ideal location since you will need access to phone line. Or you convert the long forgotten attic to be your home office. Be creative.

Then you need to put a large desk. The desk needs to be big enough to put your computer or laptop, your additional monitor, your notepad, your stationery, your phone handset, and a space for your book to read or to write. These gadgets have to be in an arm reach. Allow enough space under the table for your legs.

You also need to have a comfortable chair. This is important for your health as you would be sitting in this chair for hours daily. So spend enough money to buy a reclining chair with a height adjuster. Also spend some time to set a comfortable sitting. Pay attention to your back.

Telephone

This piece of equipment is one of your most important business tool. Exploit its features such as voice mail, call forwarding, etc to setup a good, reputable business.

You need to learn a phone manner. Prepare a phone script of how to answer a call, how to make a call (no kidding this is important), how to conduct a conference call or a speaker phone.

In most cases your prospect would judge your reputation from the phone call. If the prospect hears a blazing sound of tv set or the sound of children picking up the call... then he or she would question your credibility as a serious business person.

So, make sure you have a dedicated phone line for business that only you or your business assistant (if you employ one) can answer. Install an answering machine or a voicemail to answer a call when you are absent.

If possible, assign a separate line for a fax machine. This will boost your credibility as only a serious business person who would dedicate a phone line to a fax machine. Or you can setup a fax-through-email.

Your Computer

Next important business equipment is the personal computer (PC). If you are a mobile business person, then a notebook computer would be an excellent choice. Below is a general guideline when you shop for a PC or notebook.

Currently most PC and laptop are using latest release of processors such as Intel Pentium 4 or Pentium M ( Mobile ) for notebook. This is the brain of your computer. Pick the latest, the fastest, the better whatever you can afford.

Then you select the memory, technically called as Random Access Memory (RAM). This is where your program and data are stored temporarily while you work. Most current PC and notebook are shipped with 256 MB RAM. This is sufficient for general office work.

If your business requires extensive graphics work or multimedia (such as movie) editing, then go for a much higher RAM. Currently RAM is pretty cheap, so go for 1 GB or more.

Your computer is also equipped with hard disk drive. This is where your program and data permanently reside (well until you intentionally delete them). Choose PC or notebook with minimum hard drive memory of at least 30 GB. Again memory is cheap, so you can afford to buy more capacity.

When your vendor install the operating system into your PC or notebook, ask for at least 2 partitions: one partition is for program (called drive C: ) and the other ( called drive d: or e:) is for data. Ask drive C: to be partitioned as NTFS (windows file system for a higher security) and assign drive d: or e: as FAT32 file system. This is for clarity and contingency. If your computer or notebook got damaged and you need to reinstall the program, you can maintain your data intact in the other drive. This is for Windows operating system.

Other operating system would require sometimes more partitions.

As for monitor (s), it is recommended at least 17" flat screen for desktop monitor or 15" for notebook. This is a piece of equipment that you look at all the time. You should make sure that you take care your eyes. Looking at small characters in a small window requires your eyes to work harder.

It is also recommended to buy additional monitor. This monitor would be attached to your PC or notebook as an extention. Most PC and notebook provide this port connection. You would need this to read multiple documents in 2 monitors.

Other media storage such as compact flash, secure digital, multimedia card would be needed. Some notebooks provide the port directly so that you don't need to buy its reader. This media storage is very handy when you want to exchange documents with your digital camera, printing company, your associate, etc. Currently compact flash is the most popular and therefore the cheapest. So it is a good decision to have compact flash as a media storage.

Your Printer... and Fax... and Scanner!

Welcome to the buyer market of multifunction printer. Now you can own a printer, a fax machine, and a scanner in a single machine. At an affordable price. This is a huge benefit to the home business. By 3-in-1 machine, you can save your precious space in your SOHO and save your money too.

Sometimes the vendor conducts a trade-in promotion. So watch out your local newspaper for an ad of this opportunity. You can trade-in your old fax machine with this multifunction printer.

From various models, select a model that runs on its own. It means the fax can run without turning on the computer.

ADSL Modem

Nowadays internet is a norm in conducting a business. From simple email to browsing the web, many people use internet. It is not only a means of doing business, internet itself is a huge business potential if you know how to take advantage of it.

When you need a reliable and fast internet connection, ADSL is the right choice. Recently the cost of ADSL is becoming affordable to the home business users. ADSL stands for Asyncronuous Digital Subscriber Line, which means you have all-time connection with internet service provider (ISP) with different (asyncronuous) speed line. Downline speed is usually higher than that of upline speed. You can have speed of 512 kilo bit per second. While your dial up line can only give you max 56 kilo bit per second.

There are many ADSL modems in the market. You can have a single ADSL modem connected to a computer via USB connection. You can also have a modem with a router so that you can use it as a network gateway for your SOHO computer network.

Software

As for operating system, it is no brainer to pick Windows as this is the most popular operating system. Many applications also run on Windows. It is a natural choice for many people to use Windows as they grow up using Windows.

However, if you think you would like to save some money and you have a long learning period of open source software such as Linux, then go ahead install those Linux boxes. Two advantages of Linux are stability and security. Virus attack on Linux has never been heard of.

The typical software you need would be office application such as word processing and spreadsheet, archiving software (zip and unzip), internet browser, email client, antivirus software, antispyware software, and pdf application (reader and printer). You may need a graphic application software to manipulate images for online catalog and website development.

The most popular office application is -again- Microsoft Office. The latest is Microsoft Office 2003 coming in bundle as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Outlook, Publisher, and InfoPath. For those who are not familiar: Word is a word processor application; Excel is a spreadsheet application; Access is a database application; Outlook is an email and organizer application; Publisher is a simple application for creating name card, flyer, postcard, etc. ; InfoPath is an application to create forms.

This office application also comes with simple image editing, good enough to resize, crop, change size, change color and brightness of an image.

The other alternatives are Corel series (Word perfect, presentation, Quattro, paradox) and StarOffice (with its own word processor, spreadsheet, presentation).

Web Development

If you would like to build websites, first you should ask yourself whether you know how to do it. If no, give it to the pro. Sitesell would provide you a complete solution from research, web development, web hosting, and web maintenance. You just focus on building the business.