Remote Workers Starting a Side Business – 5 Efficiency Tips
Working from home brings different advantages and disadvantages.
Some people are less productive as remote workers. Others are more efficient when they can work from the comfort of their homes.
No matter what group you belong to, there’s one thing in common for all home-based employees – they don’t have to travel to work.
As a result, every remote worker saves a substantial amount of time every day. These saved hours can be used to make some money on the side.
In this article, you can read some organizational tips that will help you combine your full-time employment and a side job.
1. Plan your time for side gigs
When you’re thinking about an additional job, first make sure that you have enough time to perform new business tasks.
The remote pc monitoring software works just like a typical surveillance camera and however instead of cameras are working perfectly. Like the particular software will be able to record each and everything that employees are performing.
Track your work hours over one or two weeks. Write down when you get up in the morning and at what time you start working. Note down every break you make during your workday, together with the exact time when you finish your work for every single day. These data will give you an insight into your current organization and the amount of time you spend doing your work tasks.
If you notice that you can start working one or two hours earlier in the morning or say awake later in the evening, go for it.
Start searching for additional gigs, but only for the calculated number of hours. If you accept more tasks than you’ve projected, your main job might suffer in terms of productivity.
Therefore, estimate your availability and act accordingly.
2. Make daily schedules
Closely related to the previous paragraph, it’s important for employees taking additional jobs to make detailed daily schedules.
When you’re closing up your workday, you can make a schedule for the following day or use one of the planning apps to improve your organizational tips.
These detailed daily schedules will help you finish all your professional tasks on time.
If you estimate that you’ll need some additional help with some side gigs, react on time and hire one or more freelancers to work with you. Still, don’t increase the additional workload until you’ve got used to your side hustles.
Last, but not least, add your physical exercise and socialization to your daily plans. Working remotely and spreading your professional efforts to additional projects is both physically and mentally demanding. That’s why you need to plan how and when to let some steam off
3. Get familiar with legal regulations
When a full-time employee decides to make some extra money, it’s important to get familiar with legal provisions regulating such arrangements.
First and foremost, you need to know that every job that brings more than $600 a year needs to be reported to the IRS. Since most people doing side jobs surpass that threshold, they need to include these incomes in the section Other earnings in their tax returns.
If you don’t keep track of your additional income and fail to put aside money for taxes, you might need to pay a high sum at the end of the tax year.
The guide put together by Intuit Turbotax might help you properly report your additional income and learn how to use tax deductions for your benefit, as well.
Also, in some states, the money you make via gigs can be paid to your personal account while in others it has to be a separate business account. Before you start accepting your payments for additional gigs, visit the local tax administration to learn more about the local regulations and stick with them.
4. Invest in your promotion
If you want to increase your workload and your revenues while working from home, you need to invest some time and assets in your promotion.
For starters, register to Upwork and other similar platforms. There are millions of job opportunities offered by companies and individuals on a global scale. Depending on the country you live in, you can specify your rates in accordance with your expertise and living conditions.
The next stop is social networks. There are numerous groups on Facebook where you can find gigs in various niches. LinkedIn is another practical option for those who want to find additional work to improve their monthly budget and improve their skills.
Launching a website is another reasonable move if you’re planning to attract a wider audience. As recommended by the designers from a web design company in Houston, a one-page website or just a simpler website with fewer options is the right choice at that stage of business development.
Another way to spread the word about your additional business services is by registering to Google My Business. Given that these extra professional activities are properly registered with the tax administration, adding your side business to Google will improve its visibility.
5. Consider your full-time job
Side gigs are a nice way to improve your monthly budget, but they bring certain drawbacks, as well.
If you’re promoting your personal business services on the Internet, your employer can easily find out about that. Since most positions are restricted by NDAs, it’s important to be extremely cautious with gigs and side jobs.
In other words, make sure not to provide the same services that are prohibited by your employment agreement. That way, you’ll be able to carry out your professional activities on the side without compromising your position in the company.
If your side business overgrows your full-time job, think about quitting that job and going your own way.
Working remotely is not easy, but it provides some opportunities that aren’t reachable for office workers. Taking side jobs is one of them. Calculate your availability and take care of taxes if you want to start a side business. Apart from that, learn more about legal regulations and invest in your business promotion to become competitive in the existing business market. All these features will help you grow your side business and one day you might even be able to leave your regular job and start a full-scale venture.
