Ruchira Bose finds 10 ideas to kick-start you into working from home

"I want to work from home, but I don’t know where to start!’’ Does this wail sound familiar? Here are 10 work-at-home ideas for various types of skills. In each of these options, you build your own business and are your own boss. The only prerequisite:

You get your cute butt off the couch. Start by finding the type of work you’re interested in. Explore the business potential, and whether your skills and personality match the job. Outline the initial cost and time involved. To market your services, print a business card, and a brochure that details your service, the approximate costs and terms of payment. Distribute your brochures at salons, your GP, gynaec or dentist’s office, hotels, to friends and family, florists and schools.

Pro Gift Shopper
Shopping with other people’s money and earning from it — it doesn’t get better than this!! As more men and women work long hours, the less they are likely to remember anniversaries and birthdays and the less time they’ll have to shop for gifts. Offer a highly personalised service. Get your hands on an extensive shopping guide, suss out shopping areas and specialised stores, get a good travel agent, explore boutique and other hotels, resorts and spas.

Draw up your own list of hard-to-find stuff and see where you can get it. That way, you’ll know which place to hit and not have to go hunting when your client calls. Get a profile of the person you have to buy the gift for (colours, fragrances, flavours and styles she/he likes and dislikes, her job, age, etc).

Have a list of gift ideas ready. Be sure to include a few unusual ones, eg: A spa treatment, a hair cut from a celebrity stylist, a weekend getaway, a helicopter ride, etc. Know a little about big ticket items like jewellery and cars, in case your client requests one of those. When you charge, split your bill into expenses and cost of the gift. You can even offer guided shopping tours and itineraries.

Custom Wrapping
If you’re artistic, this one’s great. Create custom confectionary and cake wrappers and boxes for birthdays, wedding receptions, business promotions, Valentine’s Day, Christmas and Diwali. If you want to do it on a grand scale, get a computer with a graphic design software and CD-writer.

Create the designs and give them to a DTP outlet to churn out metres of wrapping paper! But, it’s more fun to create handmade stuff. In which case, you just need loads of paint and craft material. Arm yourself with a few design books. Explore unusual wrappings like fresh leaves and fabrics.

Errand Runner
This is a really untapped market. Working couples, the elderly, challenged or homebound are all potential clients. Take care of routine chores like picking up dry cleaning, booking airline tickets, dropping kids to school, helping plan parties and anything else your clients are too busy or unable to do. You’ll need a mobile, a computer and a car.

Pet Care
If you love animals, you can be a pro pet care person. Pet sitting is an up-and-coming business, catering to the thousands of pet owners needing help during the work week, vacations or prolonged illness. And you could involve your whole family in it.

Your responsibilities may include feeding, boarding, cleaning, trips to the vet, walking, and playing with the pet. Know the traits and habits of different breeds of dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, hamsters, exotic fish, etc. Convey to your client that you really enjoy taking care of animals and know about them.

Pro Organiser
If you’re super-organised, that’s the skill to cash in on. Help your clients sort their lives and manage their time more effectively. Train people to build these skills. Start small — do you have a hopelessly disorganised neighbour or know a newly wed who needs to get his or her home in order?

Show her how to do it, and let her spread some word-of-mouth. Also: Teach small groups in your home. Get speaking engagements from the local clubs. The important thing is to establish yourself as an expert. Once you’ve done that, clients will find you!

Medical Transcriber
A lot of Business Processing Outfits (BPOs) hire masses of medical transcribers. But you could do it from home using earphones and a computer. Besides being a speedy and accurate typist, you’ll need to make sure sentences are grammatically correct and that medical terms and names of drugs are spelled right. You can do a Med transcription course at a vocational institute.

Translator
A cunning linguist? You can translate everything from annual reports, letters, legal documents and brochures to novels from one language into another. Of course, you’ll need to be fluent in at least two languages. Good typing skills are also crucial. Apart from that, you’ll need a computer and printer. Get in touch with publishers, consulates and translation agencies to offer your services.

Landscape Designer
Have an aesthetic sense waiting to be tapped? Get into landscape designing. It could entail anything from making extensive design drawings to advising clients on all kinds of flowers and plants. Familiarity with horticultural issues and knowledge of different plants and trees is extremely important.

Explore nurseries. Arm yourself with some landscape designing books and a cell phone. Also get a small team of gardeners and contract labour that will help you execute your design. If it involves extensive waterworks and fountains, it will help to team up with an architect.

Card Designer
We’ve all made little paper-and-crayon cards as kids. Well, if you want to take it to a more sophisticated level (with earning potential), design and market greeting and invitation cards. You’ll need a computer, lots of designing software and a good colour printer. Unless you’ll do the handmade sort.

You can also blend computerised and traditional tools. For example, print out a design and work with paint over the output to lessen the cold digital look and feel of the cards. To get clients get in touch with wedding and party planners.

Model: Riya Sen Photograph courtesy Aviance Workshop