As you all know, I have been doing a little bit of general transcription work from my home. Right now I’m loving it. Right now I only have one company that I do work for but I do plan on adding another one in the fall. With the kids home for the summer right now, I really don’t have the time to commit to more than one person. But when they go back to school, I will have more time on my hands. So all in all this transcription work that I have been doing has been pretty good. And the guy that I have been doing quite a bit of work for lately has just informed me that he has enough work for me to keep me busy until the end of August. So… I have to say that I’m pretty pleased with the way things are working out so far.

As you all know, I have a part time job outside of the home plus I do a little bit of Internet work as well to earn a little more income. I only work about eight hours a week outside of the home so I don’t earn a whole lot of income that way. This is why I also try to earn income through working from home. Right now I do some paid blogging, some paid article writing as well as some home transcription work. All of this does keep me busy. Some weeks more than others. For the next couple of months I will be really busy writing articles and I also have a couple of contracts for some general transcription jobs. So, it’s really good that I get this extra income and I’ll take it when I can. I’m not real sure how busy I will be after the next couple of months, but hopefully something else will come up.

That’s the thing when a person relies on this type of work for income. You just never know when it will come and when it does, you just have to be thankful that you have the work. At least for now that is.

Well I figured I would give you all an update on how my journey into the general transcription world has been going so far. Well, so far so good. I have completed a couple of jobs for a couple of different people and have decided that I really do like to do this type of work. It is a difficult job and can be quite frustrating at times, but I really do love a challenge so I am more than happy to keep up with us.

And… yesterday I was hired on by an actual company. Today will be my first day at transcribing for them and I am really excited about this venture. So that’s where I’m at with this new career of mine. Hopefully I can continue to get work from different individuals and be able to earn a little bit of money through this method.

Well my last post in here got my motivation back for crafting and getting my home crafting business up and running. Yesterday after work I started to go through all my crafting magazines to see what I could create to try to sell. Well I came across an old unicorn cross stitch pattern and thought I may like to make this pattern. Years ago (probably 10-12 years ago) I made a couple of these and actually had someone buy both. I made a pretty good profit off my efforts so I have decided that I’m going to try to do this again. So instead of making jewelry I’m going to get back into cross stitching again. This is a perfect craft to do while I’m watching TV in the evenings as it doesn’t take a lot of “brain” work to do something like this.

When I get one of these patterns finished, I’ll be sure to pop back in and show you a picture of the finished product.

Well I’ve been listening to the news lately and have been hearing all about the US and how they are dealing with their recession period. Well here in Canada we are not doing much better. The economy has slowed considerably right now and if your anything like I am, you are just trying to find different ways to survive.

Well one of the ways that I have been using to try to survive in these very trying economic times, is by resurrecting my home crafting business. About a year ago I tried to get this little business up and running. But after a couple of months of not having any significant sales, I got a little discouraged and put this idea on the back burner. Well, I have decided that if I want to make any income at home, I’m going to have to give my idea of creating a small business a little more thought.

One area where I have been concentrating on is how I have been accepting payments for all my crafts in the past. In the past I hadn’t utilized any services such as Credit Card Factoring and I really do think that I probably lost some sales due to this. As most people use credit cards these days, I have decided that if I want to get real serious about this business, I am going to have to implement this option. I would be able to do this by using the services of onlinecheck.com. They have a very fast approval system in place with less stringent requirements to getting a loan. And with no closing costs or fees, I could potentially save some cash in the long run.

So, this is definitely something I’m going to need to give more thought to. I’ll let you all know how I make out with my little home crafting business.

About a month ago I applied to a site on the Internet where I could do some writing for them. Well last week I heard back from them and was informed that I was now one of their writers. Yay! Then yesterday they e-mailed me with my first set of assignments. I do have a couple of weeks to get them all done, but I am planning on doing the majority of them over the weekend. I really want to do a good job for them so that I can continue on with them in the future.

So if you don’t see me around for a few days, don’t fret. I’m still around, it’s just that I will be writing articles instead of doing so much blogging.

Over the past couple of years I have been slowly trying to build up a small home crafting business. And yes, this process has been going pretty slow. But with it now being a new year, I have decided to try to kick things up a bit. Over the past couple of years I have realized that there are some things that I haven’t been doing well in attracting potential customers and buyers and one of those things seem to be my advertising methods. I have tried to go the “cheap” way with word or mouth advertising, but have discovered that this method isn’t working out really well.

So I have decided that what I probably need to do is to look into getting a small business loans that will help me pay for some advertising which may in fact help me to increase my sales. I do realize that we are now in the middle of a recession, but I still think that the products that I sell are still in demand as people still need to buy gifts for loved ones. So I think if I pay for advertising and have it targeted to my perfect market, I could in fact keep my little business running. Right now the only payments I accept is through paypal but I think that if I start accepting credit card orders I may increase my sales as well.

So with it being a brand new year, I think these may be some measures that I need to put in place to become successful in my crafting business. The more exposure my business gets, the more sales I could potentially make so I really do think a small business loan may be the way to go.