Maternity leave

Wow, how quickly time flies. I will be having this baby next week (hopefully) and will be on maternity leave for an undetermined amount of time. I will try to keep up on my blog while I am at home with my new little baby. In the meantime I wanted to share some awesome photos with all of you. These are before and after photos from a renovation done at a place called "Palm Garden of Ocala Spa" where they installed a new walk-in tub. What an amazing transformation.

Oh to be sick and pregnant.

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I have written in my blog. My apologies for the delay. Unfortunately I caught a nasty virus which sent me spiraling into pregnancy complications and even more secondary infections than I have ever had in my entire life. To top it off I had two sick children. Boy was that a fun two weeks. Thankfully we are all recovering well. It is just taking me a lot longer than we had hoped. Now I am two weeks behind in my work. I have a ton of SEO work to catch up on for Cosel USA, my power supply client, and A&R Wholesale, my Safety Tub (walk-in tub) client. I will be spending the rest of this month focusing on them and helping my newest client Danger Rangers to move forward with their site additions/changes. Thank you to all of my clients for being so patient with me during my extended absence. I am so grateful to be able to work from home where I can be on bedrest and still check on my clients and make sure everything is under control. That is one of the many benefits of being a work at home mom!

Great site for our kids!

I have a new client I am working on now called Educational Adventures. They are a multi-media edutainment company committed to the production of premium content that entertains, educates, and empowers children in all areas of safety and well-being. If you have children, you've probably heard of their Television Show called Danger Rangers. Their series focuses on safety topics for children to help teach children about safety in a fun and entertaining way. My kids love it! If your a parent or educator I highly recommend you check out their site. They have online games, downloads, products such as DVD's and activity books that you can purchase, and tons of resources and information on safety topics.
They are an amazing organization and I am looking forward to working with them on their web sites!

Communication with your clients

These past few weeks have been very busy with my walk-in bathtubs client. We have been dealing with some email issues that should not have taken this long to resolve. Why do host companies have to make things so difficult? Any way, I have learned a great deal from this experience. As a work at home parent you have to be even more resourceful than if you were working in an office environment. You also have to be sure to stay in close contact with your client so they know you are working to get the issues resolved. Communication is very important when your working out of a home office since you never have the opportunity for face to face meetings.

Thanks to technology it's easier to be resourceful and to be able to communicate well with your clients. Many vendors offer alternatives to an 800# which you usually end up wasting time on hold with any way. For example, many vendors offer online chats and/or a technical support email address where they can create a ticket for tracking and follow-up. If it's a vendor you deal with on a regular basis, oftentimes they will offer a point of contact person (account manager) that you can contact directly. Use as many of these resources as possible.

In regards to communicating with your client, there are very obvious ways to do this well.

Email- with email you can keep a history and manage follow-ups so you can be sure you are answering questions and getting things resolved.

Phonecall- Usually a simple phone call letting your client know the status of a situation will help them feel comforted that you are working to get the problem(s) solved.

Teleconference- Same as a phonecall, however in a teleconference you can speak with several individuals including the vendor(s) which can save time and hassle.

I/M- Instant messaging is a great way to chat with your client or co-workers as you are working through a problem. It's real time and you can swap documents, links and more which you can't do as easily on the phone.

These are just a few tools you can use as a work at home individual to ensure you are meeting your clients needs.

It also helps if you have wonderful clients which I happen to be lucky enough to have!

Welcome to 2008!

Happy New Year! Here we are in 2008 and as for me, I welcome it. Last year was great overall and I see only good things for this year as well. For a lot of us work at home people January usually means one thing is weighing heavy on our minds- yes that's right, TAXES. I have a very dependable accountant, which makes tax season a lot less stressfull. I highly suggest to anyone working freelance, if your not comfortable with tax "stuff"or just don't like the hassle, get an accountant. It's usually well worth the money. There are a lot of write-off's you can take working from home. I am no expert so I won't give specific advice, instead I will send you on a learning experience. I suggest you do some research on the internet. There are a lot of great sites out there that are full of information. Aboutus.com and the IRS web site both have columns on Office In Home Tax Deductions and Justanswer.com offers free tax advice. However I still recommend getting an accountant if you are unsure and/or want to avoid an audit, which of course doesn't mean you won't get audited, but at least your accountant has your back. So in summary, do your homework and if all else fails, turn to an expert. Best wishes to all of us this tax season!