Benefits of working from home 2

I’ve been sitting here today writing on my laptop thinking how lucky I am. It’s not everyone who sits in an office with a changing wallpaper like this. Certainly, this is one of main benefits of working from home.

My office wallpaper

Today has been a little cloudy at times with a cool breeze blowing of the sea, interspersed with bouts of warm sunshine. As the seasons change so does my office wallpaper.  Would I prefer to sit in an office, lit by artificial lighting, listening to phones ringing, people constantly chatting, surrounded by computers and machines. I have to say no,  I much prefer to work from home.

Gunfleet Sands

On the horizon I can also watch the latest local development, the Gunfleet Windfarm, taking shape. A major project of 48 wind turbines built on Gunfleet Sands, 7km off the coast.

Of course there has been much controversy locally whether or not to build the windfarm. There has been a lot off opposition to the project, however it is well on the way now with a projected full production by 2012, providing 20% of electricity needed by Essex County.

Just further up the east coast we have Sizewell, a nuclear power station. Personally  thinking of our future generations, windfarms although unsightly are less damaging to our environment that any nuclear disaster.

Working from home

There are many distractions, like watching the view in my case, when working from home, however one must learn self discipline and learn to focus on the job in hand. Having your goal firmly in front of you, whether you work for yourself or you are a tele-commutter working from home, the better the focus the faster the work gets done, leaving more time for the other important things in your life.  

Zo Nicholas

Benefits of working from home

One of the many benefits of working from home is that you can be totally flexible when the need arises.  When working a  9-5 job, its never easy to approach your boss and ask for time off at a drop of the hat. Circumstances may dictate that you just need to be away for example with your family, however your boss also needs his staff and he pays your wage or salary. Being your own boss allows you much more flexibility.

Flexible timetable

Sometimes a flexible timetable is a must! These past couple of weeks have had our hosehold in a bit of a turmoil due to the planned arrival of a new family member. Nothing went quite according to plan! Our daughters little bundle of joy eventually arrived when HE was ready, nearly two weeks late, weighing in at 7lbs 11ozs.

Working from home allows one to be flexible and to juggle the work, the working hours and daily tasks according to when the time allows. With the added volume of phone calls, conversations and visitors this week, work has taken second place and has had to be kept to a minimum with certain tasks postponed. Not something an employer would look at too favourably.

Work timetable

Now that things are settling down, it will be back to the normal work timetable. Hopefully! Once back in more of a routine, even the brain switches into work mode and tasks run smoothly.  Following a timetable and being disciplined are very important when working from home. Too easily one can become distracted, unfocused and become engrossed in other ’stuff’ and lapse into achieving very little. Following a timetable with set tasks to be achieved creates a sense or urgency and stimulates action. At the end of the work day you can then tick the boxes and derive satisfaction from a job well done.

At the end of this week I am looking forward to the monthly 2 day Ycademy Seminar: How to Build an Online Business which will help to get my brain completely on track and focused back on my long term goal.

Zo Nicholas

YORGOO and Ycademy Trainings

The YORGOO and Ycademy training calls cover various topics every week and can be attended by any YORGOO member who wishes to improve his/her knowledge about marketing his/her business or product online.

This past week the training calls focused mainly on creating, editing and publishing images on YORGOOpress [the YORGOO newspaper project] and also adding images to posts on the various blogs that the members like Ute Schaedler or Laetitia Paris have set up. The technique is simple yet inserting images incorrectly into a post can result in a screwed up code and not being Google efficient.

Running own hosted blogs requires a domain and  a server with access to a control panel and the various functions like mysql databases. Setting up an own hosted Wordpress blog is not as difficult as many think. If you can follow step by step instructions, then the process is relatively simple. Many YORGOO and Ycademy members have done so already and are achieving top Google ranking in their related niches.

Webmaster Calls

This weeks YORGOO-Ycademy webmaster call focused mainly on server maintenance, keeping the server clean, and performing backup. The cleaner one keeps the various functions on the server like mail, databases etc the better the server will perform. These tasks do need to be performed regularly. Learning how to keep a server in tip top condition is an important part of being a webmaster.

The webmaster call on Friday nights is a regular feature, attended by members who are interested in running their own servers, blogs and own websites.  Many of the members also attend the YORGOO-Ycademy seminars which are run once a month:  2 full days of information, training and workshops, instructions are done entirely online. The May seminar focuses on ‘Monetising your blog’. A topic which interests anyone working online.

YORGOO and Ycademy Training calls and seminars are a great way to learn good marketing and webmastering skills without spending a fortune.

Zo Nicholas

Ycademy Training with images

During the previous Ycademy training we focused on creating rotating banners for YORGOOpress.

Ycademy Training

The Thursday Ycademy call focused on creating unique images for blog posts, pages, emails etc. Using software that is freely available on the internet it is possible to creating some unique and fun images that can be used for any purpose.

Editing images in YORGOOpress and utilising the NexGen plugin resulted in some fun results which can be seen here on Working from home News.

Zo Nicholas

Buddy Press and Social Networking

You can never say that working from home online is dull or boring. NEVER! This past week we have seen the realease of Buddy Press 1.0, a WP based Social Network Platform allowing user to develop their own personal social networking database.

YORGOOmedia social network

Working with our own social network develepment, YORGOOmedia has intergrated the Buddy press plugin and this week we have been customising and testing the various possibilities that are available. Having applied Semiomantic tuning to the WPMU, the goal of YORGOOmedia is to build the best performing MU-BuddyPress powered formula, where each members site can reach a top 10 Google position on his/her relevant.

Buddy Press features

So far we have been familiarising ourselves with some of the various features available in the admin area. One of the features allows participants to invite friends and build groups, similar to the features on other social networks like Facebook, but unlike facebook you build a personal database and not facebooks. The messaging system is a nice feature too.

So far, so good as we test all the features. Watch this space as we develop further our personal social networking space.

More to come….

Zo Nicholas

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