3 Kids and Us

4 Home Businesses You Can Start (Even If You Have Small Children)

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Being a stay-at-home parent is a full-time job – one that pays in memories and time spent with your children. Sometimes this isn’t enough for families who would like to make a little extra income to spend on a vacation or fun experiences together.

Fortunately, we live in the beautiful age of remote work and technology, perfect for stay-at-home parents who want to start a small (or large) business right from the comfort of their home.

From a little bit of work to some major dedication, these are four home businesses parents can start, even if they have small children running through the house.

  1. Network Marketing

You’ve heard of companies like MaryKay, Pampered Chef, and Premier Designs Jewelry. You’ve probably even been invited to a home party where you can buy items from these companies.

If you have a large social network and a knack for meeting new people and selling items, then you may want to consider getting into a network marketing company. You’ll have a mentor to help you establish your business and even have the opportunity to build your own empire and mentor other sellers.

  1. Print-on-Demand

If you’re an artist or graphic designer who would love to see your art printed on items like mugs, notebooks, t-shirts, and phone cases, then you may want to look into print-on-demand business models.

This model allows you to create your design at home, advertise it on a product through a website, social media, or however you see fit, and a print-on-demand company produces the product and ships it to your customer.

The beauty of this business is that you never have to keep inventory! All you have to do is design and promote!

  1. Craft Seller

Do you have an area in your house with all of your crafting supplies? Maybe you just bought a Cricut and ran out of things to make for your house but still have an itch to keep crafting.

Consider selling your craft products like home décor, jewelry, candles, and whatever else you can craft at home. As you unwind and relax making your crafts, you can also make some extra income from your hobby.

If you want to get really serious about your craft business and find the most effective way to sell your products, conducting some retail market research is beneficial and will help you enhance your business plan.

  1. Affiliate Marketing

Are you a creative writer or enjoy creating social media content? Then you may want to become an affiliate marketer!

When you have a blog or large following on social media, you can reach out to brands and products that you want to advertise to your followers in exchange for a commission for each sale you make from your audience.

It does take some time to build an audience and create content, but the payoff is amazing when it’s done right, and you work with the right brands and products.

The Value of Customer Service Calls

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Let’s face it. Not many of us look forward to calling a 1-800 number. In the vast majority of cases, we call a company to receive an answer to a question or to lodge a complaint. Rarely, do we ring up any business just to say we’re happy with the product or service it provides, as we often dread the lengthy maze of options directing us from one concern or department to another and can resent the barrage of questions we receive in response to our own inquiries. Nevertheless, customer service calls serve an important purpose; without physically visiting a company’s headquarters or relying on a prolonged written exchange of correspondence, how else could we voice and have heard our concerns? Maybe it’s time to consider the benefits of customer service calls. Here are three:

They Provide Quick Feedback

Of course, first and foremost, the customer service call is a (relatively) quick way (when possible routing nightmares are set aside) for us as customers to receive pertinent and individualized information. We might be able to locate or generate instruction on a website, product packaging, pamphlet or brochure, but only direct, verbal communication offers us the opportunity to receive information that is prompt and personalized. Emails and written correspondence can provide similar results, but both necessitate time for the back and forth relay of conversation.

They Provide Individualized Feedback

As mentioned, in addition to being quick, customer service calls have the advantage of offering us all personalized service. Not only can customer service representatives provide quick information over the phone, they can provide specific information that takes into account the details of our own unique relationship with the company. In this way, exceptions to policies might be made or special benefits might be given to us that wouldn’t or couldn’t be provided via other means.

They Can Be Used to Train Staff

Finally, when customer service calls are recorded, they can also be used to train staff. In fact, a hosted call recording can be a crucial part of employee training, offering examples of common customer concerns and providing best practices for representatives to replicate in future calls; specifically, characteristics of an exemplary rep’s pattern of speech, including his or her volume, cadence and clarity, can be used as a model of effective communication with consumers for future call center staff, ensuring the subsequent customer service calls are met with professionalism and any complaints are dealt with in the most most efficient way. This benefits us all in the long run, providing future customer experiences with staff that are better informed to manage a range of customer service issues.

Passenger Counting Systems Advantages

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A fully-fledged passenger counting system is a great addition to the management of any mass transit operation. It provides tons of valuable data which is useful to stakeholders such as the passengers, managers, planners, operators, and even concerned third parties like insurers in some cases. The data from these systems can help to improve customer service, plan operations more smoothly thus improving efficiency, enhance security and safety, and to help in accurate revenue capturing or projection.

Features of passenger counting systems

High accuracy levels – These systems employ independent traffic statistics algorithms, which allows them to have high accuracy rates of approximately 92%. They can precisely differentiate customer flow regardless of the color of the clothes, having caps, backpacks, and so on.

Two-way passenger flow counting – Every device in the system has the capacity to automatically capture the passengers getting on to the vehicle and those alighting. As such, it can support 2-channel video input and 2-channel output. Additionally, it can automatically summarize the gathered information.

Real-time reporting – The terminal equipment in the system and cloud server work simultaneously to avail real-time data enabling accurate reporting of a person’s entry and exit.

Sending alerts – The system’s highly accurate data can be set up so that it sends notifications to operators in the event of overload and so on.

Advantages and uses of passenger counting systems

Fleet management, transit agencies operators, passengers, and other parties will get numerous benefits from the passenger counting systems. It is therefore a worthy investment to have on the vehicles, and the best thing is that it is easy to install and readily available from service providers such as Eyeride.

Here are some of the benefits of the system:

Reduced costs or better budget savings

The systems improve operational efficiency and customer service allowing for optimal use of resources. Due to the ability to analyze data up to the individual passenger, the system can identify the routes and even stops that are not well-utilized or those that may not be of any meaningful business. With that information, the planners can do better routing and optimize each vehicle and route. The conductors can also be eliminated in the passenger vehicles.

Timely response to incidents

The automatic passenger information system enables quick and instantaneous response to incidents such as accidents and others and that could make a significant difference between losing lives and saving them. The systems with their cameras and other linked gadgets and sub-systems help fleet managers or transit agencies to act swiftly in case of threats such as hijacking, accidents, and other emergency incidents.

Help to address customer complaints

The information from the automated passenger counting systems enable fleet management and other concerned parties to sort out customer complaints. The data from the system makes it possible to differentiate valid complaints and baseless accusations due to customer errors. Thus, real problems are addressed satisfactorily and in time, enhancing the customer service and reliability of transport service providers.

Revenue projection

With automatic passenger counting systems, it is possible to estimate the number of passengers who will use the bus and how much revenue that bus should generate over a given period. Human errors are also eliminated, for example by conductors in counting and so on.

Efficiency

One of the most significant advantages of the passenger counting system is overall fleet management efficiency, which factors schedules, route plans, traffic trends, and other crucial things that affect the transit quality.

Conclusion

Passenger counting systems have many benefits to the transit operators, passengers, and others. It enables enhanced efficiency, reduces costs, enables quick response to emergencies, and enhances customer service and the handling of customer complaints. It also facilitates revenue projection.

Can Hacking Actually Be a Good Thing?

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When any business owner hears the word hacking they would rightfully run to make sure that their security software is up to date, petrified at the details which may be discovered, or indeed lost. It is with good reason that a business owner would act this way, after all hacking has accounted for untold millions of dollars worth of losses over the years when businesses have been attacked, not to mention the untold damage which can be done thanks to a new lack of trust which clients have in a business post-hack. But what if we said that you’ve been thinking about hacking the wrong way? What if there is an ethical way to hack, bringing about positive solutions?

Pro-active

For as long as cybercrime has existed security has always been one step behind and has been playing catch-up in terms of creating solid defenses against attacks. This is a cycle which has not been able to continue because as quickly as software developers are coming up with ways to prevent Trojan Horse or DDOS attacks, the hackers and cybercriminals are on to a more advanced way of doing things. Software and security needed a shake-up and this is why we are beginning to witness the rise of ethical hackers.

What is an Ethical Hacker?

In Layman’s terms, there are two types of conduct online and these are called white hat and black hat. White hat techniques are ethical, morally just and legal, while black hat techniques can be either illegal, unethical or morally unjust, or they can also be all three. Ethical hacking or white hat hacking is basically hacking by computer developers and programmers who have been invited by a business or a software development company who are working on behalf of the business.

Why Would They Allow a Hack?

The reason for this white hat hacking is that company’s want to know where their weaknesses are in order to prevent themselves from being exposed. This isn’t a new technique by any stretch of the imagination, many businesses will pay ex-thieves to find out where the blind spots are in their store or how they would steal from them given the chance, in order to beef up their security and avoid being stolen from. This is a newer approach to online security and there are many businesses who are now offering hacking services to these companies and corporations. It stands to reason that recruiting some of the world’s best hackers and asking them to try and breach the framework and firewalls which are in place to protect data and business sensitive information is one of the best ways you can keep these information secure.

Risks?

Some people moot the idea of there being risks around this kind of practice. What if an ethical hacker purposely ignores backdoors into a system in order to exploit it later on? These questions become null and void because any system will be hacked by multiple people which greatly diminishes any chances of illegality, and ensures that maximum protection will be given to a business’ computer systems.

Hacking is changing, and those who are doing it have only good intentions.

Does Email Marketing Still Work?

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Email marketing used to be among the most popular internet marketing strategies. Email addresses collected by companies are a gold mine because they can send information using these emails. They can provide updates, send newsletters and continue engaging with their previous and target customers.

Nowadays, it seems like email marketing is not the first option for many business owners anymore. They have moved on to other campaign strategies online that are more effective in targeting a lot of people. Besides, the rise of social media allowed business owners to talk to their audience in a single post directly.

If you are a business owner, should you still rely on email marketing? Is it still a strategy worth pushing?

The benefits of email marketing 

If you wish to continue this strategy, it might still work because you are reaching out to people through their email. For professionals and young adults, their emails are useful to carry out their daily communications. It is possible that they will read any update you send through this method.

Another benefit is that you can reach a lot of people at once by typing several emails. If you do not want to do things that way, it is also possible to personalise your message and send it to individual emails.

The downside of email marketing

Conversely, email marketing is also a strategy many people deem as outdated. It does not appeal to them anymore. If anything, they see all these updates as spam. Instead of believing in the company, they start to feel turned off.

Another downside is that people get updates through other means. Social media could quickly tell people what is going on through notifications. It might take time before they decide to open their email and get updates.

Try other strategies

Considering that email marketing does not work, you might want to try different marketing strategies that some people think are a thing of the past but are still relevant. Rollerbanners are among them. The good thing about this print media is that it allows you to reach local audiences and update them about your business. You can post information regarding exclusive deals and discounts offered by your company. If you intend to launch a new product and you are having a significant event, you can also inform everyone through these banners.

Banners might seem like a strategy used several years ago, but even significant brands still use them. It is a testament to how effective banner campaigns are. Therefore, if you decide to use one, you will not worry about the results. As long as you include the right message and you place the banners in the best locations, they will work well.

Email marketing is old and useless for many companies, but some old strategies could still be effective. You need to remain cautious in determining which campaign to use in the future. You also need to check the results and decide whether changes in the strategy are required before the next campaign is launched.

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We left our home in Sydney, Australia many moons ago in May 2012 and, other than a brief stint back in Perth for Christmas and a wedding in early 2014, we have been travelling the world nomadically ever since, running a business from our laptops and we’re here to show you how to do it!