When I was a young lad of 16 I went to work in a bank.  There I met a man called John James who was the sub-manager.  He took me on as his ‘project’, lord knows I did not have a clue.

One day he asked me a question.  “What is the purpose of a business?”  Obviously I said to make a profit.  That was wrong.  He said that the purpose of any business is to provide a service, the objective is to make a profit.  Anyone in business loses sight of this simple truth at their peril.

This applies to all of us working from home.  We must provide a service that allows customers to feel that we deserve their business.  We must give value.  Not just in terms of price but delivery times and the quality of what we sell.  I always try to post my items that day of the order, certainly by the end of the next working day and never any later than that.  That is one of my missions.  I always include a note with each sale to say thank you.  It is personalised and I often talk about the purchase describing the book or how best to look after the Zippo or whatever.

The result? 2000 positive feedbacks on eBay and not one negative.  You can not buy that sort of recommendation!

It is all about providing a service, John James was right!

Do you remember that I blogged about focus groups a few days ago?

I was contacted by a reader who said that there was nothing doing in their area.  They had the idea of setting up their own, local focus group.  That sounds like a great plan.  Run for local businesses it could be a valuable resource and beneficial to all concerned.  A quick check on Amazon and I found “Doing Focus Groups” by Rosalind Barbour among other books that may well be worth studying.

I also found one article on the web that recommended running a focus group about your website.  That sounds quite scary to me but it could provide some interesting feedback.  Maybe one day, maybe……..

Those fine people at Amazon have produced another money making opportunity for us.

Amazon Turk has been set up to allow companies and individuals to be put in contact with people to undertake some of those tasks that computers can not.  These tasks involve things like reviewing pieces of text to gauge comprehension and understanding.  In other words how well designed and written is the text or page.  Some tasks ask for reviews, articles and comments, all the things best done by human beings.  For each task you are paid.

I doubt whether you can make a living from Amazon Turk.  However, rather than just sitting infront of the TV Amazon Turk offers an interesting and productive alternative.

Is it possible to make money online taking surveys?

You have probably seen adverts that say that it is possible to make money simply by filling out some surveys on line.  In the name of research I will give this a try and let you know how I get on.  Please tell me of your experiences.

My first thought is that this is too good to be true.  My second is whether it is possible to make enough to make the time spent worthwhile.   I am also sceptical about sites that demand a signing on fee.  I am sure that it is possible to find the companies that want people to take surveys without going through a middle man.  However, the time taken to do so may make the ease of using a site such as Paid Surveys UK worthwhile.

Watch this space.

Working from home requires somewhere to work, that is obvious, but what does that really mean?  My thoughts have turned to this as I am in the process of moving my office.  I have outgrown the third bedroom in our house.  We are decorating the attic room and I will be moving up there within a week or two.

Just what is necessary when starting out?  There are some basics.  You need a PC, desk, telephone line, printer, paper and consumables. 

My problem is that the number of files and the amount of stock has also grown.  I began by selling Zippo lighters on eBay.  They are a good thing to sell as they are small and fast moving.  This means that I can hold relatively small amount of stock and replace them as I need them.  This is called just in time replenishment.  If I know that I will sell 5 of a particular style of Zippo a week then I will order 15 at a time and reorder when I am down to 10 as the time lag from ordering to receipt is 2 weeks.  That way I always have stock but never too much.  The other benefit is that my money is not tied up in unsold stock.

Selling on Amazon has brought a different problem.  The stock is bigger (books) and slower moving.  I have had some books for 3 months.  They are selling but they are on the shelves for longer than the Zippos.  As an example, I bought ‘Kinski Uncut’ the autobiography of Klaus Kinski (a wonderful actor) a couple of months ago for £1.  Last week I sold it for £37.  It was worth having it on the shelf for that length of time.  The problem is space.  I am selling about 30 books a week and have a stock of 650 that are listed on Amazon.  I have to replace the ones sold and I anticipate the stock growing to about 1000 within a few months.

When starting a home business ensure that the space for your setup will be sufficient for your needs now and for the foreseeable future but keep everything under review.

I will be returning to this the theme of home office organisation over the coming weeks, just once I have finnished painting the attic room…………….

It would be difficult to make a full time living out of being on focus groups but you can make some nice extra money for very little ‘work’.  Well, would you call sitting round pontificating about your views on some product or other work?

3 good UK based focus groups are focusgroupsuk.com, customersmatter.co.uk and qualityeye.com.  They also have some work for mystery shoppers.  Being a mystery shopper is great.  You are employed to go into a selected store and buy something.  You are then asked about your in-shop experience.