2. Childminding – If you are looking after your own children you may aswell look after other peoples. Childminding is looking after children in your own home and the pay is usually between £3-£5 per hour per child depending on which part of the country you are in. Childminders do need to have a paediatric first aid, Food hygiene certificate and have been on a childminding course and safeguarding children course. They also need to be OFSTED registered and have an enhanced CRB check. Becoming a childminder costs around £300 to become qualified and can take between 6 months-1 year to get registered.

3. Catalogue Distribution – Many companies offer the opportunity to sell their products by delivering catalogues, these are companies such as Avon, betterware, and kleeneze. Most of these business don’t have such a huge financially outlay and you can `walk with the pushchair and a friend to deliver and collect the catalogues, order your stuff and deliver out to customers.

4. Party Plan – There are a few businessese that rely on you doing party planning and these are normally held on an evening, so once your partner is home from work. Normally you go round to peoples houses, they invite a group of people and you showcase the products you have for sale and people order them their and then. Some of these companies include shoesgloriousshops, Ann Summers and the body shop however there are many more.

5. Craft style businesses – There are more and more businesses starting from home that women are doing these days including making plagues, sock puppets, toys, games, cupcakes, cakes and selling them on sites like ebay and creating facebook groups to network.

Most parents usually start groups on facebook to help start their business, they can invite their friends to join the group and have a competition to try and get friends to invite their friends. Networking can also be a good way to increase the likes on facebook and help you promote your products or services to more people.

This article was written by Gemma Dawson, owner of gdparty supplies which sells baby shower party supplies.

Remote working

Remote working is perhaps the most popular trend in the modern workplace. Instead of having to worry about a long and difficult commute, many knowledge workers can take advantage of remote working options to get things done from home, the airport, or a hotel. Working from home can save time and money, and is a great option for someone who wants to get back to work part time after maternity leave, or someone who is on call a lot, and wants to be able to fix certain issues without taking a long trip to the office.

Bring Your Own Device

This isn’t a technology, as such, more a collection of technologies. Instead of being issued with a company mobile phone, many employers are giving people the option to choose their own device, or use a personal phone, tablet PC, or laptop, for work purposes. This does have some security issues, but it’s a boon for employees, if it can be done right.

Unified Communications

Email is still one of the most common forms of communication, but texting, instant messaging, IP telephony, shared whiteboards, and chat rooms are all being used to share information and increase productivity. With unified communications solutions, each of these disparate communications platforms can be integrated, making everything faster, more efficient, and easier to use.

Electronic Signatures

Instead of printing out documents, faxing them to another office or posting them, then having the signed copy faxed back, many companies are making use of electronic signature software and PDF documents for the vast majority of their official paperwork. Electronic documents are easier to store, less likely to go missing, easier to search, and more efficient too.

Open Plan Offices

The traditional cubicle or closed off offices of a few decades ago are becoming less popular every year. While they can still be seen in older companies, start-ups are opting for shared workstations, communal spaces, desks on wheels, and a “work where you like” mentality. Instead of every person having a designated office space, people are encouraged to move around, and work wherever they can find a power outlet and network port. This is great for morale and communication in the office.

The workplace of today is a more relaxed, and hopefully happier workplace than the ones of many years ago, but there are downsides to this world of constant connectivity. Some people feel that the pressure of always being connected to the office is bad for work-life balance, and also feel that the concessions made in the office are designed to distract people from how much time they spend there. Hopefully, technology will continue to improve, and the workplace of the next decade will be an even better environment.

This is a guest post for Imaging FP written by Amy Fowler for unified communications and remote working experts, Maintel. Find out more by clicking here or here.

It is assumed that Apple are introducing it as a competitor to the likes of Android, who’s tablet’s can be picked up for little more than £100 in their smaller screen variations. As Apple did with the iPod, they simply want to leave no area in the market open to competition and we say good on them! We can’t wait … at that price it’ll be a brilliant device to carry in your pocket and in instances where you need more than a smartphone but don’t need, or can’t carry, an iPad!

We can’t wait and October can’t come quickly enough!

When looking at a search engine’s results pages, you can generally find two forms of results; organic results and paid results (PPC). There is often a lot of confusion as to which is the best to appear on so let’s take a look in a bit more detail:

Organic SEO

Organic SEO services are techniques which are used to see a website appear highly on the organic (or natural) search results on the likes of Google, Yahoo and Bing. When we talk about this, we are referring to the standard results which appear, in general, 10 to a page when a search term is inputted to the search engine. There is a number of techniques which can be used for an organic SEO campaign both on-site and off-site, however it can take some time for such to take an effect and the website appear on the first page of the search engines. But, and this is a big but, the quality of traffic from natural results is usually of a high standard and conversion rates from traffic of this origin are generally strong.

The other alternative for appearing on the search engines is:

PPC (Pay Per Click)

As the title say’s, you can pay to appear on the search engines. Generally, this is in the form of ‘sponsored ads’ and in Google’s case, the ‘AdWords’ ads which appear at the top, side and bottom of natural search results. The obvious benefit of PPC is that your website can be at the top of Google instantly. BUT, it comes at a price. AdWords can be costly and, when put alongside organic SEO, this all ads up. With organic SEO, it may cost you to hire an SEO professional to get you there but, once you are, you’re not paying per visit to the website.

So, which is better? The honest answer is both! In an ideal world, you would appear both at the top of the organic search results AND on the ads, therefore having double the coverage and increasing the chance of a searcher visiting your website and making a sale or enquiry.

We found a pretty decent video which covers a bit more on this topic which is well worth a watch:

When it is time to call a customer service representative on the phone, it is an experience that most people dread. Many times, the operators are working long hours and lose patience with customers after some time. In addition, it is difficult to retain composure if a customer is being rude. Many phone operators do not have much training, or if they do, the little training they do receive is not put to use much. One way to resolve this problem is to provide further training to phone operators so that they will know how to compose themselves in all possible scenarios when dealing with a customer. If phone operators learn proper phone etiquette, the experience will be much more pleasant for both the operator and the customer whether making the call or receiving the call, it is important for phone operators to be knowledgeable of the proper way to communicate with customers and clients over the phone.

When on the phone, the phone operator should be polite to the customer, attentive to the customer’s concern, and help the customer as much as possible. Sometimes, a customer may call and be unsure of what to ask for. The phone operator should be able to engage the customer and figure out what the customer desires. Sometimes, a phone operator may lose patience, or the customer may get angry if they feel they aren’t receiving the help they need. In the worst case scenario, a customer will no longer want to deal with the company again. Things like these can be eliminated by letting the staff receive the proper telephone systems training.

Getting this telephone training is quite simple. A series of telephone training courses are available for free online. These videos are extremely useful for any person who works in customer service. In reality, the company can only do so much to improve the employee’s work ethic. It is up to the employee to improve his or her own ability. For business owners, it is recommended that they refer their employees to this series of free videos, which will improve the quality of service provided to the customers. Employers should encourage employees to practice their phone etiquette outside of the job, especially those who have trouble communicating with customers sometime. This will result in happier customers and a much happier staff.

Best of all … Busy Bee Candles are happy to cater for wholesale orders so you yourself can become a stockist if you wish! We’d love to see these candles in more independent stores across the UK to get in touch with them today! In the meantime, why not take a few moments to take a look at their latest promo video:

To 25th February 2012, HRG’s profits sat at £90.2 million, compared with £265.2 million the year before … that’s a huge drop and looking at that, there’s no wonder the shares dropped in value today.

It certainly backs up the recent announcement that we are once again in a recession, in fact with us entering the double dip, and that times on the high street are tough. Internet based business definitely seem to be the winners of this recession, being able to offer greater discounts on products due to lower operating costs. As much it seems that the high street chains should match online offers, in many cases it just isn’t possible. An online retailer is likely to have 1 warehouse and minimal staff, compared with store rent, staff, fittings and a whole host of other overheads for high street chains.

Is this confirming reports that the high street is dead? Argos has been around longer than most of us can remember and it’s be a real shame to see it go but who knows, if drops in profits continue it may well go the way Woolworth’s did a few years back.

With house sales still being at a very low level, will the housing market continue to decrease or will it once again pick up? We have to remember that only 15 years ago average house prices were well under £100,000 with many luxury houses available for even £75,000 in some parts of the country.

Russell Quirk of online estate agents eMoov.co.uk said: “There’s neither rhyme nor reason to house prices right now. “With transaction levels so low, prices can swing dramatically from one month to the next. And that’s what’s happening month after month.”

How the house market in the UK will continue we don’t know at this moment in time. As Russel has said, prices are changing on a very regular basis and I guess only time will tell the true extent of the future of the UK housing economy!

Has your site been affected? We’ve seen example of a fair few sites dropping over the past few days and it looks set to continue. I’ve been watching a site go up and down for their main keyphrase all afternoon! Have you seen a drop in just short tail keyphrases or long tail keyphrases too?

It seems that they’re out to hit a lot of sites, in some instances even those who stay well within Google’s guidelines! Let us know what you’ve experienced!