Fantastic Work-At-Home Information
At the present time, Fantastic Transcripts
is not hiring work-at-home transcriptionists, but we have used work-at-home
people in the past and we are interested in hearing from you if you have
a background in business, finance, high-tech, legal and medical. We are also
interested in hearing from people who can transcribe in a foreign language
and people who can also translate transcriptions.
We will keep your e-mail address on file and contact you when there is an
opportunity. In a few instances we've been able to team up a transcriptionist
with a client who lived in their area, so if you're in the market for work,
it pays to contact us.
Also tell us if you live in the Boston area and can pick up work from our
downtown offices. We tend to give preference to people who live nearby versus
people on the other side of the country to save on FedEx charges.
To be added to our contact list, send us an e-mail at
jobs@fantastictranscripts.com.
In your e-mail, tell us a little about yourself and your experience, and
the kind of equipment you have. We will contact you when there are any
opportunities with our company.
Please don't call our offices asking for work-at-home employment. We will
only tell you to visit our Website or to send us an e-mail. And you can also
save time and money by not sending us any letters or paper resumes through
the US mail, because we don't keep them on file. We do everything electronically.
If you have any questions, e-mail us and we will be happy to answer them
via e-mail.
Work At Home Advice
We hear from a lot of people looking for work-at-home opportunities and we
thought we would share some advice.
Firstly, do not buy any books or pay money to subscribe to any work-at-home
Websites. From what people have told us, the listings are either bogus or
the companies listed are so besieged by people writing, calling and e-mailing,
that any job they originally had was grabbed a long time ago.
Secondly, do not pay for any training or equipment in the hopes of getting
work. We have heard of scams where companies are really selling transcribing
equipment or envelope-stuffing supplies and they never deliver on the
work-at-home jobs they promise.
To be quite honest, there are very few legitimate work-at-home jobs. There
are lots of jobs people can do at home, but getting them is difficult. Most
people who work from home work for themselves, in businesses they have created
themselves, or have convinced employers to let them work from home after
years of excellent work.
Starting Your Own Business
Starting your own business in the United
States is pretty easy, but finding customers is the difficult part.
To start your own business, all you need to do is to go down to your local
town hall or city hall and fill out a DBA (Doing Business As) form. There
is usually a nominal $5-$50 charge for filing this form, but doing this allows
you to legally operate under the business name you choose.
You will be given an official copy of the DBA form. With this copy, you can open
a business bank account in the name of your company. Banks don't like
to cash business checks through personal accounts because they charge more
fees for business accounts, so they will usually be more than happy to help
you open a business account for cashing checks in the business name.
Once that's done, you're officially a business, and you can do whatever you
need to do to get your business upand running, such as printing up business
cards, ordering phone service, and so forth.
A lot of people think they need to be incorporated or pay a lawyer a lot
of money to set up some kind of business shelter, but this really isn't necessary
for a husband-and-wife or one-person business. There are DBAs that generate
millions of dollars of income. If you're the sole proprietor or you're
indistiguishable from your business, incorporating won't stop creditors from
coming after you should your business fail.
Also keeping track of your taxes is easier as a DBA. Basically, you take
your revenue, deduct your business deductions on Schedule C, and whatever's
left over is income.
With a DBA, you're also allowed to mingle your money; for example, paying business
bills from your personal account without having what's called a "Chinese
wall" between your money and company money. If you're incorporated, the only
way to transfer money from you to the company is by having the corporation
take out a formal loan. As you can see, things get complicated with incorporation
and it should only be done if you have non-family partners or non-family
investors.
Another thing to think about is to keep your expenses low while you're trying
to establish your business. We know of many people who go out and spend thousands
of dollars buying desks, chairs, computers, software and so forth, where
they could have worked at little or no cost at their kitchen table to establish
their business.
Which brings us to the other half of the equation, where do you find your
customers? The harsh reality of the answer is if you don't already have
customers, or don't know who and where they are, you might not want to start
your own business. It takes on average three-to-five years to start a business
from scratch, and two-thirds of businesses fail within the first five years.
One of the reasons they fail is that owners did not understand who and where
their customers were.
Most successful businesses are started by people who have already worked
in the field and know the business inside-out. Otherwise, it's a gamble.
Maybe the business will take off, maybe it won't. Success will depend on
timing, ability and luck. You might be in the right place at the right time,
or you may not be.
One of the best ways to start is a business is to do it part time from your
home. Get a DBA, open a bank account and use the tools you already
have at hand, such as your PC and your phone, to get the business going.
When you start getting some clients and some money starts coming in, then
you can start thinking about giving up your day job and buying office furniture
and equipment, installing business phone lines, and so on. But first, prove
that your business can succeed as a business. Look at your results at three-month
and six-month time periods. If things aren't working out then you haven't
spent a great deal of money and you can move on to something else.
One way to learn whether there is a market for your business is to join your
local chamber of commerce, Rotary Club, or Lion's Club and mingle with the
members, asking them what kind of product or service is in short supply in
your area. You might even find a business opportunity that you had not even
considered, but there are people ready to sign up if someone simply offered it.
There are plenty of books and Websites devoted to starting your own business,
so be sure to do some research before diving in. Good luck in starting your
own work-at-home business.
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