Copyright 2006 Anwar Ahmed Ally
A home typing service is an ideal venture to get into on a part-time basis. While it won’t make you a millionaire, you can expect a few hundred dollars per month. I’m sure you could use that. However, if you are fast and good at it, you will find plenty of business coming your way from referrals and recommendations and your monthly income could very well skyrocket, making it a great home business idea.
There are thousands of typing possibilities and even more people looking for the services of a typing agency. Typing requests will come from business people, doctors, lawyers, authors, students and even job seekers. Some possible typing jobs may include resumes, sales letters, flyers, lawyers letters, student assignments, announcements, manuscripts, newsletters, etc.
What’s Required
In order to be successful in this home business concept, you need to obviously be able to type quite well. You don’t have to be a fast typist but rather a meticulous and professional one. You need to be dependable and finish typing assignments on time.
You obviously need to have a reliable computer and printer. An excellent word processing program like Word or similar is required. As the output quality of your finished assignment is crucial to your success, you might want to ensure that you have a printer that is capable of high-quality printing.
Demarcate a section in your home as your “office”. You might consider keeping your clients’ documents to be typed in a secure, preferably lock-up drawer or cupboard. This will ensure that it is out of reach from kids, your pets, prying visitors or your cleaning lady who might accidentally mistake it for garbage and discard it.
Depending on where you live, you might need to get a business license to operate from home. This requirement will vary from state to state, town to town, country to country. As this article will probably be read by people from all over the world, I would not be able to advise here except to say that you should consult your nearest trade office for direction.
Getting Started
Once your home office is ready, it is time to spread the word around about your new typing service. You should start with having business cards made and pass around to places like doctors’ rooms, libraries, hospitals, etc. A great idea is to make up small posters and pin them up on bulletin boards in shopping centers, community centers, message boards on campuses and colleges nearby. Any high foot traffic area is also recommended.
You may consider placing a few classified ads in your local papers. One such ad may look like this:
Ally’s Typing Service. All kinds of typing done professionally at reasonable rates. Quick and reliable. Tel: xxxxxxxxx
You may also consider advertising in the Yellow Pages. This is an advertising opportunity that works very well in this type of field.
Pricing
Your rates will normally be based on a per hour basis. The best way to determine your starting rates is to have a look at what your competition is charging. Phone them, quiz them on their rates for various items. Set your price a little lower than theirs. As you gain experience and people start recommending you for your excellent work and reliability, you can gradually start increasing your rates.
Customer Service
As with any other business, customer service is of paramount importance, sometimes the deciding factor on success or failure. Make sure, if possible, that there is a ‘live’ person taking enquiries from your clients and enquirers to your ads. If this person is not going to be you, make sure that the person you appoint possess sufficient knowledgeable to field the calls.
You can easily ensure this is possible by providing him/her with the correct training. If you must use a telephone answering service, do so only as a last resort. Research has shown that if an enquirer is calling after reading your offer from a medium where there are similar offerings to your own like in classified listings, they will simply move on to the next ad if they get an answering machine when they call you. This is because most people are impulsive by nature – if they want to use a typing service then they want all the information like rates, time frame, etc. now!
Good Work Etiquette
When you receive a typing job request, make sure you quote correctly. You also need to decide whether you can handle that type of request due to time constraints or if you have the sufficient typing skills to do a job that is quite intricate.
Give realistic completion estimates to your clients and it is a good idea to allow an extra day in case something goes wrong. Always honor the completion time with your clients but do not be forced into promising an earlier finishing time when you know that it’s going to be impossible.
Make separate folders for each of your clients and name it accordingly. You may want to back up your data daily on either a cd rom or any other external storage device for safety reasons. The last thing you need is to lose all your hard work in the event of a serious system crash.
This is really a good, workable business idea, especially for the house-bound although it can work for just about anybody. Take it easy, start small and expand slowly. All the best!
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Anwar Ally has been in the work at home industry for over 18 years. He is the founder of: www.thehomeworker.org and blogs at: 2work-at-home.blogspot.com
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