That means you can access your data from ANYWHERE … from your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop.

It’s SO convenient and usually much more secure.

Like me, you probably hate PAYING FOR IT!

Drop Box is one of the leading cloud storage firms.

You can enter here to at least TRY to win 50GB of free storage FOR LIFE!

I entered… I’d LOVE to win that!

Enter to win 50GB of free storage for LIFE at Drop Box!

Today the “Beacon Center” (formerly the Tennessee Center for Policy Research – a libertarian leaning organization) published it’s own report on how the regulatory situation in Nashville “Music City” is stifling entrepreneurship of folks who either would work from home or start small businesses.

Here’s the report “A Burdensome Tune” (pdf)

The report begins:

In its latest report, A Burdensome Tune: How Music City’s Regulations Harm Entrepreneurs, the Beacon Center analyzes the litany of rules and restrictions the city of Nashville places on home-based businesses, street and food truck vendors, sidewalk salesmen, taxi drivers, valet service operators, and auctioneers. These regulations hurt entrepreneurs and small business at a time when jobs are needed most.

The 4th page of the report starts the section detailing the obstacles Nashville places on starting a Home Business in particular.

In addition to limiting the amount of employees and square footage that may be used, it specifically and strictly bans all signage! How many barbers or cosmetologists could earn extra income from home but not even be allowed a simple sign to promote their services or even let customers referred by word of mouth know if they’re at the right address? Piano teachers can’t even teach lessons in their own home!

In today’s world where job creation is paramount, Nashville is acting as if people were using their homes to stable livestock instead of working with an iPad! Sadly the bureaucratic class looks for salvation en masse… the savior-mega corporation bringing 10,000 jobs at a time. It’s better for publicity to wine and dine such figures when they emerge instead of empowering families and individuals to generate income!

Home businesses are a tempting venture for a lot of people. They offer a level of freedom and flexibility that other forms of employment simply cannot match; but with a home business also comes many unique responsibilities that need to be tackled in their own unique way. For example, when working from home it can be more difficult to remain focused on the task at hand – especially if there are other people in the house.

Luckily, this problem is easily remedied with some good self-discipline. Another core issue is how to stay productive and, more importantly, profitable – especially when there is so much competition from larger companies. There are lots of ways to make your home business stand out, but one of the best is to give customers a reason to come back to your website. And what better reason for a return visit than a brand new blog post?

Content is king

If you’ve never run a blog before, you might wonder what possible benefit it could have on your home business, least of all its productivity. Well, the key here is that fresh content posted on a regular basis will do two things: one, it will boost your search rankings; and two, it will keep your client base (both existing and potential) engaged with your business. People tend to bookmark blogs and check them on a regular basis, so if you can keep the content coming, your visitors will too. One of the key phrases on the web is ‘content is king’ – and it’s very true. The most successful sites are those that stay updated; likewise the most successful home businesses are those that keep their clients engaged.

Fishing for new business with keywords

So how exactly will a blog help your home business productivity increase? Well, first of all, you’ll need to keep writing about your business and its industry, which is productive in itself. Plus, a blog should bring natural traffic to your website (if its keywords are chosen carefully) which you can then convert into new business, which again is productive. When choosing blog topics, try to do the right level of keyword research. Discover niches that relate to your business and exploit them. This will help you encourage natural traffic. Having a blog really is a win-win situation. Plus, there are lots of blog writers out there who will be happy to create the content for you – so you can sit back and watch the enquiries pour in! Hills and valleys Whether your home business helps people find the best credit cards or it sells top quality golf shoes, you’ll no doubt fall victim to the ebbs and flows of business. This means that you go through various ups and downs as a business – with some months being non-stop and others being a little quieter. The great thing about running a blog is that it is a consistent source of productivity for your business. To keep your content fresh and up-to-date, you need to post new blog posts roughly once a week, so no matter what month of the year it is, your home business will always have something to do. And you never know – the boost in traffic that your blog brings in could easily be the source of a lucrative new contract that takes the business from the depths of a valley to the peak of a mountain!

There really is no downside to having a blog to complement your home business. If you already have a website (which you likely do), then you already have everything you need to launch a blog – it only takes a few moments to install a blog platform like WordPress, and there are countless guides all over the web that you can follow, After that, all you need is to dedicate a bit of time to the creation of the content (and even that you don’t need to do yourself). So in many ways a blog can be a godsend for your home business – and of course it’s also a great way to keep up with the times! And we haven’t even started on social networking yet…

If you’re thinking of trying to earn extra money that way, consider this article from a business person who claims “Hiring Virtual Assistants Saved My Business”.

It will give you  new insight into what YOU, as a Virtual Assistant, “bring to the table” in today’s business environment.

If you’re wondering … “Should I do enter this business?” It might help you make the decision.

At one point I was creating and hosting shows; writing articles and editing; marketing and promoting; and cleaning the bathroom among other tasks. The big problem was I needed help, but did not want to manage employees or need a “real” office space.

The Solution: Focusing on virtual contractors and partners. I hired two, specifically skilled, self-starting virtual assistants (as contractors) who work from their homes and save me tons of hours per week handling details that were bogging me down including scheduling, website management and more.

Read it all at “Hiring Virtual Assistants Saved My Business”

While there are work at home positions, they seem to be focusing their recruiting on folks living in the general vicinity around Clarksville, TN

Please do your own due diligence of course.

Convergys hiring for on-site, work-at-home jobs in Clarksville, TN (USA)

20th June 2011 – Convergys Corporation a global leader in relationship management, is hiring for both on-site and work-at-home positions for its contact center in Clarksville, Tennessee. About 300 on-site employees and 75 work-at-home employees are needed.

Interested candidates from throughout the Clarksville, Tennessee/Kentucky Metro Area are invited to attend a Job Fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday, June 23 at Convergys, 324 Dover Road, in Clarksville. New employees will provide customer service support to a client in the telecommunications industry.

Most of the time, I’ll wager, people assume that they have no choice when it comes to landscape design. They assume that they will call the local landscape contractor and have to accept whatever the contractor can deliver. No more! WowMyLandscape.com links consumers, landscape contractors and designers online so that everyone gets the results they want.

Whether you’re a homeowner (do it yourselfer) or landscape contractor seeking to outsource your design projects quickly and easily, this is the site for you!

Aspiring LANDSCAPE DESIGNERS can work from home (or wherever they want) and generate income while building their unique online portfolio. You can become a WowMyLandscape designer quickly and easily!

Thanks to WowMyLandscape for bringing this unique work at home option to our attention and sponsoring this post!

Well, that assumes there ARE jobs out there worth having. In this recession, they are fewer and fewer, but even if you had one, why would you still have your own business “on the side”?

Here’s an interesting answer… a bit philosophical… but still worth reading:

The power to negotiate a wage comes only with the power to say “no” to the terms offered, and this power comes only from the possession of an alternative to the wage. And only property confers this power. Where workers have their own property and can make their own way in the world, any wage contract they accept is likely to be a fair one, one that fairly rewards their productivity. But in absence of a real alternative, there is no real negotiation; you cannot negotiate if you cannot say “no.”

You can read the article it’s derived from here.

Note the history lesson from 16th century England there as well:

We know that in 16th century England, before capitalism came to dominate social relations, a common laborer could provision his family by 15 weeks of work, and a skilled laborer by 10. A century latter, after the closing of the commons and the seizure of the monasteries, which instantly converted England into a capitalist country, those numbers became 40 weeks and 32 weeks, respectively.

Amazing!

What is the difference?

Others own the fruit of our labor no matter how much they groan that we’re not productive enough for them!

That’s why the path to freedom involves acquiring property… whether that means for us skills, tools, software, knowledge, livestock or “natural property” i.e. land and managing the product of our labor.

What will you do today to be free?

It’s even possible these days that your nonprofit career could allow you to work at home. As non profits seek to reduce overhead and work with “telecommuters”, it’s more and more likely that grant writers, web designers, and other support staff working or non profit organizations will be able to do their work from home.

One website that focuses exclusively on nonprofit jobs is “nonprofitjobseeker.com”. Whether you’re seeking jobs by state or by job title, you can quickly scan the latest openings. Keep in mind that while non profits may be more open to remote workers, often they’ll want you to live close enough to report or business or meetings on a fairly regular basis, not simply by “Skype”. That makes having a data base of local listings important.

Thanks to NonProfitJobSeeker.com or bringing their services to our attention and sponsoring this post!

It’s possible that people are just waiting to pay you money to answer their questions!

JustAnswer.com has received a lot of of publicity as a place people can go to get their questions answered.

If you’re an “expert” you can earn 20 to 50% on what people pay for answers.

If you’re not an expert, you can refer experts and get paid if they start producing!

Here’s the simple answer… I’ve had several people sign up from my HubPages links. 1 out of 5 on average actually built a hub! So I can tell you right now that the 80% who haven’t done anything will NEVER earn money on HubPages!

But if you go to the site and check out their “success stories” you’ll find people who – after a while (on average 2 years and many “hubs”) are earning up to $1500 per month from HubPages.

Does such earning have to take forever?

I mentioned this one case study where a fairly experienced (in terms of keyword research) person made $475.26 in his first 30 days. He’s gone on to make $4,000 in fairly short order. Remember that he built 40 hubs using extensive keyword research in his first week.

I’ve been doing the hubs at the rate of about 1 per day over 2 weeks or so (maybe 3 now) and have 17 active hubs with some just being published.  I’ve put in a couple of hours per day maximum. Now I’m about to give you an affiliate link, but this is the product I used to isolate the keyword in question. The product is MicroNicheFinder and it helps me brainstorm keywords to write about (unless I’m just ranting about something where no keyword research is involved! A few of my hubs are just that sort of thing.)

In that time – between Adsense, Ebay, and Amazon – I’ve earned @ $18.70. I consider that pretty decent because lots of people on the forums there talk about going months to a year to get a $100 Adsense payout. At this early stage, most of the traffic is other people on Hub Pages checking out your hub. These are usually other authors, not buyers. 

The best part of that were two product sales from Amazon from a highly targeted keyword for an electronics product.

Bottom Line: while the “real money” at HubPages is in the long term “residual” traffic and (usually it seems) Adsense clicks, you can start earning money right away if you use a tool like MicroNicheFinder to find keywords that are highly targeted, have decent traffic, and little competition. HubPages can get you at the top of the search engines for these “long tail keywords”  all by itself without lots of back linking on your part.  For more competitive keyword niches, you’ll need to do backlinking too most likely.

The best thing about HubPages is that you can start for free, get experience, learn from the other folks there, make some money and impr0ve gradually. You can see how your hubs are producing and then work to refine them.  There are many helpful people there and as long as you try not to produce spam pages, you’ll be welcome!

And now you know you can start making some money right away… maybe several hundred dollars if you have the time, knowledge and energy!

One more thing. People who are successful writing hubs often make more money than just from Hub pages. The person making $1,500 from Adsense monthly makes twice as much from other ventures that are attributable to what she learned at HubPages. She works from home in a beautiful rural area and attributes much of her success to learning to write at Hub Pages.  You may find people who check out your hubs asking you to be PAID to write for them. Not too bad…