This is an old post. Instead of thinking about the downsides to online business, brainstorm your next niche affiliate site.
Working from home is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Honestly, it doesn't really matter that much what niche sites I build, or what industry I'm in. I'm not that particular about whether I would be a YouTuber, blogger, podcaster, consultant, day trader, or freelancer.
I want to work at home.
I love waking up whenever I feel like it, and staying up all night finishing my work for the day. I feel in control of my own destiny, responsible for my future, and free to make my own decisions for life, time, and money.
But there are some negatives to consider before working from your own home, and most of us don't consider them until we see the problem starting at us face to face. Here are a couple things that I've grown to dislike about working at home. For me, the following are tolerable, and the positives outweigh the negatives, but writing these down made me realize that a home business isn't for everyone.
1. You need to schedule your own time
With no boss breathing down your neck, it's easy to let things slide. I forget stuff all the time. I write something down on a ‘to do' list, but stuff the list in a drawer and find it 2 months later when I clean out the clutter.
Organizational skills, to some degree are needed. But for a scatterbrained entrepreneur who's moving from one project to the next, or juggling several at once, it can be a real challenge to set clear goals, then take the necessary steps to achieve them. Very often, these targets get left in ‘la la land' while I do “market research”, aka watch YouTube videos
2. You are alone a lot
I wake up, and there's no one in the house. I have breakfast, check my mail, and get to work. Sure, I interact with people online, but really my first word of the day is when I go to the gym and the front desk girl says, “Hi”, then I say “Hi”. I stick on my earphones and go about my workout.
Sometimes in the evening I see my room mate, but many times he's out with his girlfriend or doing his own thing on his computer. When I lived in China and lived in my own apartment, sometimes I would go a whole day without saying 1 word.
I'm naturally kind of an introvert, so I won't say it's horrible, but it does get old sometimes, and I do feel my IRL social skills slipping sometimes, I really have to TRY to convince myself to leave the desk and go out to public places or else I get “in the zone” and stare at the computer all day.
3. It's easy to get burned out
In the honeymoon phase of sole proprietorship you'll work all day, every day. It's no problem. You know your goals, you're on the right track, and you don't mind working the long hours. You're the boss, and you directly reap the benefits of your hard work.
But 6 months, a year, 2 years down the road, you're going to wake up and think, “Oh, crap. Not another day of this BS.” Sometimes it takes just a day of rest to get back on track, other times longer. I had a pretty bad slump for about 4 months one time.
4. It's hard to rest or wind down
When you work like this, how do you chill out?
The funniest thing to happen to me is that I simply can't get MORE relaxed that I already am. Working at a job, you have the contrast between work and relaxation.
When you get off work on a Friday, or at the end of the day at 5:00, there's that ‘release', where you feel like you can finally watch some TV, check your email, have a beer, and chill out.
But in a normal work day I wake up late, watch as much TV as I want, can check my mail while YouTube videos render and upload, I sit in a comfy office chair all day in a room temperature that I control, and sometimes I even drink beer as I work on my websites.
Wow, what an awesome job.
But minus the contrast between work-mode and relax-mode, it's hard to wind down even further. I mean, how do you take a rest from sitting on the couch typing. Heck, in China, I had a reclining sofa and used to write blog posts from a reclined position (using a wireless keyboard).
It's tough to get more relaxed that!
Final Thoughts
I love my job, and I hope this doesn't read like I'm unhappy doing what I'm currently doing. This is just one side to the picture, and if I wrote a post about what I love about working from home it would probably be 2 or 3 times longer than this list.
Maybe I'll write it tomorrow.
Do you wish you could work from home? Are you already doing it? What are the best and worst aspects of working and living in the same environment and being in total control of your daily life?
Let me know in the comments below!
Nathaniell
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