Well, me too, although I’ve never consciously thought about it before. I picked up ‘All best’ several years ago from my MA writing tutor, who was also a self-employed writer and editor, and I’ve noticed it’s commonly used by people in the publishing business. I liked it because it was brisk and business-like, but sometimes I wonder whether some people might find it a bit curt. When in doubt I usually revert to ‘With best wishes’ or just ‘Best wishes’ but it always seems so bland.

And do you ever use more affectionate terms to someone you originally met through business? Sometimes it’s quite straightforward – I teamed up with my fellow BIG Jelly organisers Fay Easton and Jan Minihane through a mutual enthusiasm for coworking, but the stresses of organising a major event soon brought us together. You’ve heard of blood brothers; well, we are Jelly sisters and we needed that love and kisses! If you meet someone for coffee and seem to get on well, do you start to sign off with a x?

In the old days of letter writing the rule was always M&S, like the chain store – if you started with Mr, Mrs etc, then you signed off ‘Yours sincerely’. If you began with Sir or Madam, it was ‘Yours faithfully’. It’s less clear-cut in these digital days. What’s your favourite sign-off? Or is there one you just hate or that would put you off the sender?

You can still benefit from the popularity of the site by sending me information suitable for my readers. What do I mean? The recent post featuring Rosie Bray’s clever home working tips infographic is a good example. Rosie and I know each other through Twitter and she emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in using the infographic, which was inspired by her first year in business.

Through the wonderful and labyrinthine ways of social media, it was spotted on this site and has now been translated into Portuguese and featured on a Brazilian home working site! You might say ‘So what? That’s only any good if she gets some work out of it.’ But what if Anderson, who runs the site, follows someone in London who asks on Twitter for recommendations for a photographer? Or has friends living in London who want to record their children for posterity? Once you’re ‘out there’ you just never know where you’ll end up!

Last week I recommended a decluttering book on Facebook and Hollie Whittles commented that she had ordered a copy and is looking forward to giving both home and office a good old spring clearout. She’s agreed to send before and after photos and give us the lowdown on how she gets on.

And Katie Macdonald will soon not only be giving up employment and starting to work from home full-time, but also moving into the home office in her brand new house. I’m going to ask about her impressions and ambitions as she starts out on this exciting new phase of her life.

So that’s the sort of thing I’m after. Don’t think you could possibly have anything interesting to say? So many home workers say that, but I talk to you all the time and believe me, I know that’s far from true.

Why did you start working from home? Had any funny/strange/bad experiences lately related to home working, coworking or mobile working? What are your daily struggles and triumphs?

As encouragement, I’m giving away a copy of Daniel Priestley’s inspirational and readable book Become a Key Person of Influence to the first five people who send me some home working information that inspires a post. It was the book of choice at The BIG Jelly last year and is currently for sale on Amazon at £10.55 and with 32 five-star reviews. Your influence starts here!

Here is Nick’s response to the challenge of spending a lot of time alone:

‘There isn’t one simple answer for me. I think the trick is to gradually become more self-aware and get to know your own rhythms and energies and how to fulfil all your own different needs. I have a mantra that goes, “There are lots of things I love doing, and none of them would I want to have to do every day!”

‘There are times I love being at home on my own focusing on projects, writing or daydreaming. There are days when I love in-depth conversations with one person. There are days when I love to be leading a big group of people or broadcasting to thousands. For me, it is about learning to understand all these aspects of myself and give them all the attention they need.

‘I think one of the great challenges and opportunities for us is also learning how to structure our life, energy and our time. Most of us are trained to have teachers, family members and employers tell us what goals and what projects we should pursue and how we should structure our time.

‘It can take time, awareness and discipline to take back charge of our own time and energy and commission our own projects, and to regain a higher degree of sovereignty over ourselves. But to be truly creative, we have to listen inside deeply and identify our own true projects versus the things that other people want us to do.’

More wise words to come from Nick soon on resistance and rejection.

My survey responses were mainly from women – 70% – which tallies exactly with my likes on Facebook. The majority were from UK home workers – 63%, again the same proportion as Facebook – with 11% from the US, 5% from France and Greece (thanks, French Jelly ladies and Mammas Work at Home!) and a handful from Ireland, Canada, Brazil, Germany and Reunion.

When asked about their motivation for working from home, the top five reasons were:

To cut costs 22%
To spend more time with family 18%
To reduce travelling time 13%
For a better lifestyle 12%
To be my own boss/control my environment 11%

Other reasons included redundancy, less hassle, better productivity and not being able to find full-time work, the mixture of choice and lack of choice that you’d expect with the economy as it is.

Asked how effective they think they are at working from home, the answers show we’re also pretty happy with our performance:

29% said very effective
51% good
16% average
only 4% below average
and nobody not very effective at all!

What a competent bunch we are

As anyone who works in customer service will tell you, this is an often underrated role that can be vital for the success of a company. The quality of customer service a company of any size offers can make all the difference as to whether a particular individual or organisation gives you their business.

CRM (customer relationship management) is a well-established method of engaging with customers and it can also have other benefits for organisations, such as helping them increase revenue or improve efficiency. With software and computing becoming more affordable, CRM systems are no longer reserved for multinationals. There are more systems than ever suited to SME’s and home based businesses, allowing enterprises of all sizes to now benefit.

If you use CRM, you should always bear in mind that while the software can be massively useful for a range of processes, how it serves the customer is the most important aspect. One of the ways you can ensure this happens is to use your CRM system to analyse different aspects of the company. For example, you could produce a report based on customer feedback to make sure their views are taken into consideration in everything you do.

CRM systems can also help you to engage with customers more efficiently. A good example of this is the ability to group your customer contacts into different groups depending on their preferences and characteristics. This can help your home business to target marketing more effectively, which can help your customers to feel more valued – after all, they are far more likely to appreciate an email newsletter that is relevant to their specific interests rather than a generic update sent to your entire database (although these also have their place).

Finally, CRM solutions can be applied to help you improve customer relations, such as by using your software to track the progress of sales. Here, you can record vital information and make sure you always have the relevant customer details to hand so that your service is targeted, personalised and designed to bring the best possible benefits to all parties involved in a particular activity.

It was, of course, a small and unscientific sample and I decided to make many questions open-ended, rather than soliciting yes or no answers, in order to gather the most information. So the findings are qualitative rather than quantitative and should be viewed as indications of what home workers are thinking, rather than absolute proof, but in that light here are some of the results:

I’m sure none of you will be surprised to hear that the four biggest challenges for us in order of significance are time management, which in most cases means working too many hours, being distracted by family, friends and neighbours, isolation and motivation.

I applaud the honesty of the respondents, who when asked how they combat these challenges, replied ‘I don’t’! Those who do try to combat them do so either through determination and discipline or by various methods of getting out of the house, including coworking, Jelly and networking.

I was pleasantly surprised that when asked to describe the way they usually feel about working from home, 37% gave a mixture of positive and negative answers, 38% gave entirely positive answers and only 8% totally negative. Yes, I realise that doesn’t add up to 100 and the reason is that the remainder either didn’t answer the question or in a way that was difficult to interpret as positive or negative!

What I also learnt from the exercise is how difficult the art of eliciting information is, and the truth of that old quote ‘There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics.’ I’ll be back with more results soon.

More home working survey results including the top 5 reasons for working from home.

If you operate a home-based business, you probably have a combined energy bill, and switching to a renewable company can help you generate the right amount of clean energy to power both your living space and your work space. This is because renewable energy companies create pollution-free energy which, over time, comes at lower rates than companies that continue to burn fossil fuels as a source of electricity.

In fact, the “Which?” customer satisfaction survey for 2012 named a 100-percent renewable energy company, Good Energy, as the top supplier in the UK. But the advantages for your home business don’t end there; renewable energy is also a more stable source of power, which means that you as a customer are less likely be subjected to price fluctuations due to political and geographical conflicts over petrol.

In addition, renewable energy creates a unique kind of marketing opportunity for home-based businesses. In a market that is not always kind to the “little people” marketing your company as a green business can actually win you more customers and portray you as a more reliable, more responsible merchant than your competitors. Becoming a green business through the use of renewable energy will also help you forge relationships with other suppliers and vendors in your industry who are also green.

Just because your business is home-based doesn’t mean that you can’t be on the cutting edge of the newest entrepreneurial developments. Many home business owners consider swapping to green energy to be one of the most effective ways to get ahead of the energy trends and learn the ins and outs of how everyone will eventually power their businesses and homes.

Now that you have all the details, consider making the switch today by finding a renewable energy company that can provide the service that you need.

Go green and save home business cash

You may have noticed that some advertising has already appeared on the site, particularly in the form of guest posts from experts, such as Charlie Dalton’s blog on the garden office in winter and Claire Habel’s on sticking to New Year business resolutions. All of the guest posts so far have come about by being approached by companies or from conversations struck up on Twitter etc. But their popularity means it’s now time to announce what is happening.

The guest posts and adverts you see on the site will be limited to products and services directly relevant to home workers and home businesses. I’m often complimented on the quality of the information I provide on the site, on Facebook and Twitter, and believe me, I’m not going to risk compromising my reputation. The funds from advertising will help me to maintain the high quality of the free information available on the site.

I see the benefits to my readers as follows:

• Extra good quality content from experts
• More interaction between my widespread community of readers – as Claire commented, ‘Within minutes of my blog being posted, I had received a direct message from one of the site’s loyal visitors.’
• Access to products and services that could benefit your business
• The opportunity to promote your businesses to each other via this trusted platform
• And in the near future some unique offers

But I can guarantee the same values and level of service will remain and only be improved upon for you. This won’t affect your experience of the site and I can assure you I won’t be passing on your details if you sign up for any future offers.

If you’re interested in writing a guest post, please contact me for the guidelines. I will be adding a page to the site outlining my policy on adverts and the ways in which you can work with me. I have lots of plans and would love to work together to our mutual benefit. Exciting times indeed!

Building a professional profile that clients and associates will appreciate is also something that home workers, and especially parents, may have to deal with.

Elisa is an architect and co-owner of Studio Blue Architects, an architectural and technical consult company she runs with her husband. She has recently moved with her family from Athens to London where she now works from her home office.

“If my husband is also in a meeting and cannot babysit and I have scheduled a business appointment too, I take my son along in his stroller! I have always been honest with my clients and this proved to be the best policy. I was clear from the beginning. At first I thought they might be reluctant to work with a work at home mum, but I was wrong. Working hard and building a solid professional profile all these years, gained my clients’ trust.”

What we found out from our contact with home workers is that their decision to work from home is sometimes also combined with their decision for career change. And in many cases, it is the fulfillment of a dream or the making of a business based on a hobby or passion.

Stella is an economics graduate who worked in the corporate business sector for quite a few years before she decided to create a business out of her love for baby wearing. “I started making custom handmade slings when I still had my day job and this was just my hobby, I didn’t have any income out of it. I kept putting even more time and energy to this project that it turned into a home based business before I even knew it. Today, it is my full-time occupation. I still enjoy it so much; I only have the social security forms to remind me this is a registered business and not just my hobby.”

There is this reassuring feeling of community when finding out how others spend their day working from home. From family issues to organizing ideas and invoice software choices, our guess is that home workers enjoy staying in touch and sharing experiences.

If you operate a business from your home, there’s a good chance that you have a small budget. There is also a good chance that you could be doing yourself a financial favour by reducing the amount of energy that you’re using in an effort to go green and get the most out of that budget.

These three tried and true methods can help you get started:

1. Know when to shut down. One of the trickiest aspects of having a home business is knowing when it’s time to work and when it’s time to call it a day. Many home business owners see it as a benefit that they can drop into the office whenever they want, but keeping all of your computer equipment on all the time can really be a drain on your electricity. Save money by turning all the equipment completely off at the end of the work day and even unplugging it to prevent power loads. This will also help you reinforce your own time to rest and unwind from work.

2. Utilise your inbox. You could save in several areas of your budget, including printing, paper, and electricity, if you skip the paper copies and use your email to organise all of your documents. Email is quickly becoming most people’s primary mode of communication, and going paperless can actually help you work more efficiently by putting all of your documents within reach at the click of a button. You will also curb your contributions to landfills in the form of discarded ink cartridges.

3. Save on gas and electricity prices. Since you’re already on a conservation kick, see if you can save even more money on energy by finding a cheaper supplier. Especially since the Big Six have raised their prices yet again, many smaller energy providers are ramping up their ability to compete by lowering their own prices. A site like uSwitch can be useful in comparing prices and finding out if it would be worth it to switch your energy supplier for your home and business.

Find out how a swap to green energy can benefit your home business