If you are starting a home business of any size or shape it is useful to think about writing a business plan.

Writing a business plan is essential if you need any investment or if you need to borrow money say from the bank, but it can also be useful if you are self-funding or starting a business with minimum cost because it helps define your business goals and where you want your business to go.

And my own personal tip is to consider writing a business plan even if you are freelancing, or just considering some part time work from home. It will help crystalize exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it!

Treat the work you do as a business and everything will come into focus.

Rather than rambling on I have collected some great articles from around the web on writing a business plan which I hope you will find useful

Articles on Writing a Business Plan

The first article contains 10 great tips and ideas to include when writing a business plan. I particularly like the one about “writing for a person who knows nothing about the business”…

10 ideas to make your next business plan soar | business ideas 4 you

Business plans take a little time to create. Don’t rush the process. Part of its value is making you take thoughts in your head and convert them to valuable and considered ideas. Remember, write the business plan according to …

Publish Date: 11/01/2011 23:07

http://businessideas4you.com/2011/11/01/10-ideas-to-make-your-next-business-plan-soar/

Secondly an article which gives some great ideas on how you can write a business plan for free …

Writing a Business Plan Effectively for Free | The Business Book

Writing a business plan can be a daunting activity if it is the first time you’ve tackled such a detailed, thorough project. Too often, entrepreneurs rely upon templates or a sample business plan as an example for their own proposal, and in the …

Publish Date: 12/28/2010 8:00

http://www.thebooknobodyread.com/writing-a-business-plan-effectively-for-free.html

And finally a great article (on a very good blog by the way) which specifically looks at writing a business plan for a home business

How To Organization Your Home Business | eHomeBusiness.net

Once you select which type of business you are going to operate, it is important to get funding for the business.You need to sit down and write a business plan. A business plan organizes your business before you ever make …

Publish Date: 11/03/2011 8:13

http://ehomebusiness.net/how-to-organization-your-home-business/

If you do need some business plan guidance or templates I recommend the templates at business-planning-4-u.com as they have around 4000 different business plans templates (you buy the ones you need) plus some extra cool bonuses (they are also a great source of home business ideas by the way)

Good luck in writing your business plan!

Tips For Writing a Business Plan is a post from: Work From Home Ideas

First of all is travel expenses and just the plain simple fact that you will not have to pay for petrol/gas or diesel. Plus of course the relative wear and tear that the constant trips in and out of the office are bound to have on a car.  You may even be in a position to downsize or even streamline your family vehicles especially if the bulk of your morning travel is from the kitchen to the study.  And if you pay for the train or the bus regularly then that is an obvious cost to be saved

You may also save on food expenses in that when you work at home, youíll most likely be eating food from your kitchen that you bought in bulk on a grocery store trip. Thereís no need to spend money on eating out 5 days a week. In addition, on those nights where you had to work late or were just running behind, you won’t be spending extra money now on eating out for dinner.

Office parties: If you worked in an office where every birthday, anniversary, or any other special occasion was marked with a party, complete with food and gifts, youíll be saving money by missing out on this. This typically meant more money you had to spend on your part of the food and the gifts. That can actually add up to more money than you would think.

Work charities: Charities are great and should be a personal choice for everyone. At lots of companies, youíre psychologically forced into giving to a charity that may not even be of your choice.

Childcare expenses: With the cost of childcare these days, many people find themselves working just so they can pay for childcare. If you work from home, you may not need as many babysitting services as you once did.

Medical expenses: One of the best things about working from home is that your exposure to viruses and flus will be significantly lower because you wonít be around all of those co-workers that feel obligated to come to work whether theyíre sick or not. Also, since your children will no longer be quiet as exposed to illnesses in childcare centers, that can also cut your doctor visits and expenses for those as well as medications.

These are just a few of the many ways that you can save money by working from home. The longer you work from home the more money youíll notice building up in your bank account. It may not happen overnight, as nothing great ever does. However, you WILL notice it as time goes on and you realize that you may be able to  afford to take a decent vacation for the first time in years – and if you are in control of your home business you can decide when to take the vacation

Save Money When You Work From Home is a post from: Work From Home Ideas

The question is how do you keep yourself focused so that you can get your daily tasks completed and meet your work at home goals?

To begin with, you need to make sure that you love your work. You’re already working from home, which is a dream of many. That job you’re doing should also be something that you’re passionate about. This makes it a lot easier to stay focused on getting the necessary tasks related to the job completed. If you have no interest in the type of work you’ve been hired or contracted to do, there’s little wonder that you can’t stay on track.

It’s vital that your job is one that makes you smile, energizes you, and raises your pulse rate. This shows your excitement about being able to work at this particular occupation. Keep in mind that just because someone else loves affiliate marketing and has made quite a bit of money doing it, doesn’t mean that you’re going to love it as well. If creating gift baskets excites you, then you shouldn’t be working as a salesperson for a particular product. Don’t become involved in something that you find mind numbingly boring or you’ll never be able to stay focused on getting the job done day to day.

Something else that you need to do is schedule regular breaks throughout your working day. This must be done no matter how much work you’ve got going on. Anything that gets you up from your desk and moving around is fine. If the weather’s nice, go outside for a brisk walk around the block. Eat lunch or dinner away from your desk. Clearing your head for even a few minutes at a time, you’ll be able to concentrate much easier without getting distracted.

When you’ve decided to start working from home, you’ll need everything possible working in your favor. It may take a bit of time, energy and effort to land that perfect work at home opportunity that will keep your attention steady, but in the end, it will be totally worth it. You’ll get to start working every day with enthusiasm and excitement. The hours will fly by rather than drag on as you can’t keep your eyes off of the clock willing quitting time to hit. Simply loving what you do just may be enough to keep you focused, after all.

Maintaining Focus When Working From Home is a post from: Work From Home Ideas

The bottom line is if you look at all of the home businesses that are successful vs. all of the home businesses that fail, you will be able to identify some common denominators between the ones that succeed that are lacking in the ones that failed.

The common denominator between the successful home businesses is that the business owner at least considered the ten things in this list….

So here they are… starting at number 10, the 10 things you need to consider when starting a home business.

10. Treat it like a Business

There is a saying that you ought to adopt as the philosophy of your home business if you want to run a successful one.

“If you treat it like a business it will pay you like a business.  If you treat it like a hobby it will cost you like a hobby.”

It is imperative that you immediately engage in your home business with the mindset that you are running a real business and not a hobby.

What is the difference between a business and a hobby?  There are many!

A hobby you do it when you feel like doing it.  A business, you engage in business building activities whether you feel like it or not.

A hobby is started with the primary intention to have fun and bring joy and fulfillment to the person who adopts the hobby.  A business is started with the primary intention to generate a profit for the person who starts the business.

Many home businesses can be operated in whatever hours you want to operate it.  That is a great benefit that you should take full advantage of.  However, don’t use that as an excuse to not be consistent in building your business.

If you are going to dedicate 3 hours a day to running the business, make sure you consistently put in 3 hours a day working on your business, regardless of when those 3 hours are.  Treat your business the same way you would if you were running it from an expensive office in the financial district of one of the top cities in the world.

Starting a home business and then establishing it is probably one of the hardest things to do, so give it the respect it deserves and you will reap the rewards

Look out for number 9 posted tomorrow ….

10 Things You Must Do When Starting a Home Business is a post from: Work From Home Ideas

One thing that has been extremely helpful with me and my business has been to write down how I spend all of my time during the week. Now I don’t just mean “home” or “at work” but every single thing that you do during the day. For instance I found that during a certain day of the week I was watching 3 hours of TV and on another night I was just surfing the internet for a couple hours not really accomplishing anything. I promise you that even if you have the busiest of schedules if you do this exercise you’ll find a ton of time you never even knew you had!

Another thing you can do to find more time for your business is to get up one hour earlier in the morning or go to bed one hour later at night. Of course I don’t want you to be dead tired during the next day but one hour isn’t really that much and you can get a lot accomplished during that time. A lot of people find it to be very effective to work their home based business on their lunch break from work. If you get an hour for lunch you can eat for the first 15 minutes and then make calls for the last 45. You can have some good conversations in 45 minutes. You must use this time wisely though – it is easy to get distracted!

[LOCK THE FOLLOWING PART]Remember that finding time to work your home based business is all a matter of desire. If you really want to make it happen you can do it no matter what your schedule looks like while others can have a ton of time but very little desire and therefore get nothing done. Make the choice to find time every single day to work on building your business. A home based business is like nothing else because you build it once and it will take care of you for a very, very long time. Make some small sacrifices now for a huge payoff in the future[/LOCK THE FOLLOWING PART]

Finding Time For Your Home Based Business is a post from: Work From Home Ideas

Running a Business From Home is a post from: Work From Home Ideas