I was having a similar conversation with my stepdaughter recently. She’s an out-of-work, young mom who hasn’t figured out what she wants to do to earn money. She hasn’t yet found my love of ebusiness, despite my best debating skills, but we may have found something that will work for her.

Recently, I hired her to do some podcast transcribing for me. I paid her $3/podcast-minute, which might be a little higher than the average, but hey, she’s my kid, right?. If I remember correctly, I think it rounded out to about $12/hour of her actual working time at the kitchen table, which was a lot better than flinging burgers for minimum wage somewhere.

Because that went well (she did a great job), she may be interested in trying to make a business out of it. I’m ready to help her get that going, so the first thing I did was order a little guide for her to read and think about. I bought her the Transcription Starter Pack * by Nicole Dean for less than twenty bucks. It gives a really good overview of the General Transcription business, what skills are needed, what tools are needed, and what needs to be done to turn those skills into an actual business.

(Note: We’re talking about general transcription here, not medical transcription. This is just literally listening to audio and video, and creating text documents from them).

Of course, if she decides to pursue this (and who knows, she could change her mind at any time), she’ll have me around to coach her as much as she wants. Like most of my professional coaching gigs, I may not know everything there is to know about a client’s actual business niche, but I know a lot about ebusiness in general. Between my broad knowledge and her indepth experience (which she’ll get immersed in rather quickly), we should be able to steer her into a successful direction, as long as she enjoys the work and is willing to pursue it full-on.

I decided to write this post for two reasons:

1. To throw out an idea for others who might be interested in the same type of business
2. To start documenting the steps to creating and building this business. If this business actually gets off the ground, it will be a wonderful chance for me to do a case study from the very beginning of a new ebusiness.

If she decides to pursue this, I’ll document the various steps involved in setting up the ebusiness, marketing it, and managing it. And of course, I’ll come back here to share it with all of you.

*

** Image adapted and modified from this pic, which coincidentally, is a photo of an online friend of mine. I stumbled across it while I was searching for an appropriate image for this post, and thought, “Oh, that pic is perfect. Hey! I know him!”

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: e - business, online ebusiness, transcribe, transcription
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Now is the time to start your ebusiness. It may not help you financially in the short term, since few new sites make much money right away. But you’ll be that much closer to pulling a profit from it later on when you need it most, if you start now. While you still have a job, it can begin to supplement your income, helping you pay the extra costs for gas and food. If you later lose your job, it may be doing well enough to help you get by while you search for another. And with any luck (and some hard work), it may even be able to completely replace that 9-5 job at some point.

I like to always follow the “just in case” theory. Being prepared “just in case” something goes wrong is a good plan. Waiting to start an ebusiness after you’ve been laid off (like I did several years ago) means you’ll be making next to nothing at a time when you need money the most. You’re much better off to have started your site, developed it over time, discovered ways to make it grow and become profitable, so that when the pink slip arrives at your desk, you’ve got a little peace of mind knowing you are somewhat ahead of the game.

And if you never get that pink slip? Great! All that means is that your ebusiness is supplementing your income, and that’s always a good thing.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: e - business, ebusiness, economy, food, just in case, layoffs, online ebusiness, pink slip, recession, supplemental income
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.