Issues in Developing Home Based Businesses

Muhammad Adil Raja

Research ProposalDecember 22, 2014

Issues in Developing Home Based Businessesby Muhammad Adil Raja

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Abstract

Over the past few years there has been a growing interest all over

the world in developing strategies for establishing effective home based

work opportunities. Various factors have stimulated such endeavors

among a large number of individuals and groups of people. The de-

clining world economy, surges of worldwide economic recession, a large

number of unprecedented layoffs and unexpected downsizing in large

multinational companies, a growing urge among educated and talented

people to be working from home and to save traveling costs and com-

muting hassles, are all the reasons that have motivated many people

to research and coin new strategies whereby home based work oppor-

tunities can become viable. This research proposal highlights a few

issues that may be cogent viz a viz developing home based businesses.

1 Introduction

A growing community of young people are now working as freelancers andself employed entrepreneurs. There is a myriad of reasons for this. Some ofthem have been discussed above in the abstract. Given the growing interestand various benefits of being able to work as freelancers and self-employedpeople, it is thought that it would be a nice idea to write a short researchproposal that highlights various issues, opportunities, pitfalls and charmsof being self employed. This proposal is also aimed at highlighting variousarenas worth exploring that may aid in creating opportunities for people tobe self-employed. In what follows there are various sections that highlightthe various issues in developing home based businesses.

2 The Role of Social Media

Social media has some very viable tools that are being utilized in profoundways. Indeed, social fora such as Facebook and twitter are not only good toolsfor better connectivity among people they are also being used as valuablemessage boards for product advertisement and marketing.

Enhancing such forums can be very useful for better utilization of humanresources. Indeed, if these forums are equipped with better marketing wid-gets and add-ons their usability can be enhanced manifold. This can range

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between marketing the bananas of a vegetable seller to a the work of a painterand an entrepreneur.

3 Employing Women

Many women are either forced to remain underprivileged or become so due tovery specific constraints. Such constraints can be natural, such as maternityor various obligations about raring children, which can prohibit them fromadopting professional careers. Sometimes such constraints are put in placeunder the pressure of various norms of society due to which they cannot goand work in mixed gender work cultures. No matter how women are beingconstrained from adopting professional careers, the over all result of this isthat a significant proportion of potential talent is wasted.

Employing women through various work from home opportunities canrehabilitate a lot of women in a professional sense. This would also meanthat a lot of women can have a lot of talent can be utilized that wouldotherwise have been wasted.

4 Utilizing Uneducated Talent

Many people in the world are either uneducated or under-educated. As amatter of fact the proportion of highly qualified versus moderately qualifiedpeople around the world is quite low. This is quite true about the develop-ing world. However, sometimes, uneducated or moderately educated peoplehave scarce valuable skills. Consider people who are proficient in the arts ofwelding, plumbing, masonry farming and animal husbandry. Creating goodhome based working opportunities for such people can be a nice way to em-ploy some of them. This can be specially beneficial for those who suffer froma dearth of proper working opportunities.

On similar lines one can help self-employ people who suffer from serioushandicaps. For instance, these include people with dysfunctional limbs orwith other such serious injuries.

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5 Internet Entrepreneurship

As home based working is becoming common, ideas such as internet en-trepreneurship and online marketing are becoming popular. Many profes-sional people are reverting to establishing their online entrepreneurship en-terprises. At the same time there are many online education programs thatteach newbies to start their own online marketing programs for free.

Such courses inculcate various aspects of online marketing. They covertopics ranging from search engine optimization to attract as much traffic aspossible to one’s site to better content writing and website development tips.

People are already increasingly using blogging tools for self-expressionand for product advertisement and online marketing. At the same timedeveloping personal websites has become much easier than before. Indeed,there are software, like Wordpress and Joomla, that allow a user to create agood quality website in a very short time.

However, as the interest in online marketing has grown, and as it is ex-pected to grow further, there is expected to come a saturation point of onlinemarketing too where the popularity of this subject is expected to declinealong with its utility.

To this end, new strategies have to be thought on as to how this valuabledomain can be saved from dysfunction.

6 Freelance Work Opportunities for Skilled

People

Nowadays many skilled people look forward to freelance opportunities inwhich they can work from their home. Freelancing can be time and resourcesaving. Moreover, if people have possibilities to connect with other peoplewho share similar work interest and specially with those with whom they canhave projects contracts while working from home can have a lot of benefits.

This is specially true about researchers and engineers. Such skilled peoplesometimes have to travel long distances in order to connect with relevantpeople who share the same interests and goals. Creating better work fromhome opportunities and more useful social fora can be very useful for them.

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7 Methodology

The specific methodology that would need to be adopted in this researchis not being chalked down as it would depend on the problem statement.However, it may be anticipated that it would have the components of atypical research project. Few thoughts are as follows:

Initially, depending on the problem statement, a literature review wouldbe required. This would primarily be of the problem domain (i.e. of one or aset of problems), and also of the computer scientific methods that have beenor may be used to solve the problem. A critical analysis of the benefits ofone method over the other would be important. This may follow with a datacollection phase in which problem critical data may have to be created. Thiswould need to be addressed by the research supervisor. This would followwith an experimentation phase that may require a design and execution ofsimulations. Issues concerning design and deployment of any software thatmay be developed on multiple machines may also be required.

The experimentation phase may end up with writing up of the resultsand findings. The expectation here would be that the work would end up indecent scholarly publications.

8 Timeline

Given that two to three years are normally allotted for a research project,following set of activities can be foreseen:

1. Literature review – 6 months.

2. Design and evaluation of any software that may be required – 3 months.

3. Experimentation and writing (of any papers/journal articles/patents)– 6 to 12 months.

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