My journey from office to home - part 1.

Ok, so as I mentioned in my 1st post, my ultimate goal is to write from home full time. I'm aiming to make the transition by February of next year.

For those of you who are also looking to follow your dreams and run your own work from home business, you may find this helpful. Here's a checklist I've made for myself of things to do first. The items marked in red are targets I've already reached and those in black are in progress (I swear they are!!).

• Identify where my writing strengths are and expand upon them.

• Join an online freelance marketplace / community. (GO oDesk!!!, yaaay elance)

• Build a portfolio of happy clients. (Takes a minimum of a year I believe).

• Secure repeat business with the aforementioned clients.

• Advertise my services through local channels.

• Start my own blog (woo hoo) :)

• Buy a domain name that I am happy with for my upcoming website ( I bought two because I couldn't decide!)

• Build my own online portfolio and website (in progress).

• Set up a linkedin account specifically for my writing services. (really got to do this soon).

• Promote my blog and website. (Currently interviewing prospective providers to do this for me).

• Speak to local website designers to make them aware that I can write content for any sites they are designing.

• Secure a partnership with a web design company to write content for websites they design (over the moon about this in particular).

• Think of a super fab company name (under wraps for now) :)

• Register myself as a sole trader.

• Panic.

So technically I've gotten a lot of what I've wanted to do done already, but I'm going to wait until the new year before I take the final plunge.

I'm sure there's going to be plenty more items to add to that list in the next few months, and well, I'll handle them as they come, but for now I'm quite happy with my progress. My goal is within my reach now and it makes me smile to think about what the future holds.

I'd love to hear from other folk who are also making or have made the transition from employee to freelancer. So if you're out there, then don't be shy!

Until tomorrow........