Business and Investment Center

The first step in building a home Internet business is to find out what it is you want to sell. There are numerous options and countless moneymaking schemes and scams that we are bombarded by everyday. Be careful to do enough research on the pros and cons of each option, and then decide which is best for you.

The next step in starting your Internet business is to make sure that your idea or connection is legal. Consult an attorney for the FTC regulations for online business, and get the advice of an accountant regarding tax obligations and learn how to keep books.

Having an impressive website presence is the cornerstone of your online business. Get a domain name that is easy for customers to remember, reflective of your line of business and can be easily picked up by search engines. Though the web address given by your Internet provider can be used, there’s the danger of losing your domain should your service provider go out of business. Make sure to register the domain name though it might cost a little.

Choose a web hosting company that is reliable and offers a wide range of packages depending on the needs of a growing business. Choose a package depending on its bandwidth, disk space, e-mail facility, downtime, customer support, back up facility and any other additional facilities your business might need. There are many free hosting service providers, but resist the temptation and pay for your service. Free hosting does not give you control over your site nor does it give a professional look to the site.

Web design is crucial, so if you have any budget at all, hire someone to design it.  It’s worth the money to have a clean, creative design that will identify your site and your product. It should be easy to upload and navigate and should appeal to your target audience.

You officially start business by launching the site but that’s not enough. Promoting and improvising the site through constant updating is what makes you different from a million others. Put together a systematic plan that works for you.

I guess nobody likes thinking about what can go wrong with the recruitment process. We all like to think we are reasonable employers, offering a fair package in return for a professional job. Yet, we do operate in a market that is prone to certain complications. Think about it. We recruit mainly young teachers who travel a long way from their home and friends, perhaps to a country they don’t know anything about. There you are: already you can see how emotionally vulnerable they are. And if all this causes them stress, they could more easily fall prey to physical illness, infection, be more accident prone.

Look, I’m not trying to be the pessimist here but I think we have to face the fact that the health of teachers is an important issue. At least, I believe a responsible employer should have health-protection measures in place as part of the recruitment package. Ideally, we should offer full health insurance together with provision to repatriate a teacher who needs to be back home for treatment and support.

Now I know that for some small schools this could prove expensive but that’s no reason to duck the issue. If you genuinely can’t offer this kind of protection as part of the deal, think of the alternatives. First make sure you explain to the teacher the kind of healthcare they will be entitled to from any national scheme that protects those working in your country. Secondly, advise them to look at insurances that are available in their own country. Maybe they can find inexpensive insurance to cover them while they are working abroad. But please don’t ignore the issue. It is deeply unpleasant to find oneself sick or injured in a foreign country and if, on top of that, inadequate provisions exist for treatment and care. The whole situation can become a nightmare. We owe it to our teachers to ensure that they are fully aware of the risks they run and the protection that they can expect or should obtain.