A Meeting Place for All Home Office Women

Have you seen the ‘DO FOLLOW’ badge floating around in the blogosphere. In case you are not aware, the designer of the badge is also the designer of my blog headers at Home Office Women, Organics and Your Health and my Shopping blog! She also design’s my husband’s blog header.
This week, H.O.W. feature has the pleasure to feature Randa Clay, mom of one and a busy graphic/web designer with 3 blogs to her portfolio. Randa speaks…

I began working from my home after my son was born. I have done web design work for 10 years on the side, while working full-time in the marketing field. My work from home really ramped up after my son was about 1 year old, and I began to get more web/print design clients, and then got into the blogging world.

The perks include being at home with my son for everything he needs, and being able to schedule my work around him, since he is my top priority in life. Also, I’ve always loved designing things, and while my “regular” jobs were satisfying, now I can concentrate on just doing what I love. The drawback is that I can get engrossed doing this work, and have a hard time taking time for myself doing things such as sleeping, etc. I feel like I only have so much free time, and I’ve got to be working every minute of it.

My business is basically design and marketing related. I have many years of experience in direct mail and brand marketing, so I bring that to the design business to offer a full range of services. I do everything from logo creation to print work, as well as web design and blog customization. I have two blogs that I’ve monetized and am hoping they will grow into a good income source for my family: freestuff4kids.net and printables4scrapbooking.com.

My advice for anyone who wants to work from home is not to fall for the zillions of get rich quick schemes that are out there. You need to think of yourself as your own brand and depending on what your business is, you probably need at least a basic online presence that looks sharp and clean to reflect “Brand You”. Also, if you’re working at home so you can be the primary care-giver for your children, remember that they are your priority. I have to remind myself of that all the time. I love what I’m doing in the virtual world, but the physical world is more important. Becoming a workaholic will only lead to stress which makes for a lot more “Bad Mommy” days than “Good Mommy” days.

Working from home by doing something on the internet is more accessible than ever. There are tons of resources out there to teach yourself anything you want to learn. Work hard at it and make some friends along way in forums, etc. that you can go to for direction.