Yes you can start a Home based business by providing eMail Management for busy entrepreneurs and professionals.

The great thing is that you can do it from a small spare room or even the much mentioned kitchen table.

All you will need is a laptop, somewhere to put it and a little training in email management.

In this article I only have time to provide a brief outline but I will be doing a detailed course in the near future.

With this in mind I welcome any questions that you may have on the subject,. I promise that I will try to answer them all.

Is there a demand for this service ?

I’m no celebrity or tycoon but even I get a lot of emails. Mostly they fall into these categories:

Unwanted – The I never signed up for that brigade

Urgent action required – Such as orders or request for quotes etc

Read only – Worth reading but unlikely to require a reply

I have no doubt that you can come up with some more.

For a moment just imagine that you are the owner of a thriving business, or a well known personality or even a successful blogger. Just picture the amount of emails you will receive every day.

It can build into thousands per month

I’m sure that, like we mere mortals, these busy individuals just don’t have the time to sort the good mail from the rubbish.

Enter you with your new eMail Management business. It’s the answer to your inbox nightmare.

There is nothing more important to a successful entrepreneur than time.

How does it work?

In the unlikely event that your customer forgets to do it you should propose a confidentiality agreement.

With that out of the way a set of simple steps will get the job moving. Try these for size:

• First get access to the clients inbox with any necessary pass-words etc
• Set up the folders that you will need i.e. one for each member of staff, within each of these insert the three folders above.
• Agree this structure with the client

Now you should spend some time watching the emails come in and go out normally. Get a feel for it.

Setup any filters that will make your job easier.

Set up a personal email for the client. Only people on the clients approved list can use this email address.

Once you understand which emails are which and where they go the unfiltered must be sorted by hand and placed in the appropriate folders.

How do you know what to charge ?

I know of one person offering this service at a charge of $ 995 per month.

I think it unlikely that you will get this to start with.

You will have to work out how much you need per hour add profit of say 30% and that’s your hourly rate.

Don’t forget here to add in holiday pay, National Insurance and any other costs.

It may well be that you won’t make a lot on your first few jobs but you will learn what you should be charging.

Your Mission should you decide to take it

Is “To reduce the clients in box to zero” and keep it here.

We have had a look at sorting the eMails but there is another stage in the process if you are to complete your mission.

Where you can understand what is needed you can reply to some of the emails.

There will always be some that only the client can handle, but they should be only a few.

In order to handle replies it would be an advantage to put together some template emails so that you only fill in the blanks.

This will help to prevent the miss-handling of any mail.

I also put together procedures which are then agreed with the client.

Now to Grow the Business

I could write a book just on this but first and foremost you must employ someone who is reliable and intelligent.

They should be a native English speaker ( unless you set up in another country ).

At first they should be on a lower hourly rate with no guaranteed hours. There are places on the internet where you can find such people although someone that you know may be a better bet.

Ensure that they are well trained – Don’t skimp

Lastly, monitor all their work until you have built up a confidence in them.

Finding Clients

Any person that you can find that has a popular website, especially those selling on line, may well have a level of eMail that would benefit from you eMail management business.

There is nothing stopping you from providing a service to countries other than your own, providing that it is an English speaking country or that you are fluent in the local language.

To attract business form this source it would be as well to have a web site. this may sound daunting to some but there are lots of providers such as 1 & 1 or GoDaddy who can provide a web site which you can easily customise to meet your needs.

If you want to start in a more local way I would recommend that you have some business cards printed and then visit a local Business Networking group.

It’s amazing how much can be learned by just one visit.

You could even visit before you have any business setup to dip a toe in the water and get some reactions to the proposed service.

Please give me some help

As I mentioned at the start I am writing a detailed course on this business and would love to hear from you if you have any questions or comments.

To help simply email me at ………… [email protected]

Or add a comment to the blog

Many thanks