Working from home, our new age reality?

Since the summer of 2020, for understandable reasons, there has been a greatly increased demand for businesses that can be run from home. Many buyers then quickly think of an online business such as an online store, website or other web business. And that's quite logical because there are plenty of web stores that are set up at home from an attic room (and sometimes don't rise above that level). But even larger web companies can be run from home under certain conditions.

Would you like to work from home yourself? In this article we have listed the advantages and disadvantages of working from home for you.

Working from home with an online business

It seems so ideal: to a certain extent you can determine your own times and be your own boss about the way you carry out your tasks. Entrepreneurship is attractive to many people, especially if this can also be done from home. Not all companies lend themselves to this, but many 'web-based' businesses are suitable for it. Where remote working from Bali seemed the holy grail a few years ago (to name just a few), nowadays we hear a lot from (future) entrepreneurs that they would like to do business from home.

With a web store you receive customers in an online environment. Many activities (writing content, adding articles, answering emails) can be done at any time and from almost any location. So also, at home. But working from home with an online store means more: customers call and there are orders to be shipped. In terms of telephone customer service, you want to be able to sit back and relax and customers expect your accessibility between 9:00 & 18:00. This too can be done from home. In terms of order fulfillment, things are more complex.

Web store inventory requires space

The products you sell need to be stored somewhere. Thus, there is a need for a warehouse. To make working from home possible, a space will have to be found for storing your assortment. For a small web store a room can suffice. For a web store with a few hundred different items, a large barn or larger is quickly required.

Don't have that space? There are other options: it is possible to deliver orders on the basis of fulfillment. Your stock is then managed by a professional warehouse and your orders are also processed and shipped by them. Another solution that seems to be becoming more and more popular is dropshipping.

Working from home thanks to dropshipping

Dropshipping is a way of processing orders whereby you carry the assortment of a partner (for example, a wholesaler or, more recently, a Chinese web store). Your web store displays the products of a third party. You are not the owner of these products and therefore do not need to buy them. So, there is actually no stock risk. Only when an order comes in, you give it to the dropshipping partner and they send the article (under your name) to your customer.

With dropshipping, you are therefore focusing on the front office. There are disadvantages to dropshipping (see the article we linked to earlier), but an advantage is that you do not have items in stock: to successfully work from home, no warehouse space is necessary.

Start working from home

The fastest way to get started is to take over an existing business. With a web store that already has visitors and good Google positions, you make a flying start and work from home quickly. Curious about the advantages of taking over versus starting your own business? On our offer page (for the smaller web stores look here) you will find the online businesses that are currently for sale. After registering as a full member, you can filter the offer by method of order processing. So, you can quickly see which shops are already working on the basis of dropshipping or fulfillment. Of course, it is also possible to take over a web store with its own stock and order processing, where after the acquisition you leave the stock management and order processing to a fulfillment partner so that working from home is still an option!