Home Business Insurance-New Entrepreneurs Small Business Advice by Satria Piningit

Nobody doubts that having a home based business has a lot of benefits! Home based business owners do not need to spend extra money to rent office space, drive a long way to work, or limit their schedules. Home business owners have to think about the same sorts of risks that other business owners consider. You have to consider protecting your assets with insurance. Insurance is all about managing risks. Consider some common risks that every business, even home businesses, face today. Of course, lots of new home business owners rely on their personal insurance. This is especially true if they start small, do not have other employees, and only perform their business duties on a part time basis. Sometimes this works out, but sometimes it can be a very big mistake. Let us look at some typical types of coverage that a home business may need. Heath Insurance - Many home business owners are married to an employed spouse. They rely upon that spouse's insurance for coverage. Some choose to buy private health insurance. If the business does employ other workers, the owner may decide to pass on a medical plan. Others may find that a small group medical plan is an affordable solution to help them keep good employees. Vehicle Policies - Do you rely on your personal car insurance to cover your auto. You really need to check on the coverage and limits of your current policy. You could be risking a lot if your car gets used for business. You may want to consider buying commercial car insurance or adding more coverage to your current personal policy. You may just be able to add commercial coverage to your personal policy. What other risks does your business take? Your own need for insurance protection will vary by the type of business you run. If you provide professional services, you may need professional liability coverage. Many accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents work out of a home office today. They still need to purchase the same sort of professional liability policies that they would need if they worked out of an office. Most business that produce physical products need to have some sort of liability insurance. Customers could claim that the product caused them damage, and it would be very important to have an insurance company helping to fight that claim. If you need expensive equipment and supplies to operate, you should consider the limits of your homeowners policy. Sometimes the personal property protection is not very high. What if the essential things you need to use to run your business got stolen or damaged? How would you replace them? You may need to add more coverage to your personal policy or take out a business policy. There is an insurance product called a BOP (Business Owners Policy). It provides a package or business protection the same way your current homeowners policy provides a package of property and liability coverage. Every home business is different. Each business will have a different number of employees, type of equipment they need, and of course, the essential types of coverage they need to be safe. You can consult with an experienced insurance agent to help you find the right solution. You can also start looking for coverage, policies, and prices by using free online business insurance quotes. Starting a small business in today's economic climate takes 'guts'. It is hard enough during times of plenty to get a small business up and running profitably but during times of economic uncertainty, it takes extreme confidence, thorough research and a preparedness to work through problems consistently. If this is you, then you will probably do very well indeed. If you are thinking of a retail outlet in a street or in a strip mall, then spend some time in your vehicle over various times during the next few weeks and check out the busier days and the amount of shopping traffic. Not just vehicles passing by in the street because these aren't shoppers. You will notice a big difference in times and days of the week. Some days in a retail business are definitely days when you need all hands working. The customers won't wait forever to be served so you will need enough staff on hand to service their needs. Some days, these super-busy times may be just for a few hours over a lunch break but you will still need to meet their needs promptly because they will not have any time to stand around and wait for service. Another thing you will need to know is the old retail adage of "location, location, location". This is the mantra of every retail outlet because if you get it wrong, you will have shot yourself in the kneecaps. You need good passing traffic (that is, pedestrian traffic) and you need adequate car parking facilities. Without the exposure of a good location for your retail business you will find your advertising costs rapidly rising which eats into profitability very fast. And there are no guarantees when it comes to successful advertising. Just spending dollars to keep your business name in front of people's attention, is not the way to run a profitable small business. If you are investigating opening up a service based business, then you will need a different type of location. The last thing you want for this type of business is to be paying high rent costs for a valuable location because you will not be depending on walk-in customers. If your rent is too high a percentage of your income, then you will find it extremely difficult to be profitable. Without making adequate profit, the viability for a successful small service based business decreases significantly. If your business is a mixture of both retail (that is, you do have physical products) to sell and you offer a service as well, then you will need to know where the majority of your clientele comes from.Most businesses are a mixture of both as even if you are a service based business like a plumbing business or electrician, it is a good business practice to also offer a physical product in line with your trade, to the general public. In today's world there are a lot of DIY'ers who insist they can do everything as well as a tradesperson, and often can, so you need to be able to sell them something if you aren't able to sell them on using your services. If it's any consolation, when I ran my small home maintenance business, my busiest days were usually on a Monday or especially the day following a long week-end, we used to get a lot of calls to come and fix DIY'ers mistakes. By this time a small job had often been turned into a much larger one. A sustainable small business will require good profit margins on both the retail and service based aspects of your business without overloading either and gaining a reputation of being too expensive to use.