What you will need to succeed in todays Nontraditional Workplace:

• Creating your virtual office
• Overcoming the challenges of working alone
• Separating personal and business life
• Preserving your professional image
• Maintaining visibility

A Virtual Office is any worksite outside of the traditional office. People who work in a virtual office can be either telecommuters, who work outside of a corporate offfice for an employer, or entrepreneurs, who are self-employed. Virtual offices are typically equipped with some combination of technology that enables information workers to re-create the support services of the traditional office.

Setting up a home office: Alice Bredin's Wuick Home Office Readiness Survey created in conjunction with Katherine Crowley, a New York City based psycotherapist and consultant to entrepreneurs covers the ability to:

1. Manage Time
2. Deal with challenges
3. Deal with distractions
4. Manage business support relationships
5. Balance business with the rest of your life

Ways to land a telecommuting job for those who want to do contract work from a home office first evaluate your skills and eligibility (typing, computer skills, writing ability), talk to people ask if they work with a company that hires people to complete work at home, try market research firms and insurance companies sometimes hire homebased employees.

Options when working for yourself include:

• Home based Franchises, allow you to lease the rights to create a business that is identical to all other businesses being run under the same name. In order to do this you may need to buy products, tools, advertising assistance, and training from the company that owns the rights to the business.
• Multilevel Marketing, is an alternative to traditional retailing in which products are sold through a chain of distributors instead of through stores. Distributors like you make money by selling products and by recruiting new distributors, you also make a commission on your own sales as well as on sales of anyone you sign up.

Alice Brendin writes a column called Working at Home, and her homebased business conducts research and advices companies who provide products and services to the small business, home-office, or telecommuting market. Get her book and she covers more indept information on setting up a Virtual Office.