Christmas Gift Guide for Self-Employed

What to buy for a friend who is self-employed? Buying Christmas presents for people who spend most of their time obsessively working to build a business may not be interested in frivolities, but they will appreciate useful presents. A word of warning, though: most of these presents are not cheap.

Amazon Gift Card

Who wouldn’t be happy with an Amazon gift card? Sure, gift cards are not an original idea, but with the variety of products you can get from Amazon, at least you are not limiting yourself to a specific shop. Also, compared to other gift cards or vouchers, there is a lower risk of the shop going bust or not having enough stock. Talking from experience, when you buy a gift card from a specialist shop, you may be disappointed when you hear from your friend that in the meantime the shop no longer exists and the voucher didn’t get redeemed.

External Hard Drive

We have all become storage-hungry: we need to keep our digital files safe and our laptops get out of space very quickly. This is particularly true when you are self-employed, as you need to archive documents for record-keeping. Your self-employed friend will be very grateful for the gift of storage!

The most popular brands of external hard drives include:

• Seagate
• Verbatim
• Western Digital

Suggestion: read some comparison reviews on sites like Techradar to find a present with the right specification that is within your budget (this applies to any of technical products in this article).

Being connected is important for self-employed people, and it’s especially important when travelling. When wi-fi is not freely available, carrying your own mobile hotspot will allow you to send that very important email while you’re on the road. Your self-employed friend will be impressed with your present.

The downside of having a wireless hotspot is the price of roaming, which can be very expensive.

Mobile hobs allow to connect several devices safely using a data SIM card. These SIM cards can be pay-as-you-go or with a monthly contract. The main advantage of wireless hotspots is that the connection can be much faster than free or shared wi-fi.

Some of the leading brands include:

• Uros Goodspeed
• Huawei
• Netgear Nighthawk

Headphones

Someone who is always glued to their laptop is probably also glued to his/her headphones. If your self-employed friend spends many hours on video conferencing with clients, you will score major brownie points if you get business headphones this Christmas.

Features to look out for are microphone quality and sound quality as well as noise cancelling to reduce background noise.

Business headphones with high specification include:

• Bose QuietControl
• Philips Fidelio
• Plantronics BackBeat Pro

Mobile phones are power-hungry and for your well-connected self-employed friend, having a fully charged phone is a lifesaver. A power bank or charger is a must-have (you may want to get one for yourself too). If you know which type of phone your friend has it will be easier to find a compatible charger; however, you can also find on the market universal chargers that are suitable for any phone. Some chargers have more than one USB port so you can charge multiple devices at the same time. Heavier models tend to be able to charge more devices (particularly tablets) and have more capacity.

Popular chargers include:

• Aukey
• Anker
• Lumsing

I hope you found this Christmas gift guide useful. Please let me know in the comments if you are planning to get any of these presents for a self-employed friend.