3 Ways to Keep Your Blog Business and Home Office Safe

For many bloggers, ‘home’ is also where the ‘home office’ is. Running any type of business from your home can have it’s pros and cons. One thing that bloggers and entrepreneurs working from home should continually have on their minds, is the protection and safety of running a business or profitable blog from the same place where they sleep and live.

With this in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to create a useful resource on how home-based businesses and bloggers can help keep their businesses, family and themselves safe at the same time. In each of the examples below, we are going to highlight different ways to keep your content, business, and home safe through the use of today’s best technology, backup systems, and even security.

Blog Content and Hosting Backups

When running a website or blog, one of the most obvious security precautions you should have in place is to make sure you a running with a reliable web hosting solution that also offers daily backup services. In previous years, the concept of having a server in your home might have seemed like a good idea to power your websites, but it’s actually just an extra added cost and complication you shouldn’t have to deal with.

Now through the use of shared, dedicated and private hosting services, anyone can get access to the power of professional web hosting for just a mere fraction of the cost of running your own servers. At the same time, when choosing a reliable web host you are also given access to a full-time time of customer support and a dedicated server team to make sure things are always up and running as they should be.

While the concept of setting up hosting and running a blog might seem easy enough, there is actually a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. For example, what if your site was hacked or your home computer was damaged… what would happen to your site? This is where daily backups come into play, and is a service that is offered by almost every web hosting provider in the world today.

Even though your home-based business or profitable side hobby might ‘just be a website’, it’s still important to make sure you have all of the necessary precautions in place.

Home Security and Business Protection

When working from the comfort of your own home, you get to experience many benefits… such as not having to commute to work, creating your own working environment and also being your own boss. However, it’s always important to remember you are still ‘working from home’.

When doing so, you are also putting yourself out there and the security of both your home and business should come into play. A great way to keep both protected is through the use of an advanced and easy to setup security system.

As many entrepreneurs and bloggers already know, times are changing and technology is advancing like never before. Along with it, so are in-home security systems. SimpliSafe, for example, is an easy to install home security system that is easy enough for anyone to setup and ideal for bloggers or business owners working from home. Not only will an in-home security setup allow for you to stay safe, bloggers can also work from their home office and use webcams to keep an eye on the rest of the house at the same time. This is a huge time-saver and removes various distractions of going in and out of the office all day if you happen to live with other family members, kids, pets or have people coming to your front door.

To see a quick 5-minute installation of SimpliSafe, check out the short video below.

Through the SimpliSafe blog, you can learn more about how a home security system can help you better protect your home, family, and business.

Another interesting benefit of adding a security system to your home is that you can actually save on insurance premiums in the process. This is just one of the many topics that were discussed in this Forbes interview with Chad Laurans, the CEO of SimpliSafe.

No matter what type of business you might be running from your home, it’s always good to have security measures in place at all times.

Keeping Your ‘Home’ Separate from Your ‘Business’

When running a business or company from your home, it’s important to make sure the two aren’t seen as one in the same. While your home is a place where you live and likely purchased with your own money, if that same location is listed as your business, there could be a conflict of interest depending on taxes, write-offs, business expenses and how they all intersect with each other. While we aren’t going to offer any tax advice, we can provide you with a few simple resources and things to consider when working from home.

One quick tip is to purchase a P.O.Box from your local post office or FedEx. This will allow you to list a separate business address online to receive documents and payment from different companies, while not providing them with access to your home address. If you aren’t sure if this is the right option for you, Intuit has a nice article on the topic.

Another recommendation is to create an LLC or INC around your blogging based-business. At some point, you will want to start receiving payments under a company name versus your own personal name. This is often recommended for any side-hobbies or projects that start earning a few thousand dollars per year. This also has a few extra levels of security built into the business vs. personal liability as well.

How to Stay Safe When Blogging from Home

As you can see, the concept of blogging is quite simple, but when you start to dive into the fine details of blogging for money and working from home… there is definitely a lot to think about.

Keep your blog, home office, and family safe at all times by implementing each of these methods into your blogging business today.