With so many people working remotely now, some companies are starting to change their tune about this way of working and are allowing their employees to work from home permanently. To many people that sounds like a great deal. They get to avoid commuting and sitting in a cubicle all day with their boss hovering around them. Now their coworkers have become their dogs and cats, and they have traded their office cubicle for working from their couch at home. Sounds awesome, right!?
However, this assumes that to work virtually, you have to spend your day on a computer working on spreadsheets, coding, or writing. In other words, there is a common misconception that the only virtual careers are jobs that could be done in an office (at least, before COVID-19). In fact, there are different types of virtual businesses — but the one thing they have in common is that they don’t have a physical location that customers visit. Here are some common virtual business features:
Virtual Business Features
- Don’t typically have a physical location.
- At least part of the job is done over the internet.
- Can be done in practically any city.
Based on these features, most independent businesses started by service professionals could be considered virtual, or remote, businesses. The booking of customers is done over the internet. In most cases the service professional travels to the customer’s home or to a job site, so it’s possible to work as a service professional, for example, a plumber, without having customers visit in a physical location. Instead, the plumber would visit the customers in their homes. This means that their business could travel with them to any city, whenever they want to move, as long as they can find customers there.
Have you always wanted to set up your own business, a business that you could run in almost any city!? If you have, you might want to consider starting a virtual cleaning business. Cleaners are needed all over the world, so you could technically start this type of business anywhere. You could set up a cleaning business with the virtual business features described and follow your entrepreneurial dreams easily. Here’s how to do it.
Starting A Virtual Cleaning Business
This process would work for just about any business that a service professional wants to start, but for the purposes of listing the steps required we will assume you would like to start a cleaning business in the U.S. Here is the process for setting up this type of business using a fictional service professional named Josh. First, think of a name for your cleaning business.
1. Register your company: After determining the market need for his service, Josh needs to actually legally create his company. He can register it either as a sole proprietorship or LLC. Josh’s Super Clean LLC, perhaps?
2. Open a business bank account: It’s always a good idea to open a separate bank account for your business in order to keep your personal finances separate from your business ones. Josh knows this, so he sets up a personal business bank account. It’s easier to deal with taxes and everything that way.
3. Buy business insurance: Josh protects his business from unexpected expenses like accidents and potential lawsuits by purchasing the right insurance plan.
4. Apply for a business license: The next step is to apply for a business license. License requirements and application processes vary by state, so be sure to look up how to go about applying on your state’s official government website. Josh lives in Washington state so he searches for the information he needs to complete his business license application on the Washington State Department of Revenue website.
5. Register on OneBook: Finally, after setting up the business, it’s time to register on OneBook. Josh registers his new cleaning company on OneBook and starts finding customers in Seattle!
If you want to start a virtual business offering cleaning services or plumbing, or whatever, it’s THAT easy! Once you have set it up, you don’t even have to worry about advertising. Just go to OneBook, where you can find customers ready to hire you.
Set up a business with the virtual business features listed above and make your goal of becoming a business owner a reality!
