This is a great guest post from David Billings of Sparky Firepants Images. I hope you enjoy this post as much as I did when I read it before I hit the published button.

By David Billings:

Home-based business are booming and there’s more helpful information out there than ever before. Freelancers, consultants, and business people of all types are now sharing their ideas about the tools they use to be successful. I thought it would also be helpful to point out those things that are actually not necessary at all. Don’t worry if this conflicts with other stuff you’ve read. Those other people were all wrong anyway. Pretend that the stuff here is hot, boiling lava and your business is a balsa wood airplane.

iPhone or Blackberry

Handheld mobile devices are just toys. They’re extravagant accessories that suck your wallet dry but don’t add any real value to your business. It’s a total show-off piece. You have to own a celebrity-scale ego just to carry one.

Besides, who wants to be that guy walking down the street with his head buried, incessantly tapping a stupid piece of plastic?

It’s not essential to have a mobile device to run your home business. You can make do with a shared Motorola phone and your Sprint Family Plan. It’s cool.

I fell into the mobile device trap and here’s exactly why it’s stupid:

One afternoon I was at Fred Meyer picking up some stuff for dinner, minding my own friggin’ personal business for a change.

While waiting in line, I picked up my iPhone to see what time it was (I sold my watch to buy it anyway). Seeing that I had new e-mail, I groaned but my curiosity got the better of me.

Turns out a client had lost the Flash presentation I had sent her earlier that day (before I got to take care of my own damn stuff). Stupid clients. Right?

I had downloaded one of those “amazing” apps everyone chatters about so much on Twitter (another waste of time, see below). To test it, I had uploaded the Flash file to my iPhone.

So this silly bi*** lost my file and was whining because she had a meeting coming up to discuss it. That’s my problem, right?

Just to shut her up, I e-mailed the Flash file to her from Fred Meyer using my iPhone. Ever since then, she won’t leave me alone. It’s like, “David, we have another Flash project for you,” and “We’d love for you to help us out again.” It doesn’t stop. Jeez, you’d think by now they could find somebody else to do all the work.

If I didn’t have this stupid iPhone, I could save money and have more time to myself. Much more time.

Twitter

It’s completely unnecessary to be on Twitter. In fact, it can suck up your productivity so easily it would make the Dyson guy jealous.

When your work-from-home colleagues are tweeting about the weather or lunch, you can feel awesome knowing that you’ve bucked another trend.

You don’t need silly lunch talk to interrupt your flow. Believe me, I know how easy it is to get sucked in.

There’s one guy I follow on Twitter who constantly re-tweets stuff he likes. We’re both artists so it’s all kind of interesting, but it’s way too much for me to click on his tweets all day long. I just don’t have the time. I stopped clicking on all his tweet links and pared it down to a few every now and then, when I can catch break.

I feel terrible. He probably hates me but is too polite to stop following me, the poor guy. Sometimes I lay awake at night thinking about all the people on Twitter who are missing me because I’m in bed. They’re probably getting
angry at me, too. I just can’t stay on top of it all.

You can’t teach a 38-year old guy new tricks.

Some people say it’s just a new way of networking. From what I hear, good networking is simply about being helpful to the people you meet. It’s also about introducing those people to others who might benefit from knowing
them, too. If it lands you a primo gig, that’s fabulous, but it’s probably just a stupid coincidence, anyway.

Business is about luck. Don’t waste your time chatting with any of those 3,000,000 losers. They just don’t understand how it works.

Web Site

There’s a lot of talk about how you “need” a web site for your business, it’s like the “new Yellow Pages,” blah blah blah. So we all bought that piece of trashy advice in the 90s and look where it got us. Somehow we’re supposed to conjure up one of these things so internet-addicted people can see what we do.

It all just sounds… expensive. So no it’s unavoidable, but you can at least save some cash. Here’s how:

If you’re in business, you’re probably old enough to have nephews or nieces. Maybe you have a young cousin. Kids these days are all into computers and know how to build web sites. It’s like a new class in most grade schools, isn’t it?

All you have to do is get the kid to build your site for you. You might have to buy them pizza or something, but that’s a lot cheaper than paying one of those “expert” bozos to create it. It’s a bunch of crap anyway – SEO, CSS,
branding, etc. They make this stuff up just to get rich off your ignorance. Total scam.

All you really need is an address and a phone number on one page. Anything else is a waste. As far as the design goes, let the kid do whatever she wants. She’s up on the latest styles anyway, so her background color choices are going to be better than yours.

Another web site secret no one tells you is that it’s really, really easy to make one. They even have software that just does it for you and it says so right on the box. If you don’t have a young kid to build it for you, you could spend as little as $60 and just let the computer do the work.

I can’t say it often enough: when it comes to your web “presence,” save yourself some money. Nobody’s gonna notice your font choice or images, and you’ll never compete with a corporate site. If people won’t take the time
to learn who you are underneath the web site, they weren’t worth it, anyway.

Blog

You’ve probably heard that everybody who is anybody is blogging now. Even the CEO of Pepsi has one (wish I was a CEO so I could waste my days playing online).

What you may not understand is how this is necessary for your business. If you’ve been paying attention so far, you can figure out that it’s not. It’s justt more window dressing.

Even if it’s true what they say about how it establishes you as an expert in your field, it sounds a little dangerous. Nobody says what happens if you screw it up.

What if something you say gets taken the wrong way? What if you’re wrong about something? Is it really worth the risk to put yourself and your company out there?

I started a blog over a year ago and it’s been a lot of hard work. I often wonder what it’s doing for me.

Then, last summer I was at a publishing convention in Los Angeles. On the last day, this woman came up to me and said, “You’re Sparky Firepants!” Some other people nearby heard her and came over, too. Suddenly I was
forced to be polite and talk to all these people about my work, my blog, their work, their writing, etc. Bleh.

Man, that creeped me out.

I took their business cards anyway. One was a literary agent who wanted to see my work and join her writer’s workshop. I wish I was an agent so I could afford to read blogs all day. Also, she just made more work for me, because I had to get samples together and send them out when I got home.

Not to mention all those “regular” people that I now have to keep in touch with all year long. Who knows what they’ll do for me?

In fact, this post came out of a request to write something on somebody else’s blog. As if I don’t have enough work to do already. I couldn’t say no because it’s against the secret rules of the internet.

Blogging is a chore that begets more chores. Avoid them.

Another source of income

All the business books I have ever read say to do one thing and do it well. So what’s the deal with additional sources of income that people talk about now?

Say you’re a small business tax consultant. You’re focused on preparing taxes throughout the year, with one really crazy period every 1st quarter. When times are slow, you probably want to kick back for a bit, right? You
might have to spread the butter a little thinner for six months, but that’s the nature of tax prep.

So let’s say that (as a lark) you decide to offer your services as a virtual assistant in the slower months. With your existing computer and software, you could write copy, edit documents, create presentations and spreadsheets, shop for good deals on office supplies; the list goes on. It’s really up to you what you decide to take on as a virtual assistant, but the point is you’ve got skills and equipment idling at home.

Here’s what could happen (I caution you). You may:

• Get busy enough to have to work every day
• Have to hire someone to help carry the load
• Find yourself even busier at tax time
• Get new tax clients through your assistant gigs
• Raise your rates on tax consultancy due to heavy workload

I could go on and frankly, what a friggin’ mess. Do you really need that kind of a headache?

It’s better to stick with one thing, definitely.

I hope this list was helpful to you. I know there are hundreds of lists you could have chosen to read today, so I’m grateful that you chose mine. Of course, it’s probably just dumb luck.