Home-Business Predictions in 2009 - The results
By Darina • Feb 13th, 2009 • Category: For WAHMsok the results are in.
I got a great reaction to the survey, thanks to everyone who tweeted and blogged, which really is just a quick snapshot not a scientific result to be used in evidence ! but I just thought it would be interesting to compare as much as we could, our predictions for home business in 2009 versus those in the UK.
There weren’t too many surprises in the results to be honest, I could see the patterns forming even with only a few answers in and they didn’t change dramatically at all as the numbers increased.
I see all of this as a positive, the UK are probably just a little ahead of us with home-business yet their thoughts and predictions aren’t that far off ours.
Have a look and I would be interested to hear your comments.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please click here to see my earlier post
First Question
Do you think Home-Business will continue to grow in 2009?
UK
Yes - 95%
No - 5%
Don’t know - 0
Ireland
Yes - 90%
No - 2%
Don’t know 8%
We’re sitting a bit on the hedge with this one. while the UK have said yes or no for definite we still have 8% hovering at don’t know but yet only 2% said a definite no, so what does that tell us? We’re sorta confident it’s going to grow but not quite?!
What do you think will be the most popular kind of home-business in 2009?
This is one I thought may have fairly different results, and while there are a few differences, (we seem to think online selling is going to increase more, whereas the UK seem to be heading more towards creativity and hand-made), there’s nothing really drastic.
UK
Creative Services 18%
Domestic Services 5%
Handmade Goods 5%
Online Selling 36%
Professional Services 36%
Ireland
Creative Services 10%
Domestic Services 4%
Handmade Goods 2%
Online Selling 46%
Professional Services 37%
I thought the professional services was interesting, almost the same, and I have to say I agree I think there’s huge scope for all different types of professional services to be home based.
As a home-business owner are you looking to grow in 2009? if so how?
Now this one I thought did have interesting results.
UK
By Extending my products or services 57%
By Hiring Staff or Outsourcing work to contractors 7%
By working in Partnership with other businesses 30%
I don’t wish to grow my business in 2009 7%
Ireland
By Extending my products or services 49%
By Hiring Staff or Outsourcing work to contractors 4%
By working in Partnership with other businesses 32%
I don’t wish to grow my business in 2009 14%
Apart from the partnership area, which both of us seem to agree was a good way to grow. The differences are more obvious than on the other questions. 14 - double the UK- saying they don’t want to grow in 2009 surprised me. I think this also reflects back to question one where we still had a “don’t know” answer about home-business but the UK were more definate. Personally I believe it’s more a lack of confidence with everything thats going on, that people don’t believe they can grow their business rather than not actually wanting to do it. I think this one will change as we start to raise the profile and also quantify what’s actually going on out there and what difference are we making to the economy.
Will homes with home offices increase in value in 2009?
I thought this was an interesting question to see the results, particularly with the property market as it is.
UK
Don’t know - 40%
No - 22%
Yes - 38%
Ireland
Don’t know - 41%
No - 29%
Yes - 31%
Not a huge difference there, but still ours landing on the side of caution or experience, I don’t know which? Personally while I don’t think they will increase in value specifically, certainly not in the short term, I do believe that a house with a home-office will have a stronger selling postition than their neighbour and this eventually will create a demand which will increase the value, so my answer would be a cautious Yes.
Where will you be working from in 2009?
UK
Garden Shed (or purpose built home-office) 17%
Kitchen Table - 15%
My bedroom 3%
Spare Room 65%
Ireland
Garden Shed (or purpose built home-office) 16%
Kitchen Table 23%
My bedroom 3%
Spare Room 58%
Not a huge difference there, apart from the fact that a few more of us will be round the kitchen table as opposed to in the spare room !
Will we see more devices designed for home business owners in 2009
To be honest I didn’t quite understand this question myself, so I was interested to see if there was a difference in how we interpreted it versus the UK and whether that would reflect in the answers. Personally I thought perhaps it was to do with mobile devices or other stuff like that to make home-business easier, I’m sure that’s what most people thought.
UK
Don’t know - 22%
No - 10%
Yes - 68%
Ireland
Don’t know - 37%
No - 7%
Yes - 56%
Will social networking continue to prove useful to home businesses?
I was interested to see the results of this question. My answer is a resounding yes. I think it’s a huge tool for home-business. I have to say I couldn’t have got the response I did to this survey so quickly (most answers were in within couple of hours) if it hadn’t been for the likes of twitter, facebook, igopeople etc..
but not every one is as convinced as me ! again I would think more from lack of experience and from caution rather than pure belief. Our No’s lower than the UK but our on the fence higher !
UK
Don’t know - 0
No - 5%
Yes - 95%
Ireland
Don’t know - 4%
No - 2%
Yes - 93%
Will more home businesses trade online in 2009?
This was another result that surprised me, surprised me that once again we had so many don’t know’s? I know i’m an internet junkie so I have to bear that in mind but my initial reaction is if you have a home-business why wouldn’t you trade online? you don’t have a retail outlet (unless it’s a home-based one !) you normally don’t have access to your clients and customers to the same level as a non home-based owner so why wouldn’t you use the internet to balance things up? I think the UK’s “No’s” surprised me more than our “Don’t know’s” which I was beginning to get used to seeing.
UK
Don’t know - 8%
No - 3%
Yes - 90%
Ireland
Don’t know - 13%
No - 1%
Yes - 86%
So there you go. Very interested to hear your comments. As I said not hugely scientific, sample sizes were different, having said that I don’t think our results would change drastically with an increase or decrease in sample size, as Imentioned I could see patterns forming very early on with the answers and nothing much changed and I’m sure it was the same in the UK
Darina x
Darina
Great idea to run this survey and compare results.
Have noted that our question on device design wasn’t too clear!
Very interesting to see the difference in replies. Let’s see what we can do to encourage and support home business in UK & Ireland.
Best wishes
Emma
Darina,
Well done on the initiative - interesting results. I believe that websites like IBW and LinkedIn are invaluable for business women around Ireland, and also twitter and facebook etc. But seriously, those of us who are tech savvy in any way can see this. The rest are still relying on local traditional ways to communicate and advertise, i.e. papers radio, fliers. A lot of Irish small businesses have not put any resources into exploring the other options mentioned above, and have a sense of fear around it - I certainly understand how they feel, still only learning the benefits of professional and social networking myself. That’s not to say we shouldn’t promote ourselves locally as well but ignorance is not bliss and every business owner should take on the responsibility to understand somewhat the benefits and payoffs - if even just to maintain their morale. Whether to outsource this or not is a debate in itself. I sense from the survey, Irish business people are curious and yet terrified, hence the don’t knows - maybe the fences are a bit high for some of us, providing an opportunity to overcome this fear,
Thanks a mill for yet again your contribution to the business world in Eire
Elaine
Darina
It is going to be a while yet before all thats on offer online is used by all. I feel I am web savvy but still there is so much I find a bit daunting. Facebook is one - I find I dont really use it and being honest dont know how to use it to my advantage. I think home business will really increase over the next 10 years with so many companies closing down. This recession has set us back about 20 years in business. The celtic tiger came before Ireland was ready for it and too much had to be learned in too little time and too many mistakes were made. So I think with all the knowledge we have now - we can start again - only this time we will go into things with the right approach with caution. Customer Service will be the big winner in all of this as it seemed to be lost over the last few years and home businesses will be wise to work on that skill. Well done Darina in all you do for the business world and particularly for homeworkers.
Darina,
This was a very interesting survey, thanks for doing it. I was a little stumped by the “devices” question also.
I was also very suprised with the result of the social networking question, but I wonder if that has much to do with the fact that we, in Ireland, are very behind in broadband roll-out. Personally I would not be networking at all if I only had dial-up connection, it would be way to expensive to spend any amount of time on the different networking sites without broadband.
Regards
Vicky
Interesting results to the survey Darina, thanks for putting it out there!
I’m inclined to agree with Vicky regarding the use of the internet and particularly social networking sites to the small business owners advantage. There are still many parts of Ireland which as yet do not have the luxury of broadband access.
Those of us that have broadband don’t realise just how lucky we are and the extent to which it has changed our business practice. Certainly my websites would not have evolved, nor would the serial addiction to blogging had I not been fortunate enough to fall into the lucky category!
It will be interesting to see what does happen as we adjust to the changes brought about by the current economic climate. One thing is for certain; businesses will have to pay more attention to customer service in order to survive…
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