How To Start A Handyman Business-Why I Blog

Friday, 13 November 2009 04:28 by Denise

Hello everyone.

Today I just want to take a few minutes and write about why I am doing this blog, and why I wrote the book Handyman to Businessman: How to start a Handyman Business.

I started blogging about this subject because for several years my husband and I operated a handyman business. We learned a great deal in the years we had this business and I want to help share what we learned. I also blog because I want people who are either thinking about starting such a business or have already started a handyman business to realize that this is a real business.

What do I mean about this being a real business? It is the type of business that almost anyone can enter into without a lot of upfront cost. This alone has its good and bad points, and its the bad points that cause problems for this industry as a whole.

Because it is so easy to enter, you have a lot of fly by night people starting handyman businesses. These people are the ones who go around and do shoddy work and/ or just plain scam people. This will then get reported on the news and its another black eye to the industry. What you do not hear about are all the good people out there doing good work and providing a much needed service.

Everyone needs to realize that this business needs to be treated as a real business. You need a legal structure, you need a separate bank account, you need to give great, and I mean great, customer service. You need to take this business seriously. If you do, then you can make money doing this. If you do not, then you will just end up giving everyone else in the industry another black eye.

That is why I wrote the book. (see link on the right) It will give you step by step instructions on how to get started and what it takes to have a great handyman business. Get the book, if you do not get mine then get someone else's, but be sure that is gives you straight talk about the industry, not just how to fix this and that. You need to know that this will take work, a lot of work, and you need to be prepare to spend the time to really build a great business.

Hope this helps. Until next time.

Welcome to BlogEngine.NET 1.5.0

Wednesday, 1 April 2009 18:00 by Admin

If you see this post it means that BlogEngine.NET 1.5.0 is running and the hard part of creating your own blog is done. There is only a few things left to do.

Write Permissions

To be able to log in to the blog and writing posts, you need to enable write permissions on the App_Data folder. If you’re blog is hosted at a hosting provider, you can either log into your account’s admin page or call the support. You need write permissions on the App_Data folder because all posts, comments, and blog attachments are saved as XML files and placed in the App_Data folder. 

If you wish to use a database to to store your blog data, we still encourage you to enable this write access for an images you may wish to store for your blog posts.  If you are interested in using Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, VistaDB, or other databases, please see the BlogEngine wiki to get started.

Security

When you've got write permissions to the App_Data folder, you need to change the username and password. Find the sign-in link located either at the bottom or top of the page depending on your current theme and click it. Now enter "admin" in both the username and password fields and click the button. You will now see an admin menu appear. It has a link to the "Users" admin page. From there you can change the username and password.  Passwords are hashed by default so if you lose your password, please see the BlogEngine wiki for information on recovery.

Configuration and Profile

Now that you have your blog secured, take a look through the settings and give your new blog a title.  BlogEngine.NET 1.4 is set up to take full advantage of of many semantic formats and technologies such as FOAF, SIOC and APML. It means that the content stored in your BlogEngine.NET installation will be fully portable and auto-discoverable.  Be sure to fill in your author profile to take better advantage of this.

Themes and Widgets

One last thing to consider is customizing the look of your blog.  We have a few themes available right out of the box including two fully setup to use our new widget framework.  The widget framework allows drop and drag placement on your side bar as well as editing and configuration right in the widget while you are logged in.  Be sure to check out our home page for more theme choices and downloadable widgets to add to your blog.

On the web

You can find BlogEngine.NET on the official website. Here you'll find tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks and much more. The ongoing development of BlogEngine.NET can be followed at CodePlex where the daily builds will be published for anyone to download.

Good luck and happy writing.

The BlogEngine.NET team

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