Maximize Your Home Office for Profit

One of the most essential tools of a good blogger or affiliate marketer is having an office setup that is conducive to accessing the net and updating sites easily. For 2008 I am redoing my office setup so that I can be more productive. This new setup is going to include a bunch of network upgrades for the house as well as my office, and the computers themselves.

The first thing I’m going to start with is the router, which is an obvious choice for a starting place since everything coming in from the cable modem needs to pass through this anyway. If you’re router isn’t beefy enough to handle the throughput you’re limiting your connectively before you ever get started. I’ve decided to go get two used cisco routers since I will use one as the primary, and possibly use the other as a bridge or extender. Its not a bad idea to have a backup just in case either. I will be putting in gigabit routers to upgrade from the old router a bit. This should give me some added juice to download sites faster.

I like buying used Cisco routers from Networkhardware.com as they have been reliable in the past and you can’t go wrong with Cisco for the most part. I’ve been extremely happy with my Cisco equipment for several years now. Of course you can always use other brand names when doing network related hardware upgrades, but personally I vote Cisco.

The next thing on the upgrade list is my phone. This doesn’t seem like a big deal to most people but it is something that you should really consider upgrading some if you are going to be doing a lot of networking. Too many times I see people overlook a phone call to someone for an email. People still need to hear your voice, it is a secondary layer of positive reinforcement for any new clients or affiliates. To this end I am looking into getting some IP Telephony (Voice Over IP Phone). This will provide me with a less expensive phone option then I currently have (normal land line phone) and will also have many more options that I can utilize such as voice mail, call forwarding, caller id, etc etc.

The computers themselves are in fine shape, as I bought the two most used systems about a year ago. Hardware wise I’m going to throw in a bit of extra RAM for each system just to keep up with growing software requirements. Other then that the systems should remain fine and be satisfactory throughout 2008.

The last thing on my upgrade list for the home office to start the new year out with is a new desk office chair. One of the most important things in a home office is the chair, especially for bloggers. This is where you spend a majority of your time writing and you need to be comfortable, but not so comfortable that you fall asleep while writing late at night or even during the middle of the day! You can go as exspensive as you’d like to, but Staples has chairs that will suit most people, and they are not too much money.

Thats my list of improvements for the home office for the new year, what are you doing to improve your workspace?

This post is sponsored