Asset Management Can Be Your Home Business

This is the generation of the entrepreneur.  After the recession, the traditional model where “work” means going to a desk for eight hours a day is quickly becoming a thing of the past.  In its place, the work-from-home business, the freelancers, and the small start-ups have become the way to the future for many enterprising people who have learned there is no more stability in a desk job than in self-employment.  On a case-by-case basis, some small business founders have had great luck making a career out of asset management for years now, but the technology to make a good living this way has always been too expensive and high-tech for the modern person to use.

Taking their belongings by Julien Harneis, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What is Asset Management?

Asset management is a way to keep track of all of your assets in case of some kind of issue.  If there’s a theft, a fire, or another kind of natural disaster (such as flood, tornado, or earthquake), even if your belongings are insured, it’s almost impossible to receive any money for their loss unless they’re documented.  That’s where asset management comes in.  An asset manager will make a careful, documented, detailed list of every item in the home before anything goes wrong—and if something ever does, the homeowner has an itemized list of every last personal item.

How Do You Make it Your Home Business?

Many entrepreneurs have started out in the service arena.  Asset management is proving to be a smart way to get ahead in the industry as well.  While the traditional business model involved pricey technology and lots of experience, the existence of new asset management apps are making it easier than ever for newcomers to enter this arena and work from home.  The overhead for a start-up in the asset management field largely depends on what kind of technology you use; with an asset management app, you could easily start your own business out of pocket due to how little overhead it involves.  There are even free plans offered, though the for-pay plans are usually going to run between $3 and $30 a month, and offer vastly more storage to those looking to expand into a small business.  You don’t need expensive machines, but you do need to use something to log all of your time and efforts.

Fortunately, the world of smartphone apps is beginning to capitalize on the world of asset management, and is a great tool for this.  In order to begin, one would simply download an inexpensive (or free, depending on the service) application.  After becoming familiar with the technology, the easiest way to begin would be to offer services to those with little time to extensively document their own belongings.  As with any small start-up, networking is key.

Who Needs It?

Asset management is especially necessary to those who have many small, expensive items that require cataloging; think of a collector of pricey memorabilia, or someone who has been acquiring quality pieces for so long that they’ve simply stopped keeping records of them.  By offering services to help these people catalog and document every belonging, not only could you earn a great hourly wage for your services, but provide some semblance of peace for them as well.

Instead of paying a few thousand dollars to have a professional catalog every item in a home or business, a home or business owner can actually hire an entrepreneur to come to their house and catalog everything.  By using an inexpensive system such as *Asset Panda, and doing the work manually, the start-up and overhead costs of beginning an asset management business is low.  Keeping overhead costs low is a must for any business in the beginning, in order to deal with any unexpected expenses.  All you need in order to begin is a smartphone or tablet, a good attitude, and a firm grasp of self-marketing and self-publicity.

*Asset Panda is an asset management app and software.  Learn more at AssetPanda.com.