I've been working from home since 2001 as a betting exchange trader, forex and stock market trader and investor, and now also as a regular blogger. Therefore I feel I'm in a pretty good position to offer some tips on how you can successfully work from home yourself, which I've listed below: 

1. Organize your work for the day/week ahead.

Organization is everything when you are working from home, otherwise you'll get distracted and your productivity will be low. Therefore I always think it's imperative that you make a list of what needs to be done for the day ahead either first thing in the morning or the night before. You can also do this at weekends if you want to fully organize your week ahead.

2. Don't work in living area or bedroom.

When working from home it's important that you don't have any distractions, so I always suggest you should set up a designated office in your home, if possible, rather than working in your bedroom or your living room, where you will be easily distracted by other things. 

3. Ignore emails until work completed.

If you're working on a computer then it is extremely easy to waste time checking emails, replying to emails, visiting your favourite sites, etc, so my advice is to not even look at your emails (unless you are expecting something important) or visit any other sites until you have got at least some work done.

4. Do household chores after you've finished your work.

Following on from the last point, even if you have household chores to do you have to make your work a priority, so always get your work done first. The household chores don't need to be done urgently.

5. Network with other homeworkers.

If you are in a specific business, then it's a good idea to network with other people in your industry by going to trade fairs, conferences, etc, or maybe just visit internet forums in your spare time to chat with people in the same position. For example, I personally know a lot of traders from chatting with them in online forums, but I also know quite a few in real life as well that I can share ideas with.

6. Go out and socialize a lot.

Working from home can be a lonely profession so I strongly recommend you go out and socialize as much as possible. The major downside of working from home is the lack of social interaction you have with other people so try and compensate for this away from work if you can.

7. Keep fit and take regular exercise.

This is the final point, but definitely not the least important. A healthy body is a healthy mind, so regular exercise will help you with your work, but more importantly it will keep you fit and healthy and prevent you from quickly gaining weight and developing eye and back problems which can easily happen when you're sitting down staring at a computer screen all day.