posted
IIRC, some of the people here at Hatrack work from home. My wife isn't terribly happy with her current job, but it pays pretty well, and we are trying to save for a down payment for a house so it is important for her to continue working at this point in our lives.
I think there are some pretty good ways to make money working from home these days, but to be honest starting a business is probably beyond our means.
I was wondering if anyone here had suggestions/opinions about working at home, and if any of you have any idea what types of jobs are more likely to have this as a possibility.
JenniK has a lot of marketable skills....she is multi-lingual (4 other languages as well as sign language), has excellent typing skills, is pretty computer literate, and has a lot of call center customer service experience.
We have a DSL internet connection, about 3 meg/sec, which is pretty stable, and we have a decent computer. Not a great one, as it is several years old, but it has been upgraded so that it has good video card and 2 gig of Ram. I also added an internal 160 gig hard drive, and combined we have about 55-60 gig of free space. I could probably free up about another 20-30 gig of space by deleting TV shows I have already watched.
I could also upgrade our computer, of buy a laptop, as we have been looking at those for about 6 months.
Any ideas? I am looking for specific suggestions from people who are doing this, or have done it recently and made it work, but any ideas at all are welcome. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I work at home, but I don't really have any suggestions how to be able to do that yourself. I got hired out of college by a company where most employees, including the president, work out of their homes.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I talked to a girl who was doing call center work from home a couple of years ago. I didnīt ask her which company she was working for, but I believe she was living in Florida, I donīt know which city.
I know someone who does medical transcription work from home. She makes decent money, but the rate of repetitive stress injuries is quite high in that job.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
mph, you were one of the people who I remembered who worked from home. What type of work do you do, if you don't mind me asking?
Even if you don't have any sort of specific solution I would be interested is hearing about that, and about your over all opinion of working at home. I am flying blind here, as I don't know anyone who works at home in meatspace, other than a few people who own their own businesses, and even most of them have offices or specific locations....they just do the computer work at home, so it isn't really the same thing at all.
steven, that is one of the things I have considered. JenniK types all day as it is, so she would be able to do that I am sure. She also worked as a pharmacy tech for a few years when were were dating, so she knows the importance of accuracy when you are doing that.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I'm told people like to hire out their bookkeeping. I'm severely entrepreneurially impaired, or I'd do it myself.
Someone gave me a book about working from home last year. If I can find it, maybe I'll post some ideas from that. There was an initial checklist that I failed most of the points on. I'm not a self-starter, I'm not highly organized, I don't compartmentalize well, my children interfere when I'm doing business. There were others.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:JenniK has a lot of marketable skills....she is multi-lingual (4 other languages as well as sign language), has excellent typing skills, is pretty computer literate, and has a lot of call center customer service experience.
If she can get certified as a translator, there's a fair bit of legal translation work that is easily done from home. I don't have details, but in emergencies my firm would pay something like $100 per page. The fee was less for non-emergencies, but that allows planning one's day pretty flexibly. Of course, that was the rate paid to the company. I don't know what individual translators got.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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thanks pooka, I would like to hear about that. JenniK isn't highly motivated but she isn't a slacker at all; she is very organized, and she can compartmentalize well. We don't have children yet, either, and we have a library/computer room with a door that shuts that is pretty quiet.
We also live in a very quiet area.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:JenniK has a lot of marketable skills....she is multi-lingual (4 other languages as well as sign language), has excellent typing skills, is pretty computer literate, and has a lot of call center customer service experience.
If she can get certified as a translator, there's a fair bit of legal translation work that is easily done from home. I don't have details, but in emergencies my firm would pay something like $100 per page. The fee was less for non-emergencies, but that allows planning one's day pretty flexibly. Of course, that was the rate paid to the company. I don't know what individual translators got.
She has 1 year left for her Spanish degree, and I would love it if she would finish school, but we need to get finacially sound (or more so) before she goes back. She also speaks French, Japanese, and Italian, but she skills are a little more rusty for those, although she still speaks them well.
What type of certification would be needed to do that?
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Medical transcription is a good opportunity, but look out for scams that will offer to set you up, but basically overcharge you for equipment and training without any real business support on the other end.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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There is a private certification, the ATA certification, which requires a test and either a masters, bachelor's plus 2 years experience, or 5 years experience. None of the degrees have to be in translation. It's not clear what that gets you.
There are also court interpretor certifications that allow people to interpret in court and create certified translations. The federal program requires two tests, written and oral, taken a year apart. She wouldn't want to interpret if she wants to work from home, but there's document translation that needs such certification, and it might help her get other work.
It seems possible to get work without a cert - I've seen references to people taking tests with temp agencies or the equivalent. She might want to look into that some if she's interested.
posted
Here is what I am doing. It is more of a hobby for me.
My dad wanted to do stuff with ebay for a while but is computer illiterate. I am mostly a novice, but I know VERY basic html and am good at multiple education programs and simple networking in a school environment.
He signed up for BANS and convinced me to do the same. It is an eBay affiliate store program. You buy it for $97 and it provides a template where you choose your country, layout, and it provides a panel to input links to ebay items. You can then edit the CSS code and/or html to modify your store.
The idea is to build a niche, market it, and make money.
So far I have made the $97 back, but I am paying $9.95 a month for hosting. I don't have a steady income stream yet, but I am waiting until my family leaves to Japan for 3 months before I really invest serious time in trying to make it work.
I set up a basic store called Zupodsa. I don't have content pages yet, it is not registered with Google, and I not currently trying to make money with adsense. I am mostly writing content pages off-line.
Come mid April and June when I really work it I will have more of an idea if it is worth it.
It has been fun. You can make as many stores as you want. I am also creating one for my wife. If I can bring in at least 5-10 dollars a month, then I will start to get hardcore and build sites in Europe, India, and really delve into Google marketing.
You learn something and it is as fun for me as Civ IV, Guild Wars, and LOTRO.
That is what I am doing. If you buy it, do it from the link at the bottom of my site so I get a commission .
It takes more time then the site suggests. but it looks like to me even a novice could realistically make 50 a month. Some people are doing much better then that. They use it as a job. Several people in the forums are really successful.
*Note I know there is cheaper hosting, but for the $9.95 a month plan I can host as many unique websites as my bandwidth permits. I am doing that for a year. I have three months alone and then 2 and a half months with work off. I might as well jump in.
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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A supervisor's mother sells used books online. She gets in-demand titles (using the Amazon bestseller lists) from Goodwill, Salvation Army, and other thrift stores then resells them for a decent profit. She was making enough to quit her job at one point, but I think she burned out on it.
I met and chatted with a guy in Goodwill doing the same thing. He had a nice setup using a pocket PC of some sort with an attached laser scanner. He'd scan UPCs of likely books and see what they might go for using a DB. He laughed when I told him about my friend's mother using Amazon top 1000 printouts.
I'm considering trying it on a trial basis, and seeing how it goes. If I could part with any of my sci-fi collection I could start with that. . .
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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I'm a financial analyst for a large company. I do have a desk in the office, but for the past several months I've been working from home. Just about everyone on my team works from home on occasion--some more than others.
It can get lonely, but this isn't too much of a problem for me because I'm an introvert. I feel like I'm saving money on transit and food costs (though probably not much on the second). On the other hand, I lose money by using my home phone for business calls, and the costs of paper/ink for my printer. I don't think I can expense these as I'm a contractor. I'm planning on claiming a home office on my taxes, though.
Posts: 1805 | Registered: Jun 1999
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I did freelance writing full time from home for about 5 months. The freedom and short commute was very nice. If I'd stuck with it and built up a solid clientele, I would have called it ideal. Going back to an 8 to 5 office job was hard.
Some things that would be ideal for freelance writing (marketing writing, not writing for magazines)--an unlimited minutes plan on my cell phone, a Verizon network card for the laptop, a decent desk in the home office, and a comfortable place to sit and come up with ideas.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Anyone else have anything to add? I told JenniK about this thread and she was really interested in any ideas that she could get.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by steven: I talked to a girl who was doing call center work from home a couple of years ago.
I know a couple people who do call-center work from home via Live Ops and make okay money (usually in addition to their regular outside job). However, apparently no new reps can be hired in Kansas because of some new law KS passed that affects this type of business. (This call-center work is answer-only -- like people see something on the shopping network or some cable network they want to order, and are given a toll-free number to call, it is routed to these stay-at-home call center answerers.)
I know of several people with e-bay businesses.
Everyone else I know that works at home is either 1) a computer programmer, or a technology consultant, who occasionally has to travel some distances for clients; or 2) someone who worked in-house for a company and later got them to agree to allow a certain amount of work-from-home time. But they had to work on-site for a few years first.
I can see more companies going that way, though, hopefully. Especially with gas prices going up. I'm allowed to be on-call from home for some hours, but I just don't, because my home internet connection isn't fast enough to be able to do what I need to do.
oh -- and I know one guy who is a real-estate appraiser for a bank; who pretty much works out of his home, but he does have to travel alot to appraise real estate.
Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Fahim's worked from home as a computer programmer, sysadmin, and other technology related things like that. He's also done freelance writing and editing, as have I. I also worked from home as an accountant.
Personally, I've worked from home (self-employed) since, oh, 1994. I'll never work in an office or for someone else ever again, leaving my health issues aside. Fahim's been working from home steadily for the last three and a half years. I hope it stays this way. I really like having him here all the time. (No, I don't feel like killing him. ) For some people, working from home is an excellent fit.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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