Working From Home

Working from home may be the wave of the future. Today, the high cost of gas impacts everyone who must drive to work daily. Employers also feel the pinch, in terms of energy requirements. The working from home concept is again gaining traction, with companies of every size taking another look at how they might implement a work at home plan.

If your current onsite job might be a good fit for this idea, and you've got a reputation for productivity, consider approaching your boss with a working from home proposal.

If you're in the job market, try looking for telecommute work from home positions on the net. There are a lot of legitimate businesses out there looking for contract workers, as well as freelancers.

If your current manager agrees to a partial telecommute arrangement, you don't have much to worry about to keep the arrangement intact. Continue to be productive and abide by the rules as far as office days.

If you want to find telecommute positions on your own, you have a different kettle of fish. As an independent worker, you'll find there are plenty of scams, and you must learn to discern from legitimate working from home jobs and companies which are simply trying to make money by charging membership fees just to have access to their listings. Most of these sites have listings for which you must submit a bid. Frequently, the employer is only willing to pay a below-market rate for the work. So you're typically better off to exhaust listings on sites with work from home opportunities you don't pay a fee to see.

Some free listing sites are used by scammers, who may never pay you for your work. You can guard against this in a couple of ways. When you get a response to a query, do a search on 'scams company-name'. If that comes up clean, this working from home job is worth pursuing. If not, drop it there.

In the case where the job is of limited duration, perhaps with just a week or two of work, require some up front money and a schedule of payments along the way. For example, let's say you're a freelance graphic designer. The client wants a logo and new page layout for their website. You might want to split payments as follows: one third paid to begin, one third paid on acceptance of the design prototype and the remainder paid on final delivery. This is a typical arrangement, which protects you, as the client demonstrates a commitment to getting the work done and paying you.

Especially in the case of short term jobs, you also need to regularly look for other work to schedule when this job ends. Try to keep two or three projects lined up, to assure a steady income.

Working from home can be fulfilling, allowing you to schedule your own hours and saving you a substantial amount of money.