What it Means to Really Work from Home- I do and So Can You!
Working From Home- the Dream
Many of us long to work all day in our pajamas, happily surfing the internet in between work, laughing as we check our emails, having leisurely phone calls with friends and then (if you have them) tending to our children.
Every one of us has seen the ads all over the internet that promise earnings from sitting at home and doing just that. Perhaps you have gotten an email offering huge sums of money to sit at home.
It is fun to entertain these fantasies sometimes in the middle of a time when you are considering making a career move, or feel as though you are caught in a job with no potential for movement or growth. It is fun to think about a job where you never need to change from wearing your pajamas. It is fun to think about being at home, working doing something incredibly easy and getting paid large sums of money.
Especially tempting for families that have daycare or family care issues are the jobs that dangle the carrot in your face that say "Work from home, kids allowed"
Working From Home- the Reality
If you work from home for a call center, you will not be allowed to work in a place where there are children, pets, or background noises, except in some very rare instances.
Businesses do not want to send forward the impression that you are in your home somewhere.
They want the consumer to believe that you are in a giant corporate building in the middle of corporate America in a cubicle farm.
You may tell yourself "Well, my kids can be quiet. I will talk to them about this." or "I will work in a quiet area, no one will hear me." or "I will work in the middle of the night when the children are asleep." Babies cry, kids argue, children get sick. The best laid plans can quickly be laid to waste by one innocent child. If you are going to work from home doing anything for a call center, you will have to make some daycare arrangements for your children. It is better for you, your employee, and your children.
If you are on the phone with a client, then you are not attending to your children. Someone needs to be. Kids don't mean to be needy, but they are. Disasters happen when children are unattended. If you are going to work from home, save yourself, your sanity and your job. Get daycare. Same goes if you have a relative that needs care.
The headset. Some companies will require you to purchase a certain model headset, because it ensures that every person working for them meets the same standards of hearing and being heard. These headsets do not come cheap. The least expensive one that I have heard about was about $50.00. The most expensive? About $450.00. You CAN write it off on your taxes as a work expense, but that does not help if you are short of cash right now. Some employers will send a headset to you, with the condition that you either make payments or return the headset if you no longer work for them.
The computer. Most companies have minimum standards of what is and is not acceptable. Your old machine may work fine for surfing the internet and checking emails, but it is doubtful that it will meet the standards of the company that you are wanting to work for. Check online. There are many companies that have laptops and PC's for sale for less than $350.00. The Chromebook, if it meets the standards set out by the company is a very affordable option.
Your Document software. Some employers will require that you use Windows Office, which can be pricey. Others will allow you to use the free Open Office. Again, a tax write off, but you will have to spend the money up front.
When you log in to work, you will be at a workstation. Your desk is your workstation. You will have to sit there in some cases between calls. Not a great situation if you have health issues that require you to go to the restroom a lot. During those calls, no background noise such as radio or television should be heard. Be careful. Some of the new headphones pick up the tiniest sounds and broadcast them for the listener to hear. Even the mute key can malfunction, and callers will be delighted to hear the sounds of your flushing toilet or pets in the background.
Working From Home Surveys, Tests, Samples
There are loads of sites that promise all the riches in the world if you will only click their ads. You may get even get free samples. You may actually get a few dollars here and there.
If you stop and determine the amount of time that you are spending to generate revenue from those sites, you would probably stop immediately. Why? Because in some cases the average salary for going to all of these sites, madly clicking here and there is less than $0.25 per hour! Are you worth more than that? Of course.
I'm not saying that the sites that offer to click for a contest or click to win, click to earn are useless.
You should not depend on contest sites as a primary source of revenue. A woman that I have been friends with for a long time told me that she made over $600.00 on the internet last year. I was really excited until I saw that the surveys that she took to earn one dollar took her nearly 45 minutes to complete. Not to mention, after filling out some of these, she did not qualify for the survey! What a waste of time. When we determined that 3 out of 4 surveys were ones that my friend did not qualify for, it was really sad. When I pointed this out to her, she starting keeping an online time clock. It worked out to be less than .03 an hour. That is so tragic. To work so hard and spend time on something that was not even giving her $1.00 per hour is a great loss of the resource of time that she could never get back.
Are There Ways to Actually Earn Money Online?
Sure there are, loads of places that are reputable. I have yet to find the one that will allow me the freedom and money to check emails in my pajamas, surfing the Internet while lazing away the day. If something sounds like it is too good to be true, well, it probably is.
For people who write, writing an article takes time. This article has taken me several hours because I had research to do. I called my friend that told me about her $600.00. That took time.
I write hubs as one of the things I do for money. It takes a lot of time. You are not going to whip out high quality articles in the hundreds per day. Researching takes time. I once had a company that wanted to pay me 0.16 cents per item I researched for them, with the average item I researched being over one hours' worth of work! I would have been working for less than .25 per hour, a wage not livable by anyone's standards.
Homeshoring- What is it?
Homeshoring is where a company in the country you reside in uses workers in that country to field calls for their call center.
In a homeshoring job, the worker must have a completely quiet home environment, a reliable computer and a high speed internet connection. Headsets are also mandatory. Homeshoring jobs can be found through a quick online search. The upside is that many companies will allow you to set your own hours so long as you make a commitment to be there. signed in a working during those hours. Other companies will insist that you work on their schedule guidelines.
A benefit of this job is that there is always the potential for overtime. A homeshoring job will not work if you MUST be off the phone at a certain time and a call runs long, or the schedule you are assigned ends close to the time that you have other obligations.
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This content reflects the personal opinions of the author. It is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and should not be substituted for impartial fact or advice in legal, political, or personal matters.
© 2012 Dixie