Work At Home Online

We stepped in 2010 and it is the time to look at the past and review ourselves. If dates and years are to count and remember the events, etc. Then why we need to make plans for a new year or why we need to review our previous achievements?

As we have days and occasions for different celebrations, at the start of a new year, we are provided with a check point to look at our previous achievements and try to plan for a more prosperous future. What we gained in 2009 and whatever is missed during the year, it is the time to asses ourselves and plan for a better 2010.

As a freelancer or working from home online person, self assessment and planning become more important. Freelancers are more affected by the change of business economy and the changing online trends. Take an example of any success story in your particular field of expertise and look at the differences between you and the successor.  Except the intelligence and experience, you can compete in all other aspects with the story maker or the successor.

Most of us miss the universal principal of time saving and following a schedule. An effort made at the wrong time with right manner become useless, but an effort made at right time and in best possible way wins the goal. For a work at home online person, it is very critical to be regular and punctual.

Freelancing is a business and it needs planning. We must plan and schedule our time table according to the online trends. Sometimes a change of field may be necessary to change our earnings. Freelancer’s earnings are irregular and instable. So they demand a perfect plan.

Some freelancers may take the time table as a burden or fatigue. It is fair, because we choose this field to be our own boss, work in our favorite pajamas and to enjoy flexible hours. But how long it is fair to neglect the need of a calendar and arrangement of our desired goals and achievements? I think it is pretty fair to follow this practice and enjoy the freedom of financial instability.

Assessment Questionnaire

• What were the best achievements in 2009?
• What were the weak areas or failing reasons in 2009?
• What were the repeated problems or hurdles faced in 2009?
• What you missed and how you plan now to achieve it?
• What you want to be? Or what you want to add with the present skills?
• Are you satisfied with previous time table?
• Which areas need the improvements and how to improve?

Work at home online means working remotely, from your home, office, net cafe or any desired location. All the communications and judgments are carried out online. So the ethics and principles of online jobs are different from the real world environment.  A person seeking online job, when make the credibility and get the confidence of their client, get plenty of work and hence a steady flow of income. How this credibility and confidence is attained? Following lines will help you to understand these phenomena.

1. Completing the User Profile

For taking online jobs or assignments, a freelancer must join a freelancing/ outsourcing company to be visible to clients globally. In this way he or she will be able to bid on assignments and win the work. Some of these outsourcing company websites allow their members to make a complete profile. This profile serves as complete resume/curriculum vitae. A service provider or working from home online member can add the following credentials in their profiles.

• Academic qualifications
• Previous work experience or history
• Qualifications attained by online skill tests
• Portfolio items (Practical examples of work)

2. Online Skills Tests: How much Important they are?

None of the client will see your academic certificates and degrees personally to check either they are fake or real. In online working environment, you need an online skill test as a proof. It is an easy way to prove your skills and experience in a particular field. This proof comes when you pass a skill test in one or more subjects or technologies. Starting from Sun Microsystems Java programming test, now there are tests available even to prove your admin, telemarketing or blogging skills.

To get an online certification, you can take a free skill test at websites like brainbench or can try the built in tests available for service providers at companies like odesk.

3. Writing a Killer or Winning Application

Another important aspect to win a project or job is the application/cover letter you write while applying. There are no special skills required to write an effective application while bidding on an assignment. There is no need to beg for the work or over promising about your skills and experience. Just read the job description carefully and look for the clients actual requirements. If a client needs to accomplish an online research for golf clubs in US and records added in an Excel file, just write about the skills and experience you have in online research, typing speed, Excel knowledge and how accurate and regular you are. By this approach, you will be looking as a professional and practical service provider and in most of the cases, you will win the work.

4. Feedback Score

When you will apply for the first job, definitely, you will not have any feedback received previously from another client or service buyer. Feedback is a very precious asset a service provider own. With no feedback score, it doesn’t mean that you will never get initial work. There are some clients that mention in their jobs that these are for new service providers. In other cases, you can win the work by completing the above said requirements and bid for less pay rates. It is wise to work for a least pay rate and earn some feedback score for a bright future.

Working from home online strength is increasing day by day. It is a choice for full time professionals as well for the part timers. Stats show that there are number of people who work online in the spare time to compete with expenditures and recover the debits. If you are one of them and struggling to do more work efficiently, following suggestions may help to maintain a good reputation and steady income. Please comment about your personal experience.

For a full time work at home person, sometimes or at occasions, it become hard to complete the task or maintain the steady flow of work. According to my personal experience, there are some habits and obstacles which are like real enemies of working from home online people. These obstacles reduce the speed and quality of work as well the interest in work. So following lines explore the inside out of these obstacles.

Watching TV

May be you decided to switch on TV for current news or for a 30 minute episode of your favorite program. But often this session expand to multiple hours and at the end you may think that you will avoid TV in future. If you are successful in future, it is very good sign. Otherwise, you can do the following.

• Make a separate place for work, at least separate from TV.
• Make a time table for work, rest and other activities and follow it as you will fail otherwise.

Phone Calls

When you are doing a job which requires complete concentration, do not take any phone calls. Your callers may reduce the concentration or interest in the work. In worse cases you may not be able to work for the whole day. Avoiding the calls may cost you a call back charges, but they will be less expensive then your job.

Friends, Family and Children

I often compare the office and home and votes go in office poll. When we are away from home, we are less or least disturbed by our family and friends. But when we are at home, they will come to you for many reasons. It shows that they do not think the working from home online as important as a real job. Or may be they are not aware that they are disturbing you in the working hours. So it is your responsibility to tell them the importance and value of your work and realize them that you will not able to attend them in these hours.

For work at home moms, there is more need of balance in child care and online work. A work at home mom can decide to take a day care center for their babies. And moms can keep the babies themselves and work during their sleep or when another family member is available to look after them. This issue has better solutions according to individual’s problems and resources.

Work At Home Online Additives

You can add some stuff to your work place which will fresh your moods and enhance the interest and quality in work.

• Make your work place as decorated as a real office of an IT professional.
• Keep some flowers and plants around. They will give natural aid.
• Get involved with other work at home people and listen to their experience. This could be arranged both online and offline. Online forums provide you a best place to discuss and be up to date with current techniques and news. People from the same profession give a competitive environment and you may think to enhance your abilities and to be considered as a professional among other working from home people.

Outsourcing is a mode of hiring professionals from around the globe and taking advantage of a wide variety of talent and payment options. On the other hand, working from home people or freelancers enjoys the freelance life and remote work with ability to earn as much as they work hard. Job trends in online job markets change with arrival of new technologies, and this change is not only happen in the software, programming languages or the tools used for a tech work. But also, there is a remarkable change came in the data entry work.

Simple Data Entry Jobs

A job titled with “Data Entry” generally reflect that it will be a typing work or will take little effort and skills to accomplish. Generally, it needs to take data from one place/website and add it in an Excel or Word file. Simple data entry can include the following work and require the knowledge of Ms-Office applications, Knowledge of Internet, typing speed and general communication skills.

• Typing from a hard copy or soft copy (Typing a Pdf file in Ms-Word OR typing a hard copy of a book)
• Taking data from one or multiple websites and pasting it into MS-Excel, Ms-Word or else where.
• Searching for a particular record online, keyword, contact info and pasting the results into a file.
• Editing work like converting a big file into a meaningful shape (Editing 10,000 email addresses)
• Typing the speech from an audio or video file (It is transcription but could be seen in data entry jobs)
• Captcha work which is the easiest but least paid data entry work

Advanced Data Entry Jobs

This category is the advanced shape of data entry work. Online entrepreneurs and small business owners may come with small or large assignments for a data entry operator. These assignments can include a work which is basically data entry but needs some additional skills to be accomplished.

All the jobs in this advance category generally focus on the SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Clients will assign you one or multiple tasks which may be time consuming and they don’t want to hire a professional SEO for such work. Like a job that require to sign up at multiple social media sites and post one or more website links to them. Or a job that require to search for a particular keyword or business like work-at-home-online forums, signing up and posting threads regularly in a desired manner. So the skills required for such jobs includes,

• Knowledge of social networking or bookmarking websites and their scope in terms of SEO
• Knowledge of use of online discussion forums and blogs
• Knowledge of posting to online directories, article directories, free advertisement directories
• Knowledge of simple Html , Ms-Office, How search engines works
• Knowledge about adding or anchoring a website or product link ethically, avoiding spamming
• At last but not least, the knowledge of SEO

Online Jobs Statistics

Many freelancers often search for a category of online jobs which are best paid and have fewer applicants.

These stats show the requirement of skills in online jobs and their fill ratio. The jobs with less fill ratio for example the C++, Java has the less fill ratio. It means that there is less number of freelancers in these categories or skills. Like wise jobs with Data Entry and SEO skills have more fill ratio and this show more number of people are there to compete with, while trying to win the bid. This is important to know that which category of online jobs has more competition and which is more crowded by the service providers. Jobs with less fill ratio have less competition and they are highly paid and easy to win. Another important aspect is the rise of SEO & MySQL jobs is more in number beside the fact that they have greater fill ratio. It shows that this category is growing and in demand all the time. So working in SEO and MySql category is also valuable and long lasting.

In Demand Skills Tests

This table shows the high demand skill test demanded by the clients or service buyers at the outsourcing websites.

Online skills tests are a way to proof your skills and abilities by passing and scoring good marks. There are some test providers like brainbench.com which offer and host both free and paid skills tests. These tests are same as an online certification from Sun Microsystems or Microsoft.

As we show our credentials with resume in real world job applications, the online tests prove the same purpose in outsourcing world. The number of tests in the related category and their marks are your credibility and add good value to the provider profile.

All the above stats in these tables are taken from the thousands of records at oDesk.com. ODesk provides a free opportunity to its service providers to take online tests and add them in the profile.

Comments: I tried my best to change the format of these tables but the blog theme do not take the changes. Please ignore them for the big font and heavy style. Thanks

Surfing online for an opportunity to work at home online, you may have noticed the term, “You need only a computer and an Internet connection to work from home”. I am afraid that I may also use it through these articles. Anyhow, it is not the only need to work from home as an independent contractor, freelancer or work at home mom. So if you decided getting in practically, you must have some skills in basics of computing and Internet, English language and the knowledge of the particular category you are going to work in.

I think knowledge of terms most used in a online marketplace or outsourcing website will be helpful for a new work from home person. The list will grow more and I will humbly request to comment about a term I am missing. Thanks

Glossary Of Terms Used At Work At Home Online World

Assignment: A job or piece of work to be accomplished.

Community forums: Discussion boards or forums where the community talks with each other.

FAQs: Frequently asked questions.

Feedback: On the completion of a job, both the buyer and provider can score the marks for each other for skills and abilities and general ethics of work and communication etc. It provides more practical insight about you and carries importance in future assignments.

Fix Price Jobs: These jobs have fixed budget and paid at the completion and approval of work.

Freelancer: People which do not affiliated or employed with any company or organization and work independently. They are their own boss and enjoy freedom of work, office and clothing etc.

Hourly Jobs: On a committed pay per hour rate, the work is done and paid for total hours logged. For example client ask to work for 40 hours per week and pay $5.00 per hour.

Independent contractor: Same as freelancer and service providers. A person who is self employed and work independently for clients remotely.

Job discussion board: A forum where you can ask or clarify more about the work or job.

Online jobs: A job which is offered online and needs the results to be submitted online on completion.

Online marketplace: An online market where service providers and service buyers’ meets to fulfill their goals. Service buyers offer jobs and providers apply for jobs.

Online tests: A qualification or skill test which prove the abilities of a service provider. It is hosted and accomplished online at any test provider website.

Outsourcing website: A website where a buyer can get professionals from around the world to work for him / her as freelancers. And a freelancer can get the buyer or clients to work for.

Outsourcing: Hiring people online from all over the world to get work done remotely.

Portfolio: A sample of your work. An example of your skills and abilities you proved in a piece of previous work.

Profile: A profile carries all necessary information about you. For service providers it serves as a resume and helps the buyer to know all about your skills and experience in a particular field.

Remote work: Means that you are working online, from any location where you have access to Internet.

Service buyer: A business owner which needs to accomplish the job from online service providers.

Service provider: When used in work at home online, a person that provides services or work online.

Trends: Statistics or graphs of a particular job or skill demanded in online marketplace.

WAHM: Work at home moms. Mothers which decide to stay at homes and work online.

Work at home online: You can work from you home or from your own destination anywhere using Internet.

Work from home: Same as work at home online.

You may have read about the ghost writers, bulk articles or volume writing. All these terms are used to describe the demand of high volume articles or content at low cost. Means that this type of writing does not need much concentration on quality of writing but focus on the use of buyer provided keywords and theme. This category of writing might be useful for the freelance writers, at early stages of writing career, or those who like to write faster and easier. Professional writers may consider this type of work below the level but it is payable work and demand of many small business owners.

Bulk writing is mostly used for the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or for keyword popularity. The knowledge of actual goals or requirement of the buyer can help to produce quality work in less time. For example the buyer asks.

Write 20 articles on “Bee keeping” ASAP.

The best method to write more articles in less time and in best possible quality, following tips may be useful.

• Ask for all the requirements of buyer before commencing the work, it will reduce the need of changes or revisions at later stages.
• Discuss, if there are some specific keywords to be used in the content, if the buyer is not sure about it, suggest the most searched keywords on the topic. A keyword tool can be used for this purpose.
• If your work is going to be added at a live blog or website, take a look at the previous work as a sample. Produce a piece of work and get it reviewed by the buyer. It is most important if you are working on a fixed price assignment.
• Now come to the writing. Read about the topic, search for related titles and digest a good volume of content. When the readings become saturated, take a break and now think your own titles to write upon.
• The titles like how to start beekeeping, how to keep bees in backyard, beekeeping advantages are easy to write.
• Write in easy and fluent style. Do not erase or reconsider the sentences again and again. Just keep on writing and leave the errors to be edited at the end.
• Articles of 400 to 500 words are best for SEO purposes.
• Make the writing style interesting to get some readership. Choose How to, Best Tips on…, 10 ways to… and similar titles which are most used in search terms. It will add good value in terms of SEO.

Everybody wants to earn money and working from home online flexibly fascinate to most of the people. Friends often ask to get involved in the freelance world and drive themselves like you are doing. But it’s not as easy to work from home and earn the bread and butter. As there are many benefits of freelancing, there is too much problem with this type of work. Working in you own pajamas and being you own boss looks very attractive but its too hard to depend solely at working from home online.

Difference between Freelancing and Real World Jobs

In real time world, there are many co-workers and dignitaries. There are so many people to ask you for the work or remind you to go ahead. But in freelance world, you are the boss and you are the company. So online jobs extremely needs a discipline and determination to live and work in freelance world. You may like to relax or watch a movie but the tight job schedule will not permit to do so. People without a strong will power often face the deadlines on the head and no way to complete the work on time. So here comes the discipline in your daily routine and schedules.

Deadlocks like Writers Block

There are some jobs which needs more then time. Take the example of writing jobs. Online jobs trends show a remarkable rise in this category. As it is emerging, it is also a kind of work which needs some moods and concentration on the subject. So here you need more discipline towards the work activity. Writers often face a writer’s block, means that you have many words to say but you type and erase them. Think and then reject it. So there comes a deadlock to produce a piece of work.

Remedies

Whether it is a writer block or lack of interest in any type of online work, you need a strong will power to advise yourself that you have to work. Sometimes we need a break and changing of daily routines or a small leisure trip to refresh and boost ourselves. But this change does not work in some of the cases. After a break, you may feel yourself out of the stream and no interest in the work. So you need some external but relevant sources to boost you and bring you back to work. You may find the following tips useful.

• Meet or discuss with local freelancers. Net café , libraries, coffee shops are the right spots to get connected. By this you will be able to discuss your matters and share the feelings.
• Online discussion forums of freelancers are also a best place to meet other freelancers and discuss the matters. You will be able to get very useful suggestions and knowledge at these forums.
• There are some blogs which really a pumping forces for freelancers. Like the odeskinsider.com, you may be inspired by the strong healing energy spread in the words.
• Reading others success stories and work also make a good change in the moods and behavior to wards your own work and scores. They may become a role model for you and bring good changes for future success.

In work at home online jobs, you may find many categories and types of jobs. Virtual assistant or web assistant job is just like a person working in an office and perform the simple or complex tasks for the boss. Most of the small business owners don’t have much time to handle clerical or administrative tasks themselves, so they often needs a person to do this grunt work. This category often has plenty of jobs available and a service provider can make good earnings and long term jobs with the passage of time and enhancement in skills.

Sometimes these jobs are posted in other sub categories in the administrative jobs but when an entrepreneur wants to hire some one for a long term job relation, the virtual assistant is the perfect category for this purpose. Following are some useful tips for work at home online service providers to handle the virtual assistant jobs effectively and efficiently.

Most of the time, a service buyer or small business owner will describe and mentions the actual tasks to be performed in the job description but you must be prepared enough to do some of the basic task and the basic skills in following areas.

Skills Required

• General computing skills and typing speed
• Working knowledge of Ms-Word, Ms-Excel, Powerpoint
• Basic knowledge of Html
• Knowledge of email, Instant messengers like Yahoo, Msn, Skype
• Basic knowledge of SEO
• Knowledge of web research and data gathering
• Basic skills of writing posts in forums, comments in blogs
• Knowledge of Internet marketing like posting website links to web directories, social bookmarking/networking sites, article directories etc

Best Practices and Ethics

A person having good computing and Internet skills do not prove to be a good virtual assistant. There are some critical points to be noted and performed always to be successful in handling the virtual assistant job.

Timely Response: It is the most important aspect in online jobs. Be reachable by emails, IM or phone to your clients to perform the task on time. Provide all your contact info and settle a time schedule for online communications.  A task may be very important for the next day meeting for your client and in the case of non availability; it can lead to loosing the job or good relations.

Be Detail Oriented: Reading the requirement of jobs carefully and responding with resultant work providing all the necessary details is also important. You must be detail oriented that all necessary aspects should be covered in your response in a professional way. It will add good value to the work done. It is like if someone cook very well but do not pay attention to good serving will ultimately loose the marks.

Discuss the job: Discuss everything which can help to perform the work in a better way. If you are well aware of the goal and aim of the client in a particular task, it will help to perform the task more effectively. It is better to get more details in the beginning of an assignment then reversing things at the middle.

Miscellaneous Ethics: Be honest and take care of the money and time of your service buyer. Try your best but do not over promise about your skills and experience. Learn things by doing. If any part of assignment needs to learn some thing new, invest the time or money in learning and this knowledge will help and raise your earnings in the future. All these practices will add good values to your credibility or feedback scores and you will be able to enhance the work at home online career.

Here in this blog, there are many useful tips available for all who want to earn a part time or full time income from home working online as a freelancer. All these tips are based on real experiences and best suggestions are made according to the type and nature of work available in the online jobs posted at the outsourcing websites or marketplace.

Browsing the web to get some new subjects on work at home online, I came to know that even there are hundreds of marketplaces and outsourcing websites available, people still don’t aware of their practical use or most of these companies are unknown to a newbie in freelancing world. My personal story remind me that I searched for at least 1 year to get a working solution to be applied to get work remotely and earn my share in a working manner. Before the discovery of oDesk, I got involved in many online offers that titled themselves as an online income generation source.

As you can get around to other posts, there are still a lot of things to be said for a newbie in freelancing. For a best place to earn your share online, I recommend oDesk. Here I will not say much about this website to avoid any promotions.

To get an accurate idea of from where to start your work at home online career, think about some basic needs applied to a freelance worker or service provider. All these needs and requirement will educate you enough and will broad the mind to understand nature, types and requirements of online jobs. Many people who already joined a reputable online marketplace or company just linger behind due to the misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about online job opportunities.

• Can you read and understand the online jobs and able to write a letter/application to get it.
• Are you able to figure out the actual requirement of an online job?
• Are you learned all the useful information available in the help or FAQs sections.
• Do you know that which job category best suits your skills.
• Do you check your mails and response timely to job or interview calls?
• Do you pay attention to details available in discussion forums or asked for some help?
• Did you completed your profile with useful info about your skills, experience and added some credentials and work examples.
• Do you plan to work voluntarily or at least pay rates to get the initial assignments.

All these questions are reminders to get help and work online. A key to success is paying attention to DETAILS. All the successful freelancers were once inexperienced and newbie in online community, so in the beginning there is a lot to digest, it is better to be patient and attentive before getting involved in a job offer. Sometimes it is easy to get initial jobs but may become hard to continue or complete the task.