Working from Home: How to Secure and Maintain this Role

 In today’s society of seemingly insane demands for time and effort, more and more are looking for alternative solutions in the employment category. With moms and dads not wanting to leave home and pay the babysitter, working from home is the most ideal solution. Yet, searching for jobs where one can work from home is a perilous journey filled with scam artists and dead ends. So how do you find a job where you can work from home and not suffer from scammers?

• Establish your skill set. Even if you aren’t a writer by trade, if you can write grammatical articles and do a bunch a day, there are plenty of ghostwriting, blogging for others and article writing jobs available on the internet. Experience and education help, but what matters most is being able to prove your skill and produce quality work. Once you have done a few projects you will have established a reputation that will continue to get you more work.

• Teachers and virtual assistance personnel are also stay-at-home jobs that many are qualified for. Even if you aren’t a college graduate, just being an expert on one subject could land you a job teaching it. There are classes for just about anything and your professional experience could come in handy there.

• Try to work for established companies that include their names in any ads. Email address ads with no company descriptions are generally scammers. References and work samples being requested as well as an application and interview processes that revolve around more than a simple e-mail are good indicators that you have a legitimate source on your hands.

• If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is. Getting your foot in the door as a freelancer or a work at home professional is usually harder than just applying for and getting a high paying job. Be wary of jobs offering huge payouts for minimal work as they are usually scams.

Once you have found your work at home opportunity it is important that you handle your independent career effectively. Many people are not cut out for working at home simply because they don’t have the discipline to actually make themselves do full days’ worth of work when they are being tempted by the comforts, conveniences, and amusements of home.

You may want to consider acting as your own manager and drawing up an actual schedule. Write out when you are going to work on what days and what projects you are going to complete during that time. Stick to this schedule as you would a schedule at any other job until you feel that you are disciplined enough to have a bit more flexibility.

Other things you are going to need to keep in mind when preparing to work at home include the financial aspects. Tax laws are very strict and you should make sure that you are well educated on the different laws that apply to being self-employed, if that is the way that you are choosing to go, so that you don’t find yourself in a lot of trouble with the IRS.