Balancing Your Priorities with Your Search for At-Home Work

Once you've surfed the web, you can't help but notice allthe ads and websites meant to hook the hordes of "work-at-home wannabes".Understandably, there's no shortage of people who want tomake their living from home. Many parents want to be ableto stay at home with their children while contributing tothe household expenses. Others want to ditch the world oflong commutes and corporate politics. Still others havedisabilities that may prevent them from working a 'regular'job.Regardless of the reasons, "work at home" is undeniably ahot topic. The International Telework Association andCouncil (ITAC) states that 19.6 million teleworked in Q31999. By 2003 that's projected to be a whopping 137million worldwide!Two ways to pursue a career from home are to eithertelecommute for an employer, or start your own home basedbusiness.As the editor of three newsletters, I regularly come intocontact with people looking for at-home work. A largepercentage of them prefer to work for an employer -- theylike the idea of having well-defined responsibilities anda regular pay cheque. They're not interested in theups and downs of building a business.Thus many websites have sprung up claiming to offertelecommuting jobs. While it's possible to land one ofthese highly competitive positions, it's certainly noteasy.One of the problems is simply oversaturation of the market.Many people seeking at-home work are looking for clericalor administrative jobs; yet when I look through postedtelecommuting jobs, I see primarily technical positionsavailable. That said, would you be willing to go to schoolto get an education that may improve your chances of landinga work-at-home job?Telecommuting positions are usually 'perks'; somethingoffered (or hard-won) by employees with proven trackrecords.Consider working in an office first in order to reachyour final goal of working from home. If all goes well,you can present your employer with a telecommuting proposalafter you've established yourself -- perhaps just onetelecommuting day per week first, then gradually buildup to several days a week. An excellent site for helpon how to create a telecommuting proposal ishttp://www.telecommutingproposal.com/ .Of course there are companies that hire telecommutersfrom outside as well. Be aware, however, that some ofthese companies (not all) may take advantage of the desireto work from home - for example, with low pay and few orno benefits.Keep your options open! You may have to consider jobsthat you otherwise would not. Consider freelance orcontract work in addition to 'permanent full-time' jobs.An excellent site for freelance jobs can be found athttp://homebasedwork.com/freelance.html .It all comes down to what your priorities are.Telecommuting can be a wonderful thing for many people,but you may have to 'sacrifice' some things in orderto get it. How much work are you willing to put intoyour desire to work from home? What are you willing togive up in order to achieve this goal?I'm not saying that you can't find rewarding telecommutingwork at a company for which you've never worked before ...far from it! However, it's highly competitive andemployers can afford to be choosy. And if you're theentrepreneurial type? You may be able to find moresuccess or satisfaction with your own business.Be prepared, stay open to new possibilities, and do yourresearch!
About the Author
Angela Wu is the editor of Online Business Basics, anexclusive newsletter for eBusiness beginners. Visit her online athttp://onlinebusinessbasics.com/article.htmlOR mailto:businessbasics@workyourleads.com for a seriesof 10 free reports on building a business on the web.