Let’s make one thing clear: working from home isn’t easier than working at an office or a factory. It’s certainly more convenient, but you’ll still need to put in plenty of time and effort if you want to make enough money to live on. You’ll also need to know a few useful skills, and if you don’t then you’ll have to learn them quick. If an ad promises or insinuates that working from home will be fast, easy, and or simple, then it’s too good to be true.
Aside from those ads, there are a few ways to put in a hard day’s work using your computer and a home internet connection. Not all of them let you switch to staying at home full-time, but if you work at it you can eventually start making enough money to quit your day job.
Telecommuting – Home Internet
Telecommuting is the quickest way to start working from home, but depending on your employer it’s also the least likely to happen. Companies big and small do have a growing number of remote workers, but many of them still have managers who don’t understand how to keep track of their employees when they don’t work in the same office. Still, if your company embraces the technology and management methods it takes to keep remote workers on task, you can get a regular salary without having to leave your house.
Contract Work
“Contract work” means any kind of job where you don’t get a regular salary or an hourly wage. You’re hired to do a specific job, you get paid to do it, and then you may or may not get another job afterwards. The advantage of contract work is the fact that you can turn down any job you don’t want to do and you can work with multiple companies at once, but you’ll have to prove your value to each company over time if you want to make enough money to live on.
Self-Owned Business
This is the kind of job where you create things to sell to others. What you create can be just about anything: videos, novels, costumes, hand-knit sweaters, or anything else you can create at home. The growth of high-speed home internet means you can sell your products across the globe, but this is the hardest kind of work-at-home job to grow since you need to reach a wide audience to make a living. That demands things like building a website, creating advertisements, and making sure your customers are satisfied with your work.
Working from home has its advantages, but chances are good that you’ll have to invest plenty of time, effort, and money before you can get the kind of income you can live on. You’ll need a powerful high-speed home internet connection and all the software and tools you’ll need to create things for others, but if you can put in the time you can definitely make it work.