Need Some Serious Help! [Archive] - FreelanceMom Work From Home Forum

itsideal4u

05-04-2005, 07:57 PM

I am a stay at home mom, my partner of 15yrs is a Foster Agency Social Worker. So pretty much he is the "only" bread winner, for now. And, I would love to be able to contribute something. He works for two agencies and I truly hate to see him drive around so much, while I am at home with so much "free" time.

I am no good at the sales person thing, although I am in a network marketing company, use the (great) products. I am just horrible as a sales person.

I am 34 yrs old, 5yr old daughter. I am desperately looking to make money, but I honestly hate the idea of having to go work for someone. Done it many times, but since my little one is starting school in July, I would rather work from home, especially the hours she will be in school. Then be able to pick her up, attend any and all school meetings, without having to "beg" my boss to be able to take time off, or leave early (you know how that is).

You ladies understand, it is not the same like when mom or dad are around when the kids get out of school. If at all possible, I do not want her in a daycare.

What options do I have? Is there anyone in here that is truly making a living from home, and earning $$? If so, please let me know what you do so I can get something started. If the start up fee is $0 better for me. I am always on the internet/computer.

Thanks so much ladies for any and all of your responses, :)

Debbi

05-06-2005, 11:15 PM

Hi Doreen,
I wrote this to another lady a bit ago, but it's worth posting again, I think because it may have some good info for you:

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Of course there are jobs out there that require no start up costs. In fact, nearly any job that requires you to make an investment is all about selling: Avon, Melaluca, Mary Kay, etc. I'm not knocking those jobs; if you are a good sales person, those are EXCELLENT ways to make money. I'm not a sales person, unfortunately. But I do believe that one of our forum members makes a very nice living doing Tupperware - you might want to talk to her.

At any rate, if you want to work from home, you need to get organized. You need a resume that states your skills and WHY you can do everything you know how to do from home. Since you haven't worked from home before, you're going to have to have a plan set because many people who routinely employee at home workers will want to know why they should hire you when you don't have that type of experience. Working from home is completely different from an office environment. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but it is hard to explain to someone who hasn't worked from home exactly how challenging it is. There are many days when I would rather get a glass of chai tea and ignore the phone calls, emails and Instant messages I get from the people I work for, but if I do, I won't keep those jobs. A person who works from home must be more reliable than the regular office person, especially when you're just starting out. Where is your office located? Do you have a phone line that you can make phone calls from? Do you have a DSL or Cable internet connection (a must if you're working from home)? When do you plan to be available to work? Where will your children be? Things like this have to be considered when you're just starting out.

Once you have your action plan, you need to have some idea of how you want to present yourself. When I first started, I made a resume with all of my skills and I wrote a detailed cover letter that told people why I could do a much better job for them if they hired me vs. a traditional employee. I sent this resume via fax and email to people who were looking for basic admin. help. I got a few leads and it helped me work on my presentation. I learned quickly that I had to be solidly certain of my ability to work from home, otherwise, I couldn't possible portray it to someone else.

So, you have your resume, you have worked out your plan, and you're ready to go. You can try almost any job site and look for work using keywords such as 'freelance, contract work, contract jobs' and other similar terms. Search on 'jobs' in your browser and you'll find a ton of job sites: monster.com, jobs.com, careerbuilder.com. I believe most if not all of these sites can be used to find jobs without any fee.

Now that freelance/work from home positions are becoming more common, most people who employee freelance people on a steady basis use the freelance job sites, not the regular job sites. These sites include:

elance.com
contractedwork.com
freelanceworkexchange.com
guru.com

All of these are excellent. I've had memberships at these sites for almost 5 years now, although I did let my elance.com subscription go 2 years ago because I simply had too much work to do. I couldn't begin to take on another assignment. I am planning on joining again this summer.

They all cost money to join. You pay your fee and you bid on projects. You win some and you lose some. That's just the way it is in this market for the most part. Also, I get a lot of my jobs from referrals, and I've gotten 2 by looking around at freelancemom.com. It is a wonderful source of gigs, ideas, and much more. I would highly recommend looking around some more.

In short, this isn't an easy profession to break into and unless you know someone who is a work at home professional, you are going to have to either do a lot of searching on the internet for freelance/work from home gigs, or you should look into elance.com, or one of the others. If you do good work, elance.com is a wonderful source of income. I know a person who got a 3 month subscription and was landing projects like crazy, many of them repeat projects from the same people (which is ideally, what you're looking for). It takes time to establish yourself. I would suggest that you spend the money for elance.com instead of surfing the web. You're going to be further ahead in the long run.

Best of luck to you,
Debbi