Feeling like you are missing the boat? You see your friends are telecommuting and working from home but you have not been afforded the same opportunity. How would you like to create your own work from home opportunity?
You could wait to be invited to remote working for your employer or even pitch your willingness to work for your current employer by telecommuting, or you could become the master of your own fate and start working from home under your own terms and start your own work at home business.
There are tons of opportunities for you to take a stab on, and in most self-employed remote workers, you will find yourself freelancing, offering services to a few clients (or many clients) to create your full-time income stream.
So, keep that in mind as you prepare to more your self-powered job online, and also note that the remote work services that you offer to provide can be anything you like to do. You need not pigeonhole yourself into any one particular offering.
Of course, before you make the leap, you will need all the tools necessary to conduct your services from your at-home office.
When you start putting yourself out there, you will tend to offer more for less. This is based on insecurity when you are starting out, which may lead to your being overwhelmed, with more work than you bargained for.
If you can avoid burnout, you can take the time to hone your offerings so that you can still offer a value but get more than what you are actually worth. And believe me, you are worth far more than you think you are.
Think about this, whatever any employer is willing to pay you or someone in your field, your value is actually five-times what you or anyone else is getting paid. Now that you are your own CEO, you are entitled to a bigger piece of the action.
Start out with what you think is reasonable, then prepare to continue to raise your rates.
As early as possible, try to wrap your head around the idea that you are it. When you are working for someone else, you are at their mercy, but you have someone to complain to, someone to fix things when they break, someone to back you up when needed. When you are on your own, it is all you. There is no one else to fall back on. This is the price to pay for independence.
You will be in charge of rewarding yourself. No one is there to recognize you for your efforts but you. You are the only one to impress with your prowess, so it is up to you also to reward yourself for a job well done.
You are responsible for your own bookkeeping until you grow to a point where you can hire out that part of your work from home enterprise. If you are not keeping the books, sending out invoices, tracking expenses, then you are not getting paid. It may not be your most desired duties (and it often is not among freelancers working from home) but you must do it unless you consider your services to be a hobby on-the-side.
As a self-employed teleworker, you are responsible for figuring out how to provide your own insurance, benefits package, as well as reporting and paying taxes, because you are now not just one of the many people who work at home, you are your own boss of your own home business.
The good news: No one gets to tell you what to do, what not to do, how to act, dress, or boss you around. You get to join the others who are working from home and enjoying all the benefits of remote work.