Home Based Businesses...

[Shuckins]

...or working with your personal computer to earn a living.

Any of you guys have any experience with this?

Kinda half-seriously fishing for information here.  I've been working in the educational field for almost thirty years and I'm feeling burned out.  I've had a three week break but I've got to go back to work next Monday, and I aint exactly looking forward to it.

I've seen advertisements on tv advocating earning money while working at home with a personal computer, but after a few initial inquiries all I can find out about it is that it involves starting one's own home-based business.

Do any of you guys operate at home like this?  Are there companies that farm out some of their work to home-based workers?

Or is this a waste of my time?

Regards, Shuckins

[Saintaw]

I have done it for 3+ years, and right now... I wouldn't go back to it. My main reason for not liking it is that you need a strong will to work at regular hours...and not slip into the "midday to wee hours of the morning" shift. That is what happened to me after a while... no good for your social life if you have one.

It also gets pretty boring to see the same thing day in day out. I am now back at working from the office and getting back home in the evening... much better for me.

I think Nilsen has been working from home for a while now... looks like he likes it more than I did.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Saintaw
I have done it for 3+ years, and right now... I wouldn't go back to it. My main reason for not liking it is that you need a strong will to work at regular hours...and not slip into the "midday to wee hours of the morning" shift. That is what happened to me after a while... no good for your social life if you have one.

It also gets pretty boring to see the same thing day in day out. I am now back at working from the office and getting back home in the evening... much better for me.

I think Nilsen has been working from home for a while now... looks like he likes it more than I did.

The problem Saw has is having to get up in the wee hours of the morning and perform in front of his webcam for the paying customers. That must suck!

[Saintaw]

Not far Rip... I sometimes think customers treat us developers like hookers. It's a good thing I mostly don't have to deal with those baboons on a daily basis anymore.

Posting the pic i have in mind would probably get me PNG status on the spot.

[Shuckins]

Saintaw,

Were you working for a company or operating a personal business?

I'm looking for some leads on how to get started and where to go to get started...it that makes any sense.

Regards, Shuckins

[indy007]

I've got a small business. It took 3 years to build it up on evenings & weekends, but now I'm working from home full time.

Contrary to what Rip may say, I'm not dancing for dollars on the webcam.

I don't want to ever go back to working for somebody else. I have no office drama, flexible hours, no commute, and my paycheck is based purely on how motivated I am. For a breakroom I have a full kitchen, and living room with HD plasma TV. The work itself is easy enough to mindlessly post on this forum, my WoW guild forum, and handle my real paperwork at the same time.

The only downsides for me is that it gets really boring & lonely sometimes.

[Saintaw]

Shuckins,

It was a small (3 peeps) buisness. I was a "major shareholder" for lack of better words. I'm in the same kind of buisness today, but we got ourselves a real office (not just a PO-BOX) and well... it's better/easier to have customers come in when you have to talk to them / show them the projects development.

To be honnest with you, working from home was much more a hindrance to my private life than it was to my professional life.
 
I guess it also depends of the scale of the buisness you're going to build. Make sure you get a good accountant and a good sales rep... I learned that the hard way too. (I s*ck at sales... can you tell? )

[Nilsen]

Both me and the missus works from home. Ive done it for 5 years and the missus has for the last 3 or so.

More and more businesses here allows you to work from home, usually 4 days a week and you are at the office firdays or mondays for meetings etc.
Very practical for both. The company saves on office space etc and you save time. You have to be an organised person that wont drift away from your tasks if you see a pretty bird or butterfly pass by.

[Saintaw]

<-- has a huge window in his office.

"Hey.. that's a nice bird..."

[Nilsen]

Originally posted by Saintaw
<-- has a huge window in his office.

"Hey.. that's a nice bird..."

back to work rainman

[hacksaw1]

Hi Shuckins,

Don't know if my suggestion will do you any good. About ten years ago I was searching for a job. I saw an ad in the paper for "Technical Writer" and thought I probably had enough technical background and writing experience to jump in at entry level. Went for the interview and they suggested a technical writing course (part-time for 2 months). After the course I found a job. After a few years I went "free-lance." Freelancers often work from home. Since most companies you'd be associated with as a freelancer work during normal hours your workday is pretty normal.

If you have extraordinary skill at lavishing praise on products such as ordinary wooden toothpicks you might be able to become a "marketing" writer. I refrained from marketing myself. I want a good conscience about the things I write, lol.

Anyway, from reading your posts, you have clear written English and that is a major prereq. If you can figure out Aces High then you probably have enough of a technical bent I would think. Might be worth looking into anyway.

There are other kinds of writing opportunities too, but I would guess that technical writing might be more stable. Otherwise, until you build up a client-base for articles you run around like mad. Maybe authoring a textbook (or even editing) would be more along the line of what you'd be interested in.

There is one statement about writing that I've found to be true. "You write by the seat of your pants." In other words you may sit for a while before the cogs start turning. I remember reading somewhere that Hemmingway sometimes would struggle for a day, get 500 words down, then throw the paper in the trash. Course that's creative writing for a novel. Thankfully technical writing has many more boundaries that help quide your thinking.

Well, just an idea.

Best Regards,

Cement

[Shuckins]

Hacksaw,

Thanks for the reply.  Your suggestions are in line with what I've been contemplating.

Where did you pick up your technical writing course?  Can you suggest any companies to contact?

What I'm looking for is a starting point, and I'm kinda new at this so I appreciate any help you can give me.

Regards, Shuckins

[lukster]

I work a lot from home. Didn't start out that way. I've been doing computer network support since I retired from the AF in 95. About 6 years ago I struck out on my own. Almost all of my customers want their employees to be able to work from home which has the added benefit of allowing me to support them remotely. I'm even thinking of moving away from this area if I can keep the bulk of my customers and find someone I can trust not to steal them when an emergency on site visit is needed.

[hacksaw1]

Hi Shuckins,

Here are a few useful links I've found in a few minutes of Googling.

Some salary information:
Salaries

These folks might be helpful.
Freelancers

All kinds of links for a wide variety of technical documentation (scroll down to find them). I'm going to bookmark this link myself!
Technical Documentation

I just saw this link to ASTD which you should look at.
ASTD

Along with technical writing, Instructional Design is another similar field for preparing learning materials. With a long background in education you might fit right in to a technical training department. Presumably you have at least a bachelor's if not higher, so you may not need to actually take a technical writing course. But you will need to be knowledgeable about technical writing standards. The third link will familiarize you with the range of what is used. You also need to be very familiar with a majority of the features in Word at least. There are online helps to learn the intricacies of Word.

Also, you may be able to join a technical writing company made up of technical writers that provides documentation services.

Shuckins I would certainly be glad to help you more, but actually I live outside the US, so I don't really know what is going on there directly. But as I am sure you know, Google is your friend. Try to find some technical writer(s) in your vicinity and ask as many questions as they'll let you. If you are serious I think you will probably find something.

Hope this helps sir.

Cement

[x0847Marine]

Originally posted by Shuckins
...or working with your personal computer to earn a living.

Any of you guys have any experience with this?

Kinda half-seriously fishing for information here.  I've been working in the educational field for almost thirty years and I'm feeling burned out.  I've had a three week break but I've got to go back to work next Monday, and I aint exactly looking forward to it.

I've seen advertisements on tv advocating earning money while working at home with a personal computer, but after a few initial inquiries all I can find out about it is that it involves starting one's own home-based business.

Do any of you guys operate at home like this?  Are there companies that farm out some of their work to home-based workers?

Or is this a waste of my time?

Regards, Shuckins

I used to make extra cash selling stuff on e-bay in conjunction with a few pawn shops. I'd take the pics & do the work very often making a hefty profit...

Once they figured out I made almost $600 on something they sold me for $20, they started doing it themselves. The item was a mint condition original Apple CD ROM from the 80's that was the size of a VCR and weighed about 6lbs... it was some ultra rare Mac garbage some Apple nut bag had to have..

I started finding all kinds of old Apple junk that people happily pay for. My best month I made about $2k, but mailing the crap & dealing with all that e-bayness started pissing me off. Plus I was too lazy to keep up that pace... do miss that extra party $$ tho..