I need to work from home. What are my options?

[lilyka]

I need to quit my job.  I have no time for my family.  My ex husband is always jerking around with my visitation.  My job is hard physical labor and it is making me sick and unable to function.  I never have two days off in a row, never have a Saturday off and rarely get to go to church.  Unfortunately, I am old, not too pretty and despite being quite intelligent I dropped out of college for domestic life and find myself completely uneducated.

My kids are older so I would have 40 to 60 hours a week to dedicate to my job, can work regular hours without int interruption, meet with clients, take phone calls etc all without worry..  I am looking for a real job that I can have a flexible schedule with and work from home (in in and out of the home). I am willing to go to school for it and/or invest some money.

I am not looking for things like surfing for change, blogs or crafting my way out of debt. (I have an etsy job that provides some nice change when I have the time to focus on it but I am not deluding myself. I know I will never make $300 a week and that is what I need).

So what sort of job could i train for or what kind of business could I start?  I already have a job that keeps me from seeing my kids, is thankless, pays poorly, makes me miserable and where I have to wear a stupid uniform.  Those are all things I want to get away from. I don't mind working nights and weekends from home but just want the freedom to go to church and to my kids school stuff.

[Purple Sage]

I work from home for Lionbridge.  http://en-us.lionbridge.com/global-crowdsourcing/jobs/internet-assessors.htm  (They do say it's a temporary position, though, and I'm coming up on my one-year mark so I might not be with them much longer if they decide my time is up.)

You can only work up to 20 hours a week, and the pay is $14.50/hr.  That would be the minimum you need, but you'd have plenty of time for a second job.  There's a thread on here somewhere with more info, if you're interested. 

[wendyland]

I work at home as a computer programmer.  My company is ok with me working flexible hours as long as I am still getting my work done.  It would take training and is sometimes hard to get in the door with little experience.  I do the old timey type of programming, but I see ads for freelance web developers all the time in the paper. 

[Jael]

Before I share some options with you, I first have to tell you that I disagree with your self-assessment. If you're the one in the photo wearing black, then you are wrong. You are quite pretty! And old? Where? I expected to see a gray-haired granny, which you, my dear, are hardly. ;)

Anyway, there are a number of things you can do. I always recommend freelance writing, because it's a great way to set your own income and really get paid what you're worth. I make between $11 and $75 per article that I write (was making as much as $150 per article before the recession hit). If you're interested, you can see the thread I posted last week on how to get started.

Also, there are other work at home jobs that offer a decent wage such as transcription jobs, call center jobs or virtual assistant jobs.

Avon and Mary Kay are also pretty good hustles if you are disciplined, organized and good with people.

Other options that you may want to consider are online tutoring, starting a housekeeping service, selling on eBay or selling websites to local businesses. There's a good discussion on the Warrior Forums about selling websites even if you have zero experience building sites. Basically, you'll outsource the actual work to a designer while you collect the cash. Here's the discussion if you're interested.

What are some of your hobbies and interests? Perhaps you can turn one of those into a job. Earning a living wage (or even an above average one) is possible while working from home if you know what you're doing and can avoid the hucksters that only want to make money off of you. My advice is to study the industry in detail, ask lots of questions, thoroughly investigate every opportunity and be very careful about who you spend money with. Also, plan on having multiple income streams, at least in the beginning, so that all of your eggs aren't in a single basket.

[Kathi Mora]

Well, the good news is that there are plenty of genuine work at home options you can explore. Even better news is that you are willing to go to school for it. Going to school will serve two purposes. One, it will train you for a specific vocation and two, it will be a personally enriching experience for you.

That said, have you thought about any careers you might be interested in? I hear healthcare is a pretty solid industry to get into right now. How about something like medical billing? As a medical biller, you will have to submit claims to patients’ health insurance companies and take care of other billing related tasks. You can easily do this from home, but it’s possible that you are asked to work on site for a while before you can start working out of your home office.

If it sounds like something you’d like to try, check out Career Step’s medical billing training. The program is pretty short and quite affordable at $1,295.

[sassymomonthego]

You may work as freelancer to any freelance websites like oDesk, elance, etc. Hope things work well for you.

[Smokering]

Some ideas:

-at-home childcare - either "normal" 9-5 care, or early or late care (often for parents with shift work, ie doctors); or special needs care

-ABA (applied behavioral analysis). I did this for a few years. It's a kind of social and academic therapy for kids with autism or other diagnoses (most commonly autism, though). My training was pretty minimal, time-wise; I learned as I went. It was enriching, although it required a certain amount of patience! There was a lot of real-world application stuff in there, so sometimes I could take my boy out to the supermarket or movies or whatever and use it as a learning experience, which was pretty neat.

-Do you have a spare room to host a foreign exchange student? I looked into this a while back, when we lived close to a university. It paid well - at least a few hundred a week - and you had to provide an equipped bedroom (desk, chair, lamp, bed with decent mattress, etc) and cook for them, including lunches; and drive them around a bit, show them the sights, and give them a vague cultural experience of a New Zealand (in our case!) family. We didn't end up doing it because a friend moved into our spare bedroom instead, but it sounded like a fairly painless way to make some decent money, if you're not too worried about privacy and personal space. You can request a male or female student, vegetarian, non-smoker etc, and the company I looked into tried to match up families according to their interests and so on. And you could do it short-term or long-term.

-Writing. I do NOT recommend eHow, about.com and so on. Most internet writing gigs pay pennies, to the point of scamminess. But I write semi-regularly for a print parenting magazine and typically get $600-$700 an article after tax. And it's something I can do around the kids.

-Medical transcription - requires training, but decent steady work

-Can you sew? Not selling crafts, but you could maybe make some supplementary income hemming pants and doing minor alterations and so on.

That's all that springs to mind right now. Good luck; sorry things are being so hard for you. :/

[Emerson Kelly]

The best option for you is to work as a freelancer. You can work whenever you have free time and can spend with the family. At the same time you can maintain the job and family!!

Good Luck!!

[Savoir Faire]

What kind of freelancing are these PP discussing? Without any previous writing experience, it would be hard to make a living. I'm not trying to be mean-- but I was a professional freelancer, with a journalism degree and plenty of experience. The market is cutthroat-- and it would be pretty hard to support oneself doing that.
 

[stellercrys]

HI, I just wanted to share that I also work from home :)
I don't sell anything or have to host parties which is a big plus because I really don't have time to parties with two kids running around, lol. I'm not going to pay for a sitter to try to sell stuff to people!
But it isn't one of those "get rich quick" things, it is an actually job that you do have to actually work, lol.
But it is easy to do, and I am able to work around my schedule so that I don't have to neglect my kids to do it :)
I'd be happy to share the details with anyone that is serious about working from home. Just PM me.

[LifeMoreSimply]

I work out of the home FT as a paramedic right now, but am transitioning (hopefully in January) to supporting our family from home with my WAHM business--and I provide our entire income as my husband is in school! If you are interested, send me an email so I don't miss your message, and I'll get you some info so you can check it out. You would have your own business but will receive a 1099 at the end of the year, so it's great because you don't have to do the usual proprietorship tax stuff! The company I distribute for is one that does natural health/weight loss/body contouring products and it's wonderful because it I get to change people's as well as MY OWN body and life through the products and opportunity. It is entirely possible to develop your business within a few months (treating it as that--a business) so that you're making what you need.  Yeah, seriously, let me know if you want more information because it has finally made my dream of being home a very close reality, and I have a few other women on our team that have been able to stay home now or who are now bringing in second incomes for their families. LifeMoreSimply at yahoo