If anyone tells you that working from home is easy, they are liars! Working from home is the hardest thing I have ever experienced. Is working from home possible? Absolutely! It just isn't easy to do. 11 years ago, when I first started looking into the virtual world, I was a single mom of 1 and was just trying to find a way to provide for my son while being home with him. This is the majority of what moms are trying to do today.
I figured, "how hard could this be"? Well, I had some experience, very little education, a child at home, TONS of bills, no savings, a computer and printer, a phone and a drive for success. I began searching around the internet to learn more about working from home and what opportunities were out there.
I found TONS of them, only to find out 4 months later, I was scammed and had to pay out $5000.00! That really put a damper on things seeing that I had no money and now had to find a way to make this amount of money, very quickly. Boy did we struggle to survive after this!
I decided that I wasn't ready to give up. If I had to pay all that money back, and got nothing out of this scam, I might as well make it worth it and keep going. So, I started researching work at home scams. I wanted to make sure that this never happened again and the only way to do that, was to have knowledge in a since that I could look at opportunities and tell a real deal from a scam.
It took a LOT of researching, asking around, etc. Finally, I got up one morning and felt empowered. I felt like I knew enough to at least start finding a way to get connected to work at home opportunities. More importantly, ones that were legitimate.
I began by researching work from home forums on Google. I found several sites. I went to each one and viewed the entire site to get familiar with what each site was about. I signed up with all of them as a member (which is free and always should be) and began posting to other fellow work at homers.
The great thing about these sites, are the other work at homers! They offered me excellent advise, information, other resources and best of all, where to go to find work at home JOBS! These sites were my ticket to working from home successfully! So I thought!
I began reviewing the "job opportunity" links on each of these sites, and applied to jobs I thought I qualified for and would be able to do from home effectively. This was so stressful! I didn't find a whole lot that I was experienced in nor did I find a lot that I was interested in. Ones I did like, there was no way I could do with a young child at home. I couldn't afford a sitter so I was limited to what I could apply for. To sum it up, it was very hard to not get quickly frustrated and second guess what I was doing. I needed money and I needed it fast!
I waited weeks after applying to several jobs and still didn't hear back. I started feeling like this was not going to work for me. Then I got an email! I was invited to an interview for a job offer. Of course, I took it! I talked with the representative for about a half hour. We went over my resume, covered the tasks, talked about my experience, my availability, pay, etc. blah blah blah, you know how this all goes.
I thought it went really well, but the downfall was that the job was a straight sales commission opportunity. This was never mentioned in the job description. After spending a half hour on the phone with this person, I figured, yet again, I might as well get something out of my time and give it a shot. Heck, I had nothing to loose.
I gave the job a shot and realized real fast, I was TERRIBLE at sales! What this meant for me, was that I wasn't going to make any money! I had to venture elsewhere. Though I lost no money from this, I lost a ton of time and was still behind on bills.
I decided that I should be a little more decisive when looking for opporutnities and not so "needy" and quick to jump at the first thing available. I started creating a list of things I was good at and would enjoy doing. The list was small but I felt it was possible.
I didn't find anything for a couple weeks and had bill collectors calling me back to back! At this point, I was really scared. I had this little child at home, no money, no job, no way to buy anything and my mom was running out of ways to help me! I was starting to panic that I might not be able to do this and may have wasted all this time.
I finally got a phone call!! It was a local staffing agency here in my hometown. They said that they had a job that I might be interested in. After they looked over my resume, they thought it would be perfect for me. I would be hired through my local staffing agency, but paid by the company hiring. I took the interview and LOVED the opportunity! It only started out at $8.50 per hour BUT it was mothers hours, weekly pay straight to my bank and it started the following week! What more could I ask for? I was told after my first month, I could work 40+ hours if I wanted to. That sounded even better! The work was pretty simple. I took customer service calls for various companies and I only had to have a computer and headset! Everything was done through their software! No upfront costs for me.
After being with the company for a month, I was able to take on 40 hours per week vereses the 25 I started with. Thank god for my mom, she was my "babysitter", or should I say, "lifesaver"!?
It was so easy to take on these hours because I was able to set my own schedule around my moms availability. During my time of job searching, I found a wonderful man who became my fiance. It was great timing because I remember when he proposed to me, I was frantic about telling him I didn't have a job and didn't know how I was going to do my share, but two days after he proposed, I got this customer service job! It seemed like everything was falling right into place.
Two months later, I started feeling really sick. I was tired and couldn't think straight, my mind was all over the place, I felt exhausted and very ill. I realized that I got so wrapped up in work, that I didn't notice I was a month late for my period. Sure enough, PREGNANT!
I remember thinking, "oh great, just as things start working out for me, this has to happen". I had very mixed emotions at this time because, although I love babies and was very happy, I was also not feeling good and my stats were dropping at work, there were now 2 kids I would need my mom to watch verses 1 and how would I work and take care of an infant? Everything started closing in and I knew I would end up loosing my job and going right back to the rut I was in before I found it.
Sure enough, two months later, I had to give my notice! I was feeling really down about having to do this and started feeling like there was just no light at the end of the tunnel for me. I was out of work throughout my entire pregnancy and even 6 months after my daughter was born.
I finally started thinking it might be time to get back to the drawing board and try to find a job. This time, I had to find something that would work around 2 children, not just one. This was very difficult. My mom was not young anymore and taking care of 2 children was a struggle for her. I thought that maybe I could go back to the job I had before since I gave a proper notice and they had mothers hours. After contacting them, I learned that they were more strict about scheduling and their available hours had changed over time. They didn't have the hours I needed or any that I could commit to.
I searched for months! I found a couple of opportunities but nothing that offered decent money or scheduling. I took a couple of small jobs here and there but it just wasnt enough. I tried the "data entry" jobs and those were mostly scams and the ones that were legitimate, had no money to be made.
I decided that if I was going to work from home, I had to find other outlets other than the work at home forums. I started venturing off into business opportunities. Of course, like many of us, I let my head run with me and started thinking really BIG! I was going to run a business, make my own hours and a ton of money. YEAH RIGHT! Isn't that the dream we all have? This was not working. My fiance and I found ourselves dishing out more money for business opportunities than we were making. It was almost like we had another bill to pay for every business we ventured. We were loosing money, not making money.
I finally did some more research and found a few sites that would supply me with a list of employers seeking freelancers. You place bids on projects and if awarded, you complete the project and get paid.
This actually worked out very well for me for some time. I was finding only projects I knew I could do and commit to and was making enough money to atleast pay the bills. It wasn't a lot of money but it was better than none. The best part, was being able to set my own schedule and most of the jobs I took were all computer based so I didn't need a sitter because I wasn't on the phone. I would do a lot of the work when the kids were napping or in bed.
It wasn't long before I wanted to start building a business again! But this time I wanted to take a different route. I thought, "what if I get lots of projects, and sub them out"? This way, I could take on as many projects as offered to me and have them all completed because it wouldn't be just me doing the work. This didn't work well.
I found, over and over and over and over again, that not everyone was as devoted to working from home as I was. Not everyone understood that working from home is just like working onsite and you have to appear to work everyday! Very quickly, I started loosing clients because work was not getting done or not getting done right. I had agents not showing up, not even communicating with me. I started thinking, "this is really hard"! I thought maybe I am recruiting in the wrong places, maybe I am being to flexible and nice in my hiring/interviewing, maybe it is my website name, etc.
I must have went through 6 different website names, a hundred different business models, changing things around all the time to fit other people. I though this would make it easier to find better workers. Come to find out, it had nothing to do with any of this, these people just didn't want to work. They were not responsible, didn't have dedication to working from home and were just plain out not reliable!
I had to stop this cycle or I would start developing a really bad reputation for myself on these sites and then I would really be in a hole. I just didn't know how I would be able to take on enough work as one person to cut the bills.
Finally, my fiance said, "why don't you use these sites to find a steady position for yourself instead of taking on a handful of projects that you cannot commit to on your own"? This was a good idea, however I was having a hard time finding something ongoing and longterm. Most of the available projects were short term, or on a month per month basis and even a one time deal.
I did luck out and finally find a few ongoing steady projects that allowed me to work on my schedule and was enough to at least cut bills. Nothing more, but nothing less. It worked for a while. The downfall, is that my dream was still to help others work from home as well. I knew there were parents out there going through the same thing I was and I wanted to be the one to help them. I learned quickly that I had to help myself before I could help others. Over the years, I built a small handful of home agents who did great work for me and I knew I could count on.
Today, everyday is still a struggle and always will be! That is the definition of working from home. It is not an easy thing to do. I have built a large pool of clients over the years and a 5 star rating with all the sites I work on. I have outstanding reviews and feedback as well as a 95% accuracy on all completed work!
If I get an overload of work, I turn to just my pool of agents that I know will work and get things done right and any work that I can do myself, I do. I am in a better place today and have knowledge of what it takes to work from home successfully. Anyone can work at home, but not anyone can work from home successfully. I learned this very fast. As a business owner and a virtual freelancer, if the work is there, I can only count on me to get it done. If an agent doesn't show up, I have to show up! Period!
Things were rough for a long time and they still get rough today, but my dedication and motivation to succeed is thriving. My dedication to help others comes after.
So I told you this loooong story just to say, working from home is not easy. It is not always common since. It is a learning process and it takes a LOT of time and dedication. It is not something you can just snap your fingers and succeed at. You have to be just as dedicated to working from home as you are being a good parent. If you treat your home job like a chore, you might not get it done everyday and things will start piling up and get overwhelming. If you treat it like your child, you will dedicate everyday to it and allow nothing to get in your way! Never let anyone tell you that working from home is easy, just like being a parent, its hard, takes a lot of work, its a learning process and it has its ups and downs.
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