Work at home – The Work At Home Blog

How Many Eggs are in Your Work at Home Egg Basket?

Getting to work from home can be great. One of the things many people do is find more than one source of income, to protect their lifestyle. By having several sources of income, or income eggs in your basket, you protect your ability to earn, should something go awry.

Some, who are telecommuters, don’t worry as much because their job is considered as safe as any other full-time job but if you are a freelancer or have your own business, this isn’t always the case because you’re regularly searching for ways to earn. Several sources of income could mean safety and it could also mean that you’re making decent money.
Tips for Having Multiple Income Eggs

Find some quick paying go-to options. That way, if you’re in a pinch, you can get grocery money fast or money to take care of an unforeseen expense quickly. Wherever possible online entrepreneurs should have a few make money fast options.
Network. Talk to other entrepreneurs and freelancers. That way you can share leads and potentially share overflow work.
Work on developing some passive income streams. If you build websites with affiliate marketing, network marketing, or contextual advertising, for instance, the initial work could be time consuming but those sites could become passive for you, creating income that generates itself and presents you with monthly payments. Learn more about affiliate marketing and passive online income opportunities.

Strive for a delicate balance when adding income eggs. Too many could feel overwhelming and result in lack of balance but some regular ones, some passive income-building options, and some strategic fast-earners could be the ticket to reaching your financial and career goals.

How to Become a Paid Askables Expert

Askables is a site that people can go to for information and it’s a great ehow alternative for writers who want another passive income stream. There are articles published and there is a place for questions and answers. Beyond using the site for information, you can also use it as a source of online income. Askables is currently accepting experts and top experts. They accept international writers (instead of just US-based such as eHow and Firehow), and offer more than one way to earn money writing.

Benefits of Being an Askable Expert

Askables has a revenue share programme that allows you to either submit your Google Adsense ID and share revenue for your articles, or, you can even have the site track your Adsense income and pay you for it via PayPal. Your articles could become profitable if they get a lot of traffic to them.

But if you’re interested in participating in the site regularly, you can earn even more money because there are two categories of site participation that could net you a per-article rate of either $5.00 per article or $15 per article. If you participate regularly and write high-quality and original articles, the site could earn you actively and passively.

Learn more by visiting Askables and navigating to the “Hey Bloggers” cloud. By meeting point requirements, you could either earn $5 per article or $15 per article plus earn passively forever and ever. Not bad!

Make Money at WebAnswers

If you like doling out advice and enjoy sites like Yahoo Answers but would like to make some cash for your efforts, WebAnswers could be a great place to supplement your income. The site is filled with questions and answers. You can ask questions and get help or you could answer questions and make money.

How WebAnswers Pays

Once you’ve either had 2 answers chosen as ‘best’, or answered 10 questions, the system will prompt you to either add a Google Adsense ID or sign up for a Google Adsense account.

WebAnswers pays you a percentage of the Google Adsense revenue for the pages in which your answer was chosen as best answer. When you’ve got the earnings on a page, it makes good sense to promote that page! Anyone who is on the page and who clicks a Google Ad could earn you money. Learn more by joining WebAnswers.

How does Google Adsense work?

You get paid per click and in some cases, per impression. Google pays you via check or direct deposit when your account exceeds $100.00. Google pays monthly. Reaching $100 in July would get you paid by the end of August.

Internet Marketing Without Money

The book No Money Marketing was written by me and Matthew Bredel. If you’d like to read it, you can get a free copy (value $97) through joining Tru-Guru, Matt’s subscription-based program that teaches people to become true online marketing gurus. (He’s offering a special now for $4.95 for a 30 day membership)
Those who buy a membership to Tru-Guru get several free bonuses and one of them is this book that’s filled with ideas of how to make money on the internet without an initial investment. Of course you’ll have paid the small subscription fee to get the free book but I do assure you, there are a lot of great ideas in there and the Tru-Guru subscription can be cancelled at any time (plus offers a money back guarantee).

Learning to make money online

Some people look for work at home jobs to make extra money. But many of them soon realize that there is a huge potential for a home-based business that you’re the boss of instead. Instead of working for someone else, you could start several different types of online businesses such as: affiliate marketing biz, creating an online dropshipping store, to create and market your own products, and more.

The most important aspect of searching for income opportunities on the web is research and Matthew Bredel has bundled several years of trial, error, research, and great results into his informative products.

Check out his free SEO Exciter Series to get a free sampling of his helpful teaching style when he shows you more than the basics of how he uses organic search engine optimization techniques to dominate the search engines in his niche (bringing him traffic and profit!).

I’d love your feedback on what you think of the book and the Tru-Guru program.

Cheers to your online success!

Dana

Work at Home Payments: Setting Up PayPal

When you earn money online, PayPal is one of the easiest ways to get paid. It is the defacto standard for those who make money online in terms of getting paid quickly and easily.

Setting it up is easy and getting paid is as easy as someone using your designated PayPal e-mail address. When someone pays you, the system walks them through a process and there isn’t a PayPal account number to be concerned with. They simply allocate the payment to the address you provided PayPal with when you set up your account. When someone pays you, you’ll get an e-mail notification at the same address.

There are things you should know about a PayPal account and here are some basic tips and PayPal FAQ’s for beginners:

Personal PayPal Accounts

Basic / personal accounts are free. You don’t have to pay any fees from amounts you are paid. As soon as you exceed a dollar value received per month and / or someone attempts to pay you with a credit card, your account needs to be upgraded to a Premier account. When that happens, you’ll pay a % of every payment.

Everyone is allowed (per PayPal Terms of Service) to have two accounts so it is advantageous to keep a basic account and sign up for a premium account as well. A lot of people start off with a Personal account and upgrade (or start a second account) later on.

Premier PayPal Accounts

The premier account will require you to pay a fee. This ranges depending on several factors including:

What type of payment is made to you (cash payment or credit card)
The amount of the transaction
Where the payment is coming from (Some countries have surcharges on payments)

When you receive your payment, you’ll get a notice via email either that:

You have new funds
Funds are on the way

When you have new funds, the money is in your account (minus any fees) and you can use it to spend online, transfer to your bank account, or you can request that a cheque be sent to you.

How long does it take for PayPal payments to transfer to your bank?

When you transfer it to your bank account, the transaction typically takes 2-3 days (although PayPal stipulates up to 10 business days). You’ll probably notice a pattern after a few transfers that tell you how long your bank takes to receive the money and what time the funds usually arrive.

If you receive a notice that tells you funds are on the way, someone has sent you an e-check. E-checks can take up to a few weeks to clear and all you can do is wait for a notification from PayPal that says the funds cleared.

Setting up your bank account on PayPal

You can set up a bank account easily. You provide PayPal with your bank information and then wait a few days. You’ll see two amounts (below $1.00 each) deposited into your bank account. When those amounts arrive, you simply log in to PayPal and confirm the amounts received. PayPal does this so they can determine they have your correct banking information for future deposits.

PayPal Bank Withdrawals

If you attempt to pay an invoice that you don’t have the funds for, it will initiate an e-check from your primary bank account in the PayPal system so it’s important to be careful when making payments. If you live in Canada or the UK and you have an available balance in your US funds account, you’ll need to move money between currencies to purchase something online or make a payment in another currency otherwise, it will initiate an e-check.

If you live in the U.S, PayPal will give you a debit card that allows you to make purchases or withdrawals from an ATM bank machine. You can also make withdrawals to your own bank account.

Beyond the fees you pay when you receive your money, if you transfer a small amount of money to your bank account (under $150.00) you’ll also be charged a transaction fee of $0.50. This is removed from your transfer fee.

PayPal Payments

If you try to make a payment in a currency for which you have a zero balance, an e-check can be initiated and this can take weeks to clear and your bank may have service charges if the e-check cannot be processed due to insufficient funds.

While PayPal does have fees, this service is definitely a must-have for anyone who wants to work at home and make money with their computer. It’s a fast and safe way to make and receive payments.

You can run plenty of reports from PayPal to help you with your records and they have other tools such as invoicing tools as well. Once you do get a lot of money happening in your account, they also offer PayPal merchant services and you can benefit from a lot of tools to help your online business run smoothly.

Finding Freelance Writing Jobs

How do you find freelance writing jobs? This post will give you several job lead sources:

Freelance Writing Job Blogs. There are a lot of blogs that offer daily job leads
Craigslist. In all major cities is a writing job category
Google Alerts. Set up a Google Alert for freelance writing jobs and you can even set on up for your specific niche.
Google. Search on the type of writing job you want
Writing Forums. There are internet forums dedicated to writers and these often have job listings in them.

Writers: Use The Web To Your Advantage!

If you want to become a writing wahm or just a freelance writer, the internet provides a wealth of opportunities for finding writing jobs. You can research how much a freelance writer gets paid, look at other writer’s sample resumes, set up your own writing website, and more.

Beyond the resources listed here, why not consider creating your own website to show your talents? Bring writing clients to you!

I’m a freelance writer, editor, and consultant and I support my family with my online income. I won’t say it’s easy but it’s very doable if you are motivated!

3 Passive Income Writing Sites

If you like to write articles, you can make some decent income at it. My friend Maria makes about $1,500 a month on eHow. I’m not in the U.S. so can’t participate in eHow yet (I’m hopeful they’ll some day change that!) but I have other programs I do participate in such as:

-Bukisa

Bukisa wants your how to articles and videos and you’ll make $3.95 per 1000 page views. I started with this site in October and have already hit payout.

-Yuwie

I’m still learning about Yuwie but there’s lots to do in this social community so I’m checking it out. Not only do you get paid page views for things people do on your pages but for your own pages as well. The only downside I see so far is a LOT of ads to sift through and this comes up sometimes when I want to do something so having to bypass ads is slightly annoying.

-InfoBarrel

InfoBarrel is a lot like Bukisa or eHow but the site offers Adsense revenue sharing instead of per page view rates so this looks like it has the same type of potential as eHow which means you can make a lot of money. You can also see how much money you’ll make because you track it through your own Adsense account.

Making money through passive income streams works great because you can write something today that pays you indefinitely. In 2006 I wrote an article about a particular topic on a shared revenue site and it went viral and is still paying me about $30 a month via Google Adsense almost 3 years later!

Happy Boss’s Day To Me! Work At Home Bliss

October 16 is boss’s day. Are you ready for it? Do you still have a boss or are YOU the boss?

If you’re a freelance work at home individual, time to treat yourself to something that shows your appreciation since you’re the boss! If you work at home and have a boss, send an e-card to show your appreciation for not having to ‘see’ your boss everyday!

As a work at home professional, here are some things I’m grateful to my boss (ME!) for:

Unlike at my old jobs, I never have the problem of someone else taking the credit for work I did! Ok wait..as a ghostwriter I kind of do but it’s ok ‘cuz I get paid extra for that!
If there’s a run in my pantyhose, no one stares.
If I feel like wearing pantyhose and no pants, no one cares.
The coffee is awesome here (it was beyond sludge at the Big Meatball [aka: where I used to work])
The boss’s door is ALWAYS open and she’s very approachable! She just ‘gets’ me.
When I need time off, I GET IT; no questions asked!
I have unlimited earning potential here
No daycare fees and I can watch the Y&R and Coronation Street every day from my job

If you want to learn how to be your own boss, check out Legit Online Jobs

or find wah job info here.

If you work at home, what do you love about being your own boss?

Freelance Work At Home Tips: Diversifying The Egg Baskets

Working at home as a freelancer has its perks. Beyond the lax dress code you can save money on commuting, dry cleaning, lunches, etc. If you’ve found a great work at home gig, it can feel like you’ve hit the jackpot. If you’re a freelancer, you really don’t have just one boss and it can be liberating to be self-employed. A lot of freelancers find one big client to help pay the bulk of their expenses and extra clients are ‘gravy’ clients.

But is it save to work for one source?

If you’re a freelancer, you might consider diversifying your streams of income so you’re paid from more than one source. Or, do your best to get a contract. Freelance writers, freelance photographers, freelance web designers that get the bulk of their work from one client are in danger of being unemployed if they don’t have any type of work guarantee. Today could be payday and tomorrow could be the bread line if you’re not careful.

If freelancing and you have no guarantees of specific quantities of work from a big client, you need to diversify your income so that if there’s no chance of a contract and notice of any volume changes, you’ll be safe.

What if the big client eats up all your time?

If they keep you so busy you don’t have time for anyone else, do your best to put a buffer amount in savings and keep the pavement pounded regularly to watch for other jobs just in case.

Some clients don’t ever give you a contract and the work never runs out but if you’re not watchful, the rug could be quickly pulled out from under you and you could find yourself in trouble.

Budgeting, savings, a contingency plan and keeping up to date on available work at home jobs in your niche will all be helpful.

The WAH Science of Forex

What is Forex? Foreign Exchange is what the acronym stands for and it’s the exchanging of currency to earn a profit. Foreign exchange is big business on the internet and a lot of people who do it earn it at home in their spare time.

Profiting from foreign currency is something that isn’t just a simple science…it requires a lot of knowledge about pips and trading times and it’s a fast moving cycle that could net you big profits or losses.

If you want to get into Forex, you might consider buying an automation program that helps you. You can buy memberships, ebooks and other programs that can help you maximize your earning potential.

As an illustration, if you buy US funds with UK funds on day one and then on day two sell it back, you could have a profit. This might equate to small profit at first but as your profits grow you can invest more of your profits into this and yield higher dividends.

One of the secrets is to play it safe at first and play with your profits and then if you do have losses, you haven’t lost anything because you lost from previously earned profits. A lot of people are capitalizing on this. You can learn systems manually or you can cut some corners by getting into a program such as Forex Autopilot

or check out this video: