Monday, August 24, 2009

Can you really work from home when you have young children?

Working from home, in whatever career, business or job you choose, requires time, and generally at least some child free time. The most child friendly work from home business I can think of is family day care, where you look after other children in your own home. But even this requires time for paper work, doing the finances, planning activities, making meals, preparing and cleaning up the area you use with the children and attending meetings and training. Family Day Carers are regulated like any other children's service and must provide a professional level of care.

With a lot of other jobs, such as tutoring or running a party plan business, there are specific times, when you cannot do the job with young children there.

I came to the conclusion that within the first two years of your child's life, it is very difficult to set up any work from home opportunity without having some sort of outside care for your child, and as one of the major reasons for working from home, is to be there for the children, if they end up in day care anyway, isn't it defeating the point?

However, as the children get older, they benefit from external care. We used Occasional Care when our children were 2, for just one day a week to start with. Not much you might think, but it allowed me a few precious hours to concentrate on something other than children. I may not be making a fortune, but I could start to work towards it, and I had a mental break which refreshed me for the rest of the week. At 3 or 3 1/2 pre-school is available, and my personal feeling is that my children benefit hugely from attending pre-school, where they are exposed to a wide range of different activities we don't do at home, and they get the chance to socialise with other children and adults. My decision was that I could then work during those hours, but still be there each day to pick up my children and spend time with them. As we get to the school years, I still want to be able to do the same thing, but will have 5 part time days a week I can work in.

One other option is to share care with your partner. For example, I have a Saturday morning job teaching a pre-schoolers' sports class. I can do this, because the other half does not work on a Saturday, and will happily take care of the children. A friend who works for Tupperware, plans her parties of an evening, again so hubby can be with the kids. The only danger is maintaining the balance and not loosing too much precious time with your family.

I think the basic message is that you cannot expect to work around your children when they are very young, as you'll probably resort to television to claw back a few hours, and then you'll feel guilty, and won't enjoy that time. If you're lucky you have family who will support you, but if not, you need to work out how much time you need and want on your own, and when you feel your children will be ok with external care.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Work from Home - Training Courses

Design, build and present your own training course. Or beome a trainer for someone else's course.

Think what training courses you've been on in your career:

technical courses, programming courses, project management courses, management training, business knowledge courses, finance courses, time management courses, leadership training, public speaking courses, presentation skills training, budgeting and project planning, interviewing skills...

And that's just my list.

There are hundreds of different skills, both hard and soft skills that people need in business. As part of personal development, motivation and reward, companies provide training for individuals and often look to outside oraganisations to provide that training.

Individuals also might be looking for training, to build or improve skills in a particular area. Skills to help them find the next job. Skills to help them build a home business. Skills to help them build a website. Or just as a hobby.

Can you become a trainer? Or do you have a subject you could write your own training course in?

Have you done something you could teach others to do? Have you set up your own business, set up a B&B, published your own book online, built your own furniture, created a film?

Is there anything here you can turn into a training course?

Courses can be half a day or five full days. They can be in an office or at the trainer's premises.

Courses can be online, or delivered in person.

How does this fit with the children?

Development and sale of your course can be during school hours. If you intend delivering your own course, you may need some flexibility with child care arrangements, but it would be within your control.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Work from Home as a Writer

Writing from home could mean freelance writing for your local newspaper, or writing a book, or writing resumes for other people. It could mean writing technical documents for the IT company you used to work for, or training material on a subject you are an expert in.

It can also mean writing content on the web. This could be articles, Blog entries, or web site content. There is a huge demand for content, as a website's success depends on its content and links to it, which affect rankings in the search engines.

If you search on the internet for writing from home jobs, you will find a range of sites, where you can register as a writer and might be asked to bid on jobs, or sites where you get paid for the articles you write.

The amount you get paid varies hugely, and in some cases you have to pay a monthly fee to be able to see the listings of work available. I need to try some of these out to see if they are genuine.

Another way to earn money writing, is to write your own Blog and earn money through affiliate marketing.

Or, if you are good at the sales pitch, professional copywriters charge a decent fee for a marketing pitch. For example, if I were to write an eBook, I might hire someone to put together the sales page for me. They would know how to write it to appeal to the right audience, get people hooked and hopefully buy my book.