The Changing Face of Business – Is Working at Home Right For Me?
By Mark Tse
Right now there is a movement within the business world that has been building since the first two computers spoke to each other and sparked what would one day be the “Internet”.
That movement has been strengthened by long early-morning commutes, expensive downtown parking, and the problems associated with working in the business world in the 21st Century. As the cities get more congested and more people move to them looking for work, a very basic need has arisen, with a single mandate:
To get as far away from all the grime, pollution, and stress as possible.
Surprisingly, it is the very thing that made the business world shoot forward like a healthy bean sprout in the summer sun that has also made it possible to escape the hustle and bustle of big city living.
The Internet has once again changed all the rules, and not in a way that many people would expect.
The Internet and good, reliable, high-speed internet connections such as Cable or DSL connections have made it so that trudging to work in a tiny cubic office every morning is a simple waste of time. For many companies, Telecommuting has been a much smarter answer to attracting experts from around the globe without having to relocate anyone.
At the same time, the Internet itself has given rise to a brand new form of advertising industry with nearly limitless profit potentials. Website publishing is now one of the single fastest businesses growing online at the moment, with direct sales and snappy web-content being the number one force that drives this new industry. Affiliate Marketing has been the phoenix rising out of the “Dot Com” fire.
But before embarking on either of these grand business philosophies, it is important to ask yourself, “Is working at home right for me?”
We have amassed some very good pros and cons of both telecommuting and website publishing, and it might be beneficial to take a moment and look them over before making that decision.
Telecommuting: Cutting Your Travel time to Zero
Telecommuting is the ability to work for a company in the comfort of your own home. Aside from checking in on occasion, all of your work can be done in your home office or on your home computer, and your pay check may or may not come directly to your house every week.
This is a very natural environment for independent contractors and “freelance” specialists, depending on the type of work they do. In the past few years, however, some businesses have seen fit to “de-centralize” their work environment and send their workers home.
These days, a business can operate quite efficiently in a virtual online work environment. Specialists can come together from all over the world and synchronize their jobs through text messaging and centralized data bases. In addition, freelance writers, IP programmers, and website design specialists have been able to sprout their own little companies and contract their work out of their homes.
A good thing about being a telecommuter is that, like in all home or personal business environments, you make your own hours. Work until the wee hours of the morning if you feel like it, or take the day off and go to the zoo with the kids.
It’s an extremely attractive bit of freedom, especially to parents and people looking to have family lives. This give you the ability and freedom to either “Plan your work around your life”, or “plan your life around your work”, whichever you find more attractive on any specific day.
Another attractive aspect of telecommuting is that the business environment can be extremely lucrative. You can be a hired gun and let companies try to out-bet each other for your services. This is especially true when you become better known in your chosen field.
The business world is always looking out for the next big talent, no matter what it is, and if you are that person you could be in for an exciting future. Also, the amount of work you put into a project is limited only by your dedication and enthusiasm, so your future is really in your own hands in those respects.
On the other hand, telecommuting has its own very real problems and stressful situations that may never come up in a more traditional business environment.
For example, working from home takes a tremendous amount of discipline, and as such it is much harder to succeed than people think. If you slough off your work load every time your favourite television show comes on or you need to go to the store for milk, you might have problems succeeding.
Also, something many people never think about is that when work is at home, it stays at home. You may easily find yourself in a situation where every time you sit down to a meal or try to relax you automatically begin thinking about your work problems.
It is extremely difficult to “leave work at work” for the night when your work station is less than 20 feet away and you have a big project sitting on your desk waiting to get done.
If you don’t finish that project, it isn’t going to get done and you are not going to get paid. Moreover, the company that hired will likely never hire you again and worse, damage your credibility by spreading the word that you can’t get the job done. There is absolutely no job security for most telecommuters and freelancers, something that can hang over your head like a cold frost.
Finally, Isolation is a common problem for any person working from home. No matter who you are, eventually you need some human contact, and sitting in your little home office by yourself for long stretches of time can be extremely stressful on people.
Website Publishing: The Wild West of the Internet
Mass website publishing and affiliate marketing are two relatively new areas of business and a terrific example of how commercialism evolves out of scientific discovery. Like the television, newspapers, and radio before it, the online medium of computers has brought with it a perfect avenue for advertising and marketing to the masses.
Affiliate marketing in websites is when a small company or individual signs up for a commissioned sales program with a company that has a quantity goods or services for sale. By building websites that direct traffic to these larger parent sites and getting customers excited about buying from them, these small web-based companies earn commissioned sales money.
These affiliate marketing members are tracked and paid according to their performance, creating a symbiotic environment for both the parent company and the affiliate website. The affiliate gets paid for their marketing skills, and the parent company has an extremely effective commission based advertising program that costs them nothing to set up.
As with telecommuting, there are many good reasons to run a website publishing business, including setting your own hours and the potential for large amounts of cash to be dumped into your bank account.
In addition, website publishing is very creative and diverse work, something that many people see as an integral part of a happy home-based business. There are many different facets to a home based web publishing business, including writing great articles, designing cool web designs for your sites, and coming up with the right idea at the right time to really drive up sales for your affiliate companies.
Literally you can learn about something new every day of the week, spend your days scouring the internet for good marketing ideas, and make some important contacts and friendships with what has become a very tight-knit business environment that has closed ranks and grown up together in the past 10 years or so.
Best of all, you can do this work at the park, or at the beach, or in your house, wherever you want to go and work. Find some place comfortable and just jump right in.
On the other hand, website publishing from home also has just as many pitfalls as telecommuting does, and before anyone decides to shrug off the corporate yolk in favour of the good life they should carefully weigh all of the factors involved.
Just as telecommuting can be lonely, frustrating, and stressful work, so can website publishing. You will work long hours, especially at the start, in an attempt to stabilize your business and get your foot in the door. There are also some potentially significant start-up costs involved in becoming a website publisher, setting up your home office and getting the proper affiliate marketing training that you need to have a chance at succeeding.
Also, your family may be of little help in this endeavour. Many people simply don’t understand how affiliate marketing works, and most people think that if you are at home, you’re free for coffee, phone calls, doing extra chores, watching the kids…starting to see a pattern? In other words, if you are at home on your computer all day many people will see this as not really working for your pay.
On the contrary, the opposite is true. There are times when you are going to be so overwhelmed with work that you won’t be able to see daylight. Your family and friends need to understand that although they may mean well, your office is just like any other work environment and you must not be disturbed while you are working.
This lack of recognition outside the work environment can be extremely disheartening. For example, someone who is a lawyer and makes $100,000 a year and has an extremely high level of job satisfaction will be the envy of her peers.
On the other hand, someone who makes $100,000 a year as an affiliate marketer and has an extremely high level of job satisfaction will simply receive slightly puzzled, amused stares and a polite request to explain exactly what an affiliate marketer is.
Understandably, this kind of situation could wear on a person after a while.
Regardless of how a person makes their money or runs their business from home, telecommuting and website publishing are both very new and exciting concepts being explored by the business world. As the internet grows, so do the growth possibilities and revenue potential for many businesses.
More businesses are getting involved in this type of environment all the time. That means for telecommuters that every day more potential customers are arriving on the scene, and for website publishers and affiliate marketers that every day there is another potential affiliate website out there just waiting to be designed, developed, and written about.
No matter what based business you are in, stay focused. Stay calm. Talk it over with your family. Come to the table with a strategy that works and a plan for success, and prepare to revise it on the fly. Take a deep breath. Got everything calm and relaxed? Good.
Now go crazy.
For more information on working from your home as an affiliate marketer, publishing websites you can be proud of, for profit, visit:
About the author:
Bill Schnarr is a full-time freelance writer who loves his work because it gives her the Opportunit*y to learn more about the world every day. Right now, he knows a little bit about almost everything, and a bunch about working from the comfort of a home office using affiliate programs, an Internet connection and a personal computer. Bill works from his home in Calgary, Alberta.
