An adventurous journey!

Was going through some old emails from my inbox the other day, and suddenly looked over “My last working day” mails. Yes, they were replies to my last working day mail from my colleagues. I had a look at the mail’s date. Whoa! That was almost an year old. That means, I will be celebrating the first anniversary as a Work at home mom :) Yippee!!
Its almost an year and it still feels like yesterday that I left office. The memories are very fresh. My colleagues, my work, my clients,(Yes, I do miss them!) everyone, and everything is as fresh as it happened yesterday.
Hmmm… So how was my one year at home been? A lot of people kept asking me just after I quit about how I feel being at home. If I have  to answer it now, I would say ADVENTUROUS !!

No shortcuts please!

It was recently when I had started with my freelancing job. I had registered with almost 5-6 of the freelance sites. I was desperately searching for work and used to finish my weekly quota of job applications in just 2-3 days! I would apply in all categories- Testing, data entry, article writing, forum posting and what not!! Once I saw a job posting which said- “Great opportunity for newbies! Apply if you can post on forums, 2-3 posts per day.” Immediately applied as I knew that posting 2-3 topics per day is a cake walk. Got the response in few hours. I was so happy. After all, I had got my first response to a job application!

Know your limitations...

 How long did it take for you to get your first job as a freelancer? It took me 3 months :) Yes! 3 long months of search, search and more search gave me a job with a site!  So, why did it take so long for me? Was I applying for wrong jobs? May be.. Was I applying in a wrong way? May be.. Were my skills falling short? Well, I don’t think it’s the last option! I was definitely not technically incompetent!! After my expert analysis, I found somethings about this :) Its only that the way I applied the jobs was wrong. Here, only your technical skills do not matter. There are a lot of other factors as well. Like the budget/price you quote, the number of hours in which you can complete, and the way you communicate.

Management Skills- Use it here :)

“Wow Ambika! This is great. Now you will be able to look after your daughter and continue your work also!”

“You must be having a great time at home now!”

“You lucky gal!”

Those were some of the responses of my friends when they came to know that I have been working from home for a while now… There is a general assumption in people about us that working from home women are the luckiest! They get all the luxuries of being a home maker and a professional too.  Well, if you are also among one of those then let me tell you- “Working from home is the most difficult thing on earth!!”

There is no manager to give you the tasks for the week; there is no specific client for the whole day; there are no strict timings for your work; and, above all, you have a house (and a kid) manage!! All these things will not definitely have a sync and most of the times you will land in a mess if you want to do everything at a time J (I have had experienced It most of the time!!) You start your day perfectly; put your clothes in the washing machine; send your kids off to school; finish up other tasks and finally you have your own time to start your work… But, Alas! Your child is back from school early today, or your washing machine doesn’t work suddenly, or worst- there is no electricity!! These are only a few instances which I have actually experienced J . 

How do the freelancing sites actually work?

Now that we know which sites to start our freelancing with... But, how do we actually start working? Do we first search for project or complete the profile? How do we build our portfolio? These might be the next few questions that you might get. Of course, by looking into these sites, you can have all the info. But, they have so much of stuff in them- their working, their projects, their payment styles, their profile builders, their work management, policies and what not!! Which info to look at first? Well, I am here to tell you then!

              All these sites like ODesk, Elance, Freelancer, LimeExchange(Except UTest and Pay4Bugs) work in a similar way as any of your normal job portals like Naukri or Monster sites. They all have the list of registered Employers and contractors.They have the projects posted by employers which are searchable by us. The only difference here is the contractors- We in this case ‘BID’ for the projects. Employers post projects with their requirements, expected delivery date, maximum budget, no. of hours per day expected and the total description of the project work. And, then we search and bid on the projects. The lowest bidder wins the project. That was for the overall summary of how they work. But, to give you a step by step answer to the questions, here’s the complete list:

First step towards a Freelancing career

I left my job to be with my daughter at home as she was just 2. But, quitting my full time job did not stop me from leaving my passion- Testing! The first thought that I would not be working anymore gave me fears. But, I decided that I will not leave my work even though I leave my office! But, then I didn’t know from where to start. I used to do a lot of search on Google and visit testing forums, spoke to friends but nothing seemed to work out. I used to Google with the key word- “Work from Home” and there I got millions of pages with the title “Earn up to 300$ per day! Earn upto 200$ per hour”. There was no one who can help me to find ways through these vast search results of Googling. It was almost 3-4 hours of searching everyday for about 3-4 months that I found that there were actually sites dedicated to Freelancers and they cater to any area in the industry. It took me almost 6 months to be an expert in Freelance job search! I had to struggle for so long just because I did not find any site, any blog which would help me out with all the ways of “How to start as a Freelancer” So, I thought why not write it down myself?

So, when you think of Work from Home, the first question that comes to your mind is- Can we get a freelance job in our area of expertise? Is the pay equivalent to that we were getting when we were fully employed? Can we trust the employers?

And, the answer is- YES: We have millions of job opportunities available for people who want to work from their homes without even investing a single penny. YES- We can rely on the employers for work and of course the payment. And, the best part- There are hundreds of jobs available for you to choose from and that too in your own area of expertise.