Archive for the ‘Telecommuting’ Category

If you’re unemployed and need to make ends meet, you might want to consider working from home, even if it’s only temporary. Because most work-at-home jobs are flexible, you’ll still be free to continue your job search, and the added income will help with necessities like groceries and utilities until you can get back on your feet again. Here are just a few work-from-home employment opportunities for you to consider.

Freelance Writing

Freelance writing may involve everything from blogging to writing content for clients through content marketing sites like WriterAccess and oDesk. About.com is another site for experts, and because of that, it also has rigorous application and training process, but in return for a specified amount of articles and blog posts, writers are guaranteed a certain amount of pay per month; additional pay is based on page views.

Online Employment Sites

Online employment sites like Elance offer a range of employment opportunities that range from finance to mobile development, consulting, marketing, programming, designing and writing. The International Association of Employment Websites is an excellent resource for people who are job hunting because it is like a clearing house of resources.

Telecommuting Jobs

For people who need a certain amount of flexibility, telecommuting jobs offer this in abundance. These jobs may also open the door to future long-term employment, which could mean benefits and a steady paycheck.

Freelance Work

There are countless freelance opportunities for those who are willing to search for them, but it’s important to check the reputability of each site. FreelanceFree is of the top four, according to Entrepreneur Magazine, and there are a range of different opportunities.

Typing and Data Entry

Some companies need people on a temporary basis to do typing or data entry. Arise offers opportunities for people in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Other companies also have data entry opportunities if you take the time to search for them.

Online Surveys for Cash

There are a number of sites that pay people to take surveys, and a good way to find them is by going to one of the sites that keeps track of multiple survey sites, such as Surveys for Cash. The amount that these sites pay varies, but be sure to read the fine print. For people who are willing to invest their time or test products in return for taking surveys that allow you to review the product, this can be an easy way to earn cash.

A Final Word of Caution

Unfortunately, there’s always a chance that you’ll be a victim of a scam. Be sure to check with the Better Business Bureau to find out whether sites that interest you are reputable. When it comes to working online, there are countless great sounding opportunities that are really scams. Adopting the “buyer beware” philosophy is the best way to prevent yourself from becoming the victim of a scam.

Being unemployed usually puts you in an untenable position, with persistent money worries and frustrations. Finding opportunities to work at home or online isn’t easy. However, with a little stick-to-itiveness and more than a little elbow grease, you might soon find more work than you can handle.

Danielle Rhodes is a full-time writer who dabbles in poetry in her free time. When she was uemployed, she found many creative ways to work from home, and was immensely glad for the short term health insurance she was able to procur during such a worrisome time.

Work at Home Jobs

Working from home offers you flexible working hours that you can fit around your family life and other commitments. There is a whole range of work jobs from home available. Nearly any business can be run from the home if needs be, but some jobs are more common than others – especially if you are only after part time hours. Still, there are over forty different job titles available that cover working from home part-time. Some of the more common ones include online surveys, freelance writing, e-commerce, delivering catalogues in your local area, commission based sales such as Avon etc. The list is quite extensive. Additionally, some home based business opportunities will involve a considerable investment on your part and these usually involve some sort of franchise. But if you are looking for a work from home opportunity that involves no investment from you, there are lots of opportunities out there.

Freelance Work

Freelance work does not just include freelance writing. If you work on a freelance basis you are self-employed. This can be in the capacity of a writer, photographer or copywriter etc. When it comes to providing freelance opportunities, there are many websites to choose from and these sites are free to join. Others are scams and should be avoided. Spotting a scam is relatively easy as they tend to make unrealistic sounding claims about what you can earn and they will also usually ask you for some sort of registration fee.

However, because the best sites out there are free, some are also hard to break into. You may have to first prove your worth by submitting a sample of your work. They will then contact you themselves when they have made a decision. Alternatively, you may be able to do freelance work for newspapers and magazines. Again, this is hard to break into but once you have a substantial portfolio of work to your name it should get easier as you build up more and more contacts.

E Commerce

Ecommerce is another way of making money from home. Whether this takes the form of your own website or selling through an online auction house is entirely your decision. To start off with most people will start selling on auction sites as setting up your own site will cost money – especially if, like most, you require the services of a web designer to get you up and running. E commerce can be very profitable when done correctly. You will have to buy in and store the stock yourself before you can re-sell it online. Alternatively, dropshipping is a good way of selling items without actually keeping stock in your home. You list the item for the dropshipping company and take a cut of the profits when the item is sold on your listing or site.

Surveys

Online surveys are a good way of making a few extra pounds in your spare time. Again, there are scam sites out there so you need to remain vigilant when signing up. You will have to sign up to few different sites to make as much money as possible. This can be done in your spare moments and can easily be fitted around family life. Payment comes in the form of cash paid into a PayPal account or as a voucher to a store of your choosing.

Other Opportunities

There are lots of other work from home opportunities available but many can depend on what skills you already have. Part-time tutoring and child-minding can all be done from home. Party planning is an area which is growing in popularity and well worth considering, as is wedding planning. Whatever your skills, you should be able to find something that you can do part-time from home and turn into a success.

Article provided by WorkFromHomeJobs.tv which is an online guide for the jobs from home seekers. Daily blog with advice, tips and news on work from home jobs.

Times are tough and tuition is steep. As a grad student, I am only able to work part-time, which makes working from home very appealing. Not only do I have more time to focus on my studies, but I am earning money by doing things I would be doing anyway. Working at home is a fun, relaxing way to make a little extra dough. Read on for some work-at-home ideas.

Freelance

The Internet takes the hassle out of finding freelance work. Whether you’re a writer, software developer, or whatnot, there are sites dedicated to helping you find steady work. Elance and oDesk both offer employers and contractors the opportunity to conduct business, making this a viable choice for at-home work.

Tutor

Parents want their children to succeed in school, but aren’t always equipped to teach them difficult material. If you are knowledgeable in a certain subject, then you could be the answer they are looking for. Post an ad on Craigslist offering your services as a tutor.As a side note, you no longer have to limit yourself to your immediate area. Tutor.com operates an online classroom that utilizes instant messaging, file sharing, and an interactive whiteboard to connect students to tutors.

Crafts

Are you crafty? Well now you can make money while doing something that you love. Etsy offers crafters the opportunity to sell their wares from the comfort of their home. Alternately, you can list your items on Craigslist or eBay.

Childcare

Thanks to the recession, many parents have to work outside of the home, and quality, affordable childcare is difficult to come by. Call around and price other childcare providers, and find a median price; don’t shortchange yourself, and be sure to factor meals, crafts, and so forth into your price.

Surveys

Once again, the Internet plays a pivotal role in your work-from-home choice. There are oodles of sites that offer paid surveys. It is important to check these sites out with the Better Business Bureau, or by Googling reviews of them, in order to avoid being scammed. Everyone has an opinion; why not get paid for sharing yours?

Customer Service

Arise, Alpine Access, Working Solutions and LiveOps are all companies that offer positions answering in-bound customer service calls from your home. These positions pay an average of $8 to $15 per hour, and may offer incentives and commissions as well. Because these positions are in high demand, be sure to be prepared for the interview, and take it as seriously as you would an in-person interview.

Telemarketing

This is another job that allows you to work from home while getting paid. If you have a pleasant voice and powers of persuasion, then this could be a good fit. As with surveys, be sure that the company you are working for is legitimate.
As you can see, there are countless opportunities to work from home. Why pay for expensive gas and wear and tear on your car, when you can stay home and work in your pajamas?

Danielle works part-time and is a graduate student. She has been utilizing some of these creative money-making methods to purchase an ADT home security system for her brother for Christmas. Read her musings on living an active lifestyle at eatbreatheblog.com.

When inclement weather hits, a traditionally run office can shut down completely as employees are stuck at home. Many offices don’t have policies and infrastructures in place that will allow their work force to perform their jobs even if they can’t leave home. Those of us who work for companies that are set up for telecommuting know the benefits that working from home can provide for employees, but how does it help individual businesses and the economy as a whole? Aside from freeing up parking spaces and making morning traffic less of a hassle, telecommuting can help our communities and the country by keeping businesses running reliably. So long as your office has their email and data stored off-site by their hosting company, whether they use a dedicated server or a virtual server, you can communicate with others in your organization and access the files you need for work.

Benefits for the Company

When your employer allows you to work from home, not only do you experience reduced stress due to not having to commute, your company gains several benefits as well. If you plan well and establish a structured schedule for the day, you can actually accomplish much more working from home than you could in the office. When you’re not being interrupted with meetings and coworkers wanting to ask questions or make small-talk, your ability to focus on your work increases significantly. When you know you have the ability to work from home, even for just one or two days of the week, you often feel more engaged and motivated, making you more likely to deliver outstanding performance. Employers who support telecommuting have more flexibility regarding their hiring practices. Rather than being forced to hire within a certain geographical area, they can find the best candidate for their position, regardless of his or her location. Finally, hiring telecommuters allows a company to expand its business without needing to lease or build more office space.

Benefits for the Country

More businesses are becoming accustomed to their employees working from home and focusing on making it easier and more efficient for them to do so. As a result, the nation will see a positive shift in environmental impact, productivity and its ability to weather previously catastrophic events. With more people telecommuting, fewer cars will be used, leading to a reduction in pollution. Though it may not have an immediate or dramatic effect, the benefit of lower pollution could lead to a range of environmental benefits cleaner air and reduced natural resource consumption. Companies that would normally stall during a prolonged winter storm or that might shut down entirely due to a hurricane or tornado could continue to run, provided their essential data and resources were hosted separately.

The ability for companies to continue operating under adverse conditions can help prevent economic disasters regionally and will contribute to nationwide economic stability.Telecommuting is gaining in popularity with businesses around the country for a variety of reasons, all of which benefit you as an employee, the business and the country. By giving employees and the company more flexibility, telecommuting reduces costs on both ends while increasing productivity and employment options. It also provides ecological benefits and can help a region recover from a natural disaster quickly by continuing the flow of money into a region. When the benefits to all parties are taken into account, it’s easy to see why telecommuting is entering into the mainstream more and more each day.

About The Author

Danielle has been on both sides of the commuting fence- both working from home and driving to work on a daily basis. In addition to saving money and putting less mileage on her car, she always enjoying working in her pajamas from the comfort of her own home more than working on-site. Read her musings on green living and active lifestyles on http://www.eatbreatheblog.com.

There are thousands of vendors that offer medical billing solutions to home practices, and though the majority are beneficial to those who seek alternatives for their current setups, some find the choices overwhelming. This article will break the field of medical billing software up into its component parts, excluding offline solutions (or else we’d be here all day) and focusing on software and software as a service.

Software solutions are the most traditional form of billing on a computer. You can purchase a copy of the software, install it on your office computer and begin telling it what to do. This route is nice because you will not be dependent on an Internet connection to conduct business throughout the day, though you will need to manually build a database for your clients with their records, Medicare and insurance policies. Physical software often comes with licenses as well, so you’ll need a copy for every computer you plan to use it on.

Software as a Service (Saas) is a newer system that is completely web-based, meaning that you will not have to purchase and install a program onto your computer; all your information is located online. This saves you space and time, but necessitates a constant Internet connection and can be a problem if that connection becomes unavailable for some reason. Because it is based on the web, you can access the program from any computer and the company hosting all the information covers security.

Web-based software has taken precedent over traditional software because it provides more access to data, requires less overall expense, is updated frequently and takes the onus of file security off of the business owner so they can work on what really matters, their clients.
Each practice is different and so before making a decision, it’s important to identify what you are looking for in software and what your goals for billing are. This offers a few instructions as to how to do that. For our purposes, I will offer a comparison of the two systems I am most familiar with. The first, Advanced MD represents a SaaS and the second, EZClaim Advanced represents a more traditional medical billing software.

ADVANCED MDAdvanced MD offers a web-based medical billing solution with the added bonus of scheduling and check-in software designed to streamline the entire process of getting a client in and out of the door. The software can store bills and create e-statements to eliminate lost paperwork. However, there are some downsides: If the Advanced MD server is down or acting slowly, there is nothing the user can do about it. Diagnosis requires contacting their customer service department, and getting a diagnosis for your problem is not always an instant affair. AMD is set up in such a way that the service benefits the user in a variety of ways, but if something goes wrong that user has no leverage with AMD and will have to wait until they can do something to fix the problem.

EZClaim Advanced EZClaim Advanced is software that is built to track payments and does authorization, while including libraries for facilities, payers and physicians. The statements include information about how much the patient must pay and how much is covered by insurance. There is a steep learning curve with the software, but after conquering said curve, the system is very easy to use. Unfortunately, EZClaim requires several add-ons to make it a full suite application and web support comes at an extra charge. The upfront price is reasonable, but after paying for the additional services that other products include in their service suites, the final cost is far above competitors.

These are but two options available to home practitioners. If you are looking for a home billing solution, review your options and your priorities and see which of the many services out there is best for your business.

About The Author

This is a follow-up to Danielle’s article about the at-home profession of Medical Billing Specialists she wrote for Real Work At Home Jobs last month. Read her thoughts on living an active, eco-friendly lifestyle on eatbreatheblog.com