Archive for the ‘Telecommuting’ Category

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

Working from home is definitely a luxury that most people wish they had the opportunity to take part in. When I say luxury, I don’t mean it’s just something that was obtained easily and therefore anyone can do it. It takes a lot of hard work and focus in order to reap the results you’re hoping for.

I have a friend that is a walking example of success in the field of at-home employment. After being in the workforce a few years upon graduating college with a Bachelor’s degree in general business, she decided she wanted to work from home in a profession that dealt with helping people. She wanted to look into the medical field to see if there was anything applicable to her training and passion. She stumbled upon an opening for a job as a medical billing specialist. It seemed like a perfect fit for her, so she dove after it – like she always did with anything she wanted.

Since my friend is so proactive and forward-moving with her career, I decided I would ask her a few questions in regards to her job as a medical billing specialist. I wanted to know what she liked about it and what she thought was most important in a job position like that. She was very open to sharing the knowledge she has acquired about the position, and she was excited about the possibility that her sharing of knowledge would benefit other at-home job seekers.

In her words, she stated that being a medical billing specialist requires an organized mind and an innate ability to multi-task. Since her job duties involve communicating between registered medical institutions, medical practitioners, and legitimate insurance-providing companies, she must be able to keep all lines of communication open and functioning to their utmost potential. It’s very important to keep files and clients organized so that no one is misinformed and/or harmed by being misrepresented. She says she’s thankful that she entered this field after the technology age because she couldn’t imagine having to manually record the massive volume of information she gathers on a day-to-day basis.

She also stated that though she is confident and productive in the medical billing process presently, she wasn’t always as sure of the task at hand, which led to an anxious feeling. Since she works from home, it was hard for her to grasp the idea of not being able to always have someone there to point her in the right direction. This was her first job in the fulfillment services department, and at the time, it was completely unfamiliar terrain for even her educated position.

She told me that it definitely was a growing experience and transitional time in her career. She said she wouldn’t have it any other way because not only did she get to work from home and make her own schedule, she was also able to help people in terms of payment and financial assistance, and that’s something she can take pride in.

Even if medical billing isn’t something you personally think you would be interested in making your next career, at least consider the benefits of working from home in a position that could and will benefit outside sources.

About The Author

Danielle, presently a part-time fulfillment services specialist, admires her friend’s ability to be a self-starter and her capacity for effective time management. While she knows medical billing isn’t a good fit for her, she thinks it’s a great option for those who work well independently. Read her musings on living an active lifestyle on eatbreatheblog.com.

Work at home jobs are not for everyone. There are a lot of things to consider before you take on a telecommuting position. You need to look at your current work situation, your home lifestyle, your family’s needs and schedules, and last but not least, your skills and experience.

You also need discipline when you work at home. When you telecommute, you work for someone else and most of the time you work on their schedule. Also do you know WHERE to look for these home based gems? Half the battle is won when you know exactly where to look.

Below are one dozen companies to start your work at home search

* cloud10corp.com/index.php?home_career
* odesk.com
* liveops.com/
* hirepoint.com/athome/index.html (Teletech)
* vipdesk.com/info/
* apply.westathome.com/workfromhome.html
* workingsolutions.com/
* 1800flowers.com/
* smarthinking.com/static/aboutUs/careers/
* elance.com
* accoladesupport.com/techjob.html
* grindstone.com/work-with-grindstone.html

The work at home companies listed above are all legitimate, so you’ll not have to worry about doing research for them. However, you WILL need to consistently check back with the companies above to find out if they are currently hiring. Unfortunately, just because a particular company is legitimate doesn’t mean they are always hiring.

Wishing you much success!

Article Written By Tammy Embrich

Tammy has been successful in the work at home industry for many years. She is an Internet marketer, article marketer, and ghostwriter. She offers free job leads for the job seeker, as well as other work at home resources, work at home articles, tips, and more.