Five Work from Home Tips to Help Decide If It's Right for You

There is a lot of misinformation on the internet today about working from home. While the freedom to work from home sounds appealing, the dedication required to be self-employed, especially working at home, is often more than what's required when working at a job site.

Let's explore some tips to being successfully self employed from the comfort of your own home:

Work from Home Tip #1

To make full-time pay, people who work from home need to work full-time hours, especially when first starting to work at home.

Employees who work on a job site are required to put in a certain number of hours per week in order to draw a full paycheck, and if someone who is self-employed wants to support their lifestyle while working at home, they should expect to have to put in work hours too.

The good news is that when working from home, the self-employed can determine how much money they want to make, set their own rates, and even refuse jobs that don't pay well. Refusing to perform job duties when working at an office with a boss is career suicide.

Work from Home Tip #2

Working from home doesn't necessarily mean more time to handle household tasks. In fact, especially when first starting a new self-employment career, learning to balance work and household chores is one of the most difficult tasks to manage.

While working from home, the self-employed actually spend more time messing up the household than cleaning it! It's important to find the balance between household chores and work chores.

Work from Home Tip #3

Managing interruptions and disruptions to the work day when working from home is not an easy task. It may seem as though working from home would actually have fewer distractions than working in and office, but this usually is not the case.

Friends and family may not realize that working from home requires more dedication to the work than working at a job site, and it's easy to be taken advantage of, asked to run errands, and to hear that dreaded phrase, "Well, since you don't really work..."

Learning to manage time and personal interests versus work chores is critical for the self-employed in order to continue to be successfully self-employed and make money.

Work from Home Tip #4

Working from home doesn't always mean more money than working for someone else. It is true that the self-employed are limited on their income only by their desire to succeed and earn, able to take on bigger and better jobs, work longer hours, etc, to make more money. However, there are other factors to consider.

For example, when self-employed, there is no employer contributing money into Social Security and retirement accounts and no one is taking taxes out of a paycheck, so taxes will be due at the end of the year. The self-employed usually can't take advantage of group health insurance reduced rates that larger employers can offer their employees. There is also the overhead cost to consider, such as the increase in household expenses since working from home means someone is home all day using heating and cooling, water and other utilities.

Work from Home Tip #5

While working from home may seem appealing because of the freedom aspect - not having to ask an employer for time off work, being able to come and go from work or the home during the day, etc.-it is important to note working from home requires a great deal of organizational and motivational strength.

As a general rule, someone who is self-employed needs to be more organized and motivated than an employee working on a job site, because there is the freedom aspect of not having a boss standing over watching every move. It is easy to slip into a non-work mode and slack off, but then the pay will suffer too.

Working from home can indeed provide freedom, flexibility, an ability to choose the projects and type of work performed, and to set working hours that fit the needs of the self-employed. As great as this sounds, and it can be a wonderful option for some people, there is a downside to working from home that should be considered before deciding if working from home is a viable option for you.