What type of work is available online

So you want to work online

Nowadays everything seems to be online. But what type of work is available online?  There are many people who no longer want to go shopping for food and clothes. If they work long hours they don’t want to waste time going out to shops to buy necessities.

We make appointments online, apply for jobs, fill in application forms. Do the food shop, check out and book traders, apply for passports, order takeaways etc. The list just goes on and on. I however will stop there before I fill the page.

There are many reasons that people decide to work online. Working from home can seem an easy option to many.

Pro’s

You don’t have to go out in all weathers, no traffic, no public transport to worry about and no crowds of people all fighting to get to work on time too. No uniform or work clothes to worry about, you could work in your pyjamas if you want to.

You don’t have to prepare food to take or pay for expensive lunch and snacks.

You are at home for deliveries, workmen and best of all the children. If your kids are at home because of illness or holidays then you are there, so no childcare to arrange or pay for.

Sounds great doesn’t it?

Cons

Can be very time-consuming depending upon the work you do. You need to be disciplined. It’s too easy to think, I will just do this, watch that, go out and do the work later.

Many people expect you to be available because it’s not ‘Real” work.

If children are at home with you, it’s not easy to concentrate and get work done.

What sort of work is best for you?

There are many sites that offer jobs working for someone else such as paid surveys, freelancing jobs, online tutoring, product testing, translation, transcription, content writing, internet research jobs and blogging to name a few.

I confess here that I have no idea what the earning potential of this work is, what such work entails or how often the work is offered. I have just checked to see what is out there but not gone into it any deeper than that.

If your job in the real world is computer based many companies offer the option to work from home a few days or more, a week.

Running your own business

So you like the idea of your own business? After all, it’s online so how hard can it be? No finding a bricks and mortar shop or office. No exorbitant business rates. Just set it up and the customers will come.

So it’s easy, isn’t it? Or is it? Perhaps in theory it is.

Well first you have to decide what sort of business you want.

The choices to sell goods!

People buy goods online 24 hours a day. I read there are something like 4 billion users of the internet on a daily basis. That is a colossal amount of people.

You can either make your goods to sell or buy items to sell at a profit, new or secondhand.

With this you have a shop on a site like Folksy, Etsy and Ebay, to name but a few. There are many more and new sites spring up all the time.

For this you will need to take good photos and write descriptions of each individual item. Does take a while. When you sell an item, then it has to be parceled up and posted. If you hand make your inventory it will need to be replaced. You can also make to order.

Another option is FBA. This is popular on Amazon and known as Fulfilled by Amazon. First you set up an account. Then find a saleable item you can make a profit on, buy a quantity and deliver them to Amazon to store in their warehouse. When you make a sale, they will pack and post it for you. There is a charge for storing as well as post and packing.  The good part is no storage needed and no packing and posting by you.

Dropshipping is another option. This entails finding a company who’s products you like that do dropshipping and sign up for an account. Then you select items you want to sell and add them to your website. When a customer buys, you place their order with the company and the rest is done by them.

There is obviously more to this than I write here. I have looked into it, but not actually taken part in the practice.

Blogging

Many people make money from blogging, sharing their experiences traveling. Doing reviews of products or selling products themselves. Once they have built up a following, advertisers are keen to work with them and happily pay to have their products featured on a popular blog.

It does take time and effort to build a following. Many of the top bloggers have been writing theirs for years. You need to post regularly and the content needs to be interesting to your followers.

Marketing

People do marketing for others, either working for a company or working for themselves.

Whatever you do or make you have to market your items. Online there is always competition and you have to be constantly pushing your wares forward to be seen.

If you don’t advertise your wares, you don’t sell anything. If you want to sell successfully you need to advertise daily. This means you need to be part of as many social media platforms as possible. Once on those platforms, interaction with others is key to building a following.

No following or very few, means none or very few see what you have to offer.

Affiliate Marketing

This is another option, one I am learning about. Companies pay affiliate marketers to advertise their products, if someone buys a product through your link/advertisement, then you get a commission. The amount of commission does depend upon the company.

I was amazed how many companies there are using affiliate marketers, big companies too, like Amazon.

Like any other work, you have to learn what to do and how to find these companies and how to advertise them.

As an affiliate marketing business, though you don’t need to find or make goods, you still need social media. If you don’t advertise in any way, no one sees what you are offering, so no one buys.

Check out these posts if you want to research a bit more. Click HERE! and HERE!

My recommendation for affiliate marketing is HERE!

Conclusion.

So these are a few of the options available, I am sure you can find many more if you do the research.

Working for others, you just need to follow their guidelines and stick to their schedule. So that’s fairly straightforward. Finding the suitable work is something that will take research.

Running your own business, working hours that suit you, is many people’s dream, but it is hard work with a lot to learn.

So whichever way you go it does involve hard work. There are many that offer ‘Get rich quick systems/schemes’ but if it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

I wish you great success in whichever direction you decide to go.

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