As I write this, I’m thinking if I should accept an interview invitation from a Dubai-based buyer on oDesk. It requires a full 40 hours of work per week at $10 an hour. The unique offer comes with a fixed $40 just to take the required tests within two days upon acceptance. That’s how serious and big the company is. So what do you think?

I can only say that I am an avid fan of oDesk if I am able to compare it with other freelancing sites. So for the sake of conversation and probably, greener pastures, I have recently joined a couple of other online job sites. I will write a review as I make progress in each one.

Meanwhile, if you are really serious about making a living from the Internet, you cannot pass up each opportunity to make money online. You’ll dig through scam dirt, but this is also how you may discover gold.

Definitely, what I will be talking about is not scam. If you know ClixSense, this is a sister site — GeoString. You’ll get paid $10 instantly just for joining. At first, I could not believe this. I stumbled upon a survey site in the past that gave out $10 for each of seven test surveys before signing up, until I found out it’s a scam. It quickly relieved my doubt once I learned that GeoString.com is connected to ClixSense.

ClixSense.com, Inc. is the number one paid-to-click site. It has quite a few clicks for free members, but it gets better when you’ve upgraded to premium. Even the referral rate increases. For those who have yet to try PTC because they think it’s a shallow thing to do and simply a job for street smarts, well, the street smarts are already way ahead of us, earning residual income even as they sleep.

So what this GeoString does is pay you for becoming an opt in member of its email marketing program. The advertising revenues from the sponsors make it possible to pay the members for doing nothing more than creating a free account, referring others, and opening the once weekly email from the company.

Why do such sponsors pay to show you their products? Well, that’s business. If you want to sell something, you must spend for promotion and buy your customers into it. Many online marketing companies keep devising new and unimaginable ways to promote products and services through the Internet.

GeoString.com is a new program vouched by ClixSense’s good reputation, and even if there’s a chance for a program to fail, you certainly have nothing to lose cause you get it free, and only for allowing the company to send you a sponsored email once a week, which you already normally do spam or no spam.

Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook MySpace Reddit Stumble This Post

Web development and web programming skills remain to be the most demanded. So I will be virtually “schooling” again starting June (following the academic school year) to address my weaknesses on certain web-related skills. I want to make sure that I will have the expertise to be able to compete with other providers worldwide in these high-paying online jobs.

If you are particularly interested in languages, demand for translation is on the rise. Localization is increasingly becoming a trend, so you may want to find out which language you can take focus on. Find out the trend and learn the language that you think will be in high demand in the next few years.

As evidenced by many job posts recently, US buyers favor homeshoring or hiring providers in the same time zone. Online work is seen as a means to curb unemployment, as more and more Americans are into it and competing with providers from countries they formerly outsourced to, like India, Philippines and Ukraine.

Contrary to what others may have thought, online work is not as easy as it sounds. There is a lot of preparation involved to be competent and to become an expert in your chosen field. You compete for the right price and skill with other providers worldwide and ought to deliver what the buyer hired you for.

To view complete statistics pertaining to online jobs trend, download the Online Jobs Report courtesy of oDesk.

Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook MySpace Reddit Stumble This Post

In a previous post, I left you with some readings on the top reasons why people work from home. I believe they represent the views of freelancers across America, but what about us here?

With the failure of the NBN-ZTE deal, and the anomalies surrounding it, we also realized that we are not yet a 100% wired or wi-fi country. The truth is, despite our good numbers on the major social networking sites, majority of the population are still in the backwaters regarding the Internet technology. Businesses are mostly brick and mortar and not too many companies utilize virtual solutions.

Local outsourcing (in plain words, allowing a remote staff do the work for you) is a strange thing to speak of. More importantly, becoming self-employed like the freelancer is considered akin to being unemployed. You will have a hard time convincing your family that you do have work, except of course, when the money is in. The banks will have a hard time establishing your sources of income and you may not be approved for a payday loan.

There are certain advantages, of course. While the cost of daily commute, food and bed space eat much of the regular wage earner’s meager salary, those who work from home naturally don’t have to deal with such realities.

In this country, only a few professions are guaranteed to build wealth, employed or self-employed, like doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers and accountants. We may also include those who work in livestock and farming, given that they are already big players, like those wealthy and powerful families in my hometown.

The question, instead of why, is “who can really work from home?” Basically, these are people with computing skills, a computer set, and a reliable Internet connection. I believe we have more female than male freelancers, and most of them are outside the normally employable age limit of 25. I also suppose they are underemployed.

The Internet is a fertile ground for those who want to put to good use their special talents and interests, which they seldom have a chance to do when working in a company. One thing is true about work from home jobs–you can only work them out if you are a good fit.

When you are underpaid, underemployed or both, naturally, you are not satisfied with yourself and what you’re getting. The freelancer is born in you when you take risks and overcome the scariest part of being self employed.

Whatever your reason for becoming self-employed, as a work from home professional or online business owner, you have to find satisfaction from what you’re doing. It is what really counts anywhere in the world.

FKEVT5DT3YDJ

Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook MySpace Reddit Stumble This Post

Generally as a freelancer, I can consider it part of my job to sit as a panelist in a writing workshop, aside from my occasional lectures on either literature or journalism. Creative writing workshop is already an annual practice in the Philippines, sponsored and usually held during summer by leading Philippine universities such as UP, Silliman and my alma mater, UST.

There are more community-based and regional workshops out there focused on a genre of their choice that normally get funding from the National Commission for Cultural and the Arts. These efforts help inspire and sustain active writing in the country.

Hopefully, Philippine literature, in any language, will also get a sizable share of readership and a well deserved patronage from schools (that promote English and mostly foreign authors) and leading bookstores (that give the best space to foreign works).

Simply put, I’m dropping a note to inform you of a workshop that I will be conducting tomorrow at De La Salle-Lipa (DLSL) with my good old friend and a poet probably greater than anyone in our generation, Ramil Gulle. The activity is meant to introduce creative writing workshop in my province, as I have earlier pledged to help organize with Criselda “Crecee” Roldan, DLSL’s coordinator for arts and culture matters.

In brief, Ramil and I will share our poetry practices, and in turn, will let the participants “practice poetry.” I can’t think of a simpler way than this to start a discussion on poetry among newbies (as Crecee said). In the afternoon, we will explore (or more probably, just glance at) Formalism and Structuralism, at least to give them an idea how a reading can change from one’s standpoint. We will get sample poems from participants to critique (we’ll be kind, though).

As promised in my previous post, I will react to the readings I shared with you on the topic of “why people work from home,” but that will be for next (again!). Meanwhile, I would appreciate your comments on any of my posts.

Talk to you soon!

Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook MySpace Reddit Stumble This Post

I can count with my fingers the people from my place who actually work from home. Probably, the number is the same elsewhere in the Philippines. I can conclude by mere estimate that independent or personal outsourcing is not yet popular here. Working from home is a strange occupation that has yet to prove its worth, at least from the Filipino standpoint.

While outsourcing may have already been popular here through the call centers, working in one of them is still considered a day job for many. Despite the good salary, bonuses and incentives (like the latest cellphone or gadget), it is often transitional, or something basically rewarding to do as they plan and wait for a major career move.

Let me put it straight that I am not doing any convincing here, as in my earlier post, like you must leave your present job here or abroad, stay with the children and work online as an independent outsourcing provider. In fact, I am going to say that not all people can engage in this kind of job.

The first determinant if you are a good fit is your personality, followed by your skill set. Your present lifestyle (and income) may hinder you from working from home, and one way or another, it also says something about your attitude towards work. Remember that good attitude is foremost in the buyer’s criteria.

It takes a lot of patience from applying to a job post to actually working your hours. Whether offline or online, getting considered for a job takes time, and once you get started on a project, you must keep an open and alert mind, as your relationship with your remote client naturally would be verbal and impersonal, mechanical even, because of distance and your connection being virtual, not physical. Unlike your boss in the ‘real’ office, who gives you the feeling of Big Brother watching.

Nevertheless, outsourcing doesn’t demand too much from providers. There is always something for everybody, from form-filling to programming. Naturally, certain skills are paid higher. If you want to belong to the elite pack of high-income earners, then define your skill set and obtain upgrades to reach a high paying level. How do you do this? By studying (again) and getting certified (take some tests).

I leave you at this point to think and consider your options. Below are some readings on this topic. You will know what I think of them in my next post. Meanwhile, if you go to this link and scroll down, you will find a table of “rate distributions by job categories,” courtesy of oDesk.com. I know this information to be vital to your work-from-home success. In fact, when I looked at it, I thought I would need a major skill upgrade.

Readings:

• Escape the Cubicle Farm: Top 10 Reasons to Work From Home
• Ten Great Reasons to Work from Home
• 10 Reasons to Work from Home Online
• The Top 10 Reasons to Work from Home
• Ten Reasons Why People Work From Home

Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook MySpace Reddit Stumble This Post