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.

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When I went home jobless (in the sense that I was no longer affiliated with any company), and with our newly born son, my wife was less convinced that we could make it, most especially here in our rural hometown that didn’t have any need for my skills, primarily creative like writing, lecturing, managing publications, movie making… such stuffs. I had spent my first seven years after college teaching in Manila and Batangas; the next four years in business; two years as a freelancer; returning to Manila and the academe for another three years, thinking of settling down. But I changed my mind all of a sudden. Instead, I went back home.

At the time I didn’t know what to do or what to work on. But with the transfer of my broadband connection here from a rented place in Laguna, I told myself I had to make good and profitable use of the Internet. There were scams, yes, but still there was evidence that people make money online by doing business or working from home. I must sit down and try to figure out how they did it. I stumbled upon oDesk, a marketplace for online work. Here I encountered the term remote service provider for the first time. I spent hours learning how to get online jobs, the tools they use, the payment method, and reading about the experiences of other users, which interestingly included Filipino providers. I did not waste time to create my own account, take the required test and applied to jobs.

It was 2008 and a global recession was looming. Fortunately, after a month of job search and application, I was hired as a virtual assistant for a real estate company based in Washington (which I kept even after oDesk on as needed basis). Still, my wife was hardly convinced even as I got my first pay through Payoneer. The first months were encouraging. But recession had finally set in, badly affecting real estate in the US, and the number of MLS listings got scarce. Still I kept my work managing the sites for my buyer. The following year I was also hired by a Spanish learning company based in New York as an Internet marketing analyst. With better pay, this time I could say that working on oDesk could be lucrative. I even became a Top Virtual Assistant on the conclusion of my work with my first buyers.

Eventually, my wife became interested and joined, but because of the baby, she could only assist me in my projects. I realized that we were a team from the time we first knew each other. She joined the creative organization that I founded when she was in high school (and I was already a college instructor), and she assisted me in my computer desktop services upon graduation.

Now, in our new teamship we must strive constantly to make things work for our young family. So we can accomplish even some of our dreams. As husband and wife, we are a team, but we can also be a team at work. As outsourcing has stood firmly throughout the recession, helping businesses worldwide to survive the hard times, it has also become evident that, given the right skills and the willingness to learn new things, we can do well here, especially through oDesk. So today, we launch Sulit Outsourcing Services, currently specializing in project management, Internet marketing/SEM/SEO assistance, social media, web research, data entry and multimedia presentations. I bet a husband-and-wife tandem like this one can truly guarantee good services and results that every buyer expects, and we look forward to proving that to you soon.

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