I've Been Working at Home Since...
my lovely daughter was born - she's 14 now.
Before I Worked From Home I....
owned a Travel Agency in partnership with a good friend - happy days.
What I Do From Home
My day job now focuses on my website www.decorating-vacation-property-for-profit.com. Every day I look to see how many people visited my site the previous day and check for any messages.
I invite visitors to the site to send me their decorating questions and I do my best to answer quickly and thoroughly. The site is aimed at the vacation property owner decorating and equipping their property in readiness for paying guests but, of course, many of the ideas on the site would apply just as much to ones own home.
Some days I write a new page and choose the pictures to go with it - this is my favourite part of the job.
How I Got Started as a WAHM (or WAHD)
As a new mum, I missed being part of the 'real' world and much as I wanted to be a full time mum, I knew I needed more mental stimulation than that role was providing.
It is difficult to find work that fits in with a young baby and in the UK, the high cost of childcare meant that almost all my earnings would be lost in expenses. I worried that I would be losing precious time with my daughter and wouldn't even be financially better off as a result.
The only option available was to find a work-at-home job that wouldn't incur any childcare costs and that I could work around my daughter's schedule - whether that be her afternoon nap or later on her nursery hours and later still, the school run.
There followed a number of years flitting from one failed get-rich-quick work-at-home scheme to another.
The bombshell that was my divorce hit when my daughter was 7 and I knew at that point that I needed to get serious. No longer would a work-at-home job that was mainly for my own 'entertainment' with a bit of money thrown in suffice - now I needed a proper income - it was scary.
I had a difficult decision to make. I could either get a 'proper' job and earn a decent income or try to create my own job at home. Clearly, from a financial viewpoint the first option made the most sense but at what cost? I felt that my lovely girl had enough change to cope with as her dad was moving out - could she cope with me suddenly being a full time working mum too? And how would I cope with the hours after school? Not to mention the long weeks of the school holidays...
I couldn't do it to her - I wanted her to have all the benefits of a stay-at-home mum despite the financial implications so I upped my effort to find a work-at-home job.
Eventually, I stumbled across a company called SBI who offer a product that enables people with no technical skills and minimal computer knowledge to build a website.
Initially, it appealed to me because I love writing and thought I would also enjoy the challenge of learning how a website is put together - something I knew absolutely nothing about.
I admit there are days when I just don't 'get' something technical and many's the time I have come close to throwing my laptop out the window from frustration but with the help of the good people on the SBI forum (an incredibly helpful bunch), I usually work it out in the end and now have a site of 200+ pages.
Advice
- Money isn't everything - freedom from the 9 - 5 is priceless
- I could have earned more if I had got a 'proper' job but I have never missed a sports day, school concert or prize giving and that means more to me than any paycheck could
- Sitting back at the end of the day and looking at my newly created webpage - available for anyone in the world to read - is a great feeling
- You don't have to jump all the way, all at once. You can start building a website with just a few hours a week:
- http://www.decorating-vacation-property-for-profit.com/work-at-home.html
