10 Part/Full-Time Jobs You Can Do From Home

By Kate Lorenz

(CareerBuilder.com) -- How would you like to work from home? No hustling out the door 10 minutes late, no fighting your road rage or battling for the last seat on train, no fast food lunch and no noisy co-workers. Sounds like heaven doesn't it?

More than ever, workers are attracted to the 30-second commute, thanks to social and economic trends. Technologies necessary for setting up a home office are widely available, relatively inexpensive and getting easier for people to use. And more workers are seeking flexible schedules to care for aging parents and children.

Many people associate working from home with starting a home-based business and becoming an entrepreneur, but more and more employers are offering this option to workers in order to attract and retain top employees. In fact, 7.6 million employees conduct work from home every month.Home-based working is growing rapidly, according to a 2004 survey by ITAC, the association for advancing work from anywhere. The number of employed Americans who worked from home, from as little as 1 day a year to full time, grew from 41.3 million in 2003 to 44.4 million in 2004.

Don't fret, there are jobs that you can find with established employers. Even if the job is advertised as office-based, these positions are telework-friendly and could be in your future.

Administrative assistant

Also known as virtual assistants, home-based administrative assistants use office experience and computer skills as support personnel. Many skills easily transition into this position which offers many part-time and temporary opportunities.

Advertising sales agent

It's said that Americans are exposed to more than 3,000 ad messages a day. Advertising sales representatives sell or solicit advertising space in print and online publications, custom-made signs, or TV and radio advertising spots.

Computer software engineer

Computer software engineers are projected to be one of the fastest-growing occupations over the 2002-2012 period. Duties include design, development, testing and evaluation of computer software, and continual training is suggested for the quickly evolving industry.

Corporate event planner

Employed by a private company rather than a hotel or convention facility, a corporate event planner coordinates staff activities including group meetings, client presentations, special events, conventions and travel.

Copy editor

Copy editors mostly review and edit a writer's copy for accuracy, content, grammar and style. This is a competitive field; however, the growth of online publications and services is spurring the demand for writers and editors, especially those with Web experience.

Desktop publisher

Desktop publishers use computer software to format and combine text, images, charts and other visual elements to produce publication-ready material. Duties of this fast-growing profession include writing and editing text, creating graphics, converting photos and drawings into digital images, designing page layouts and developing presentations.

Data entry clerk

Like administrative assistants, job prospects should be best for those with expertise in computer software applications. By typing text, entering data into a computer, and performing other clerical duties, these workers ensure companies keep up with information and technology.

Insurance underwriter

Insurance underwriters serve as the main link between the insurance carrier and the insurance agent. Underwriters analyze insurance applications, calculate the risk of loss from policyholders, decide whether to issue the policy and establish appropriate premium rates.

Market research analyst

Market Research Analysts gather data on competitors and analyze prices, sales, and methods of marketing and distribution. They often design surveys, compile and evaluate the data and make recommendations to their client or employer based upon their findings.

Paralegal

While lawyers assume ultimate responsibility for legal work, much of their work is delegated to paralegals. Paralegals not only assist in preparation for closings, hearings, trials, and corporate meetings, they also perform a number of other vital functions including draft contracts, mortgages, separation agreements, trust instruments and may assist in preparing tax returns and planning estates.

If you want to make the case to a potential employer or your boss to let you work from home, keep a few things in mind. If possible, provide concrete examples of how this arrangement was successful in the past or how it will succeed.

COPYRIGHT CAREERBUILDER.COM 2009. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS ARTICLE MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST OR OTHERWISE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN AUTHORITY

Kate Lorenz is the article and advice editor for CareerBuilder.com. She researches and writes about job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues.

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Websites for Teens to Earn Money Online

As the end of the school year approaches, many high school and college students find themselves scrambling for summer jobs so that they can save up some spending money.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many decent paying jobs available for teens, especially in a rough economic climate. However, there are a number of websites that offer very easy money for teens online. For a teenager who is disciplined and responsible, online jobs are the easiest way to earn a significant wad of cash this summer.

Websites That Offer Easy Money for Teens

Teenagers today typically have an assortment of skills that are useful and valuable on the Internet. For teens who are skilled writers, earning money will be that much simpler. Additionally, there are also well paying jobs available for teenagers who know how to write web pages, write high-volume blogs or forum posts, or program in different Internet or desktop programming languages. However, finding those opportunities often involves wading through a mountain of garbage and scams. This article will provide teens with a guideline for the best opportunities on the web that offer easy money for teens.

1. Easy Income for Teens Who Can Write Articles

For any teen that has excellent writing skills, the Internet offers an abundance of cash just sitting there for the taking. Yes, it may take a full eight hours a day of good solid writing work – but what could be better than rolling out of bed at ten in the morning and going to work at home, in your pajamas? Sound too good to be true? Well put on your pajamas and check out these opportunities.

Associated Content

Associated Content is one of the most popular “user-generated content” sites that offers articles on just about every topic under the sun. 

At Associated Content, you can either “claim” topics from the assignment desk, or you can submit topics of your choosing. You can earn both upfront payments, as well as monthly payments based on traffic to your articles. Starting out, you might only earn $3 to $4 per article you write, plus $1 to $2 for traffic – but if you wrote 5 articles a day, that’s $400 a month, plus additional monthly royalty payments.

Not only does writing for a site like AC establish you as a writer, but if your writing is exceptional, AC will even consider you as a preferred content producer, and their clients may ofter you writing gigs that pay $20 and up for an article.

Helium

Helium is another user-generated content forum that pays you both upfront fees as well as traffic royalties.

Helium is unfortunately a bit cheaper with their payments, and they’ve established a bunch of loopholes you need to jump through. You can earn about $1 per article plus traffic payments. However, to earn those payments you have to spend time “rating” articles – a painful and tedious process of comparing two articles and picking the one that’s better. But with Helium, the real money is in the “marketplace” section, where you can compete on client writing gigs worth anywhere from $5 to $100 or more.

Triond

Triond is another content site that accepts your articles and pays you royalties for traffic.

Triond is one of the few sites known for actually sending authors the payouts they’ve earned, so it deserves mention here. However, if you want to use Triond to add an income stream to your summer writing, you’ll need to submit a very large quantity of articles that are well written with SEO in mind, and can attract a very large stream of readers from the search engines. If you can accomplish that, then yes – you can earn money from Triond.

2. Make Money Writing Reviews or Writing Letters

One of the most popular reasons many people use the Internet is to research products before buying them. This has turned “reviews” into one of the most popular types of content online. If you like writing up product reviews, then there are countless opportunities to earn income from your written opinions.

I’ve written for Shared Reviews (the image above) before, because they do legitimately pay their authors. However, I’ve also heard that Epinions is another great review site to earn money from.

Have your friends ever told you that you’re amazing at writing letters? Then consider spending your summer creating custom letters at Letter Rep. Yes, the website isn’t exactly the prettiest site in the world – but by submitting letters to custom letter requests that visitors submit to the site, you stand to earn $10 per letter. Not only that, future visitors to the site can also purchase your letters, making your pile of work a wonderful source of residual income, not only throughout the summer, but even throughout the school year.

3. Quick Money for Teen Programmers

If you are an ace programmer with any programming language, you could spend your summer doing programming freelance jobs for some real cash. However, when it comes to finding freelance work, you have to be very careful what websites you visit – as most of them are useless or flat out scams.

Scriptlance is about as far from a scam as you can get. At the beginning of my online writing career, I spent months sifting through the latest project postings there (there are dozens per hour), and bidding on the ones that matched my skill set. There’s writing work, but the bulk of Scriptlance is programming work. If you post a professionally written proposal to the person who posted the project, your chance of landing the gig will be excellent. Just working on scriptlance projects alone, you could easily earn several thousand dollars by the end of the summer.

Other legitimate freelancing sites (although none quite as big as Scriptlance), include Rent A Ghost Writer, Elance, and iFreelance. Be sure to watch for new updates often, and be the first to post a bid.

Work Hard, Be Persistent, and Rake in the Dough!

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