Work From Home Jobs

Working from home is ideal for many people - you can cut out the daily commute, leave the office-wear in the closet and earn a living from the comfort of your living room. Additionally, work from home jobs are becoming more and more prevalent each day. As software becomes better able to manage and facilitate businesses hiring out-of-office employees, and as office space and utilities become more expensive, many employers are looking to the option of hiring work from home sub-contracted or freelance employees to fill their non-management and customer service rolls.

Most Common Job Titles and Descriptions

• Content Writing

  If you’re already a strong and versatile writer, content writing can be both an interesting and well-paying work from home job. Content writers are hired to create text for blogs, articles, websites, social media online magazines, as well as for academic or business publications. Content writers will spend a lot of time thoroughly researching the subject they’re assigned and summarizing it into valuable, optimized written copy. Content writers are typically hired and rehired based on a portfolio of writing samples and the quality of work they’ve produced for their previous clients.

• Graphic Design and Art

  If you’re a talented artist looking for more work, you’ll find a wide variety of websites to display your talents and bid for contracts. Artists and graphic designers produce everything from website graphics and logo designs to video game character sprites and concept art, expanding their portfolios and sharing their work on sites like DeviantArt and Reddit.

• Virtual Assistants

  Virtual assistants provide all manner of online office support, including data entry, responding to customer queries, taking telephone calls, organizing diaries and taking meeting minutes. Virtual asssistants may work for many separate clients or just one or two main ones, offering support in a variety of ways.

• Community Managers

  Community management is something that started off in the games industry and spread to other areas as the prevalence and power of social media increased. Community managers oversee the management, growth, and engagement of various different social media accounts, acting as a bridge between businesses and their online communities.

• Virtual Customer Service

  This job involves answering inbound customer service and/or sales calls for retail or technology businesses. It can include responsibilities like answering website or product related questions, resolving customer complaints, and if the role involves sales, will also involve introducing, explaining, and selling online products or services.

• Bloggers

  Think you are an expert in a topic that others want to read about? Maybe you have a talent or you’re a subject matter expert and you want to share it with the world? If it’s something newsworthy, trendy, or catchy, the blogging world is full of readers and watchers who are ready and willing to consume your knowledge. Bloggers share valuable information through written, video, audio, and visual content. Once a blogger has a large enough readership, they can make money through putting up website advertisements or selling blog advertising sponsorships.

Salary Statistics and Growth

Salaries are highly variable, and much depends on previous experience and positive feedback from clients and readers. Many online jobs start out below $10 an hour, but with a little experience and positive client and customer feedback, you can increase your hourly rate considerably. For freelance artists and writers, earning potential very much depends on your level of talent, previous work output, breadth of portfolio, as well as client feedback and ratings. If blogging is something you pursue, the more blog visitor traffic you can get to your website, the more money you can make by advertising to those visitors. This salary range can fluctuate dramatically as blog readership increases or decreases.

Job Field Growth or Decline

The work from home industry is growing dramatically year over year. Employers are embracing the idea of being able to select staff from all over the world and are taking advantage of this opportunity to lower their facility and management costs. Workers are enjoying the move away from the conventional 9-5 job in order to adopt a more flexible working schedule and work environment. With more people working from home than ever before and more work from home job opportunities opening up, this job market doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Best Companies for Work at Home Jobs

• UpWork.com
  UpWork is an online freelancing site designed to match freelancers with employers. You can set up a profile with your background and experience, then start applying for jobs. UpWork covers the whole work from home spectrum, with everything from virtual personal assistant work to high level software development. All jobs are protected by UpWork’s policies, making it a safe and easy way to secure work.
• eDegreeAdvisor.com
  eDegreeAdvisor hires call center agents who match potential students with the right schools and degree programs from the comfort of their home. All you need to be an agent is a laptop, a decent headset with a microphone, and a passion for helping others earn their degree.
• Elance
  Elance is very similar to UpWork and has been around for a long time, with over $1.5 collectively earned by Elance freelancers since the site opened for business in 2006. It offers work in a wide range of areas, from legal and finance to engineering and marketing, as well as offering a wide variety of writing, administration and customer services roles.

Other Work at Home Employers

• Amazon.com
• American Express
• Apple
• Aetna
• Humana
• Convergys
• Angie’s List

Job Certifications, Training, Education Requirements

As you can do just about anything desk based from home, the requirements of these jobs really depend on the sort of work you want to do. Work is often project based, and in many ways, a good number of positive reviews from clients is more likely to get you work than a long list of certifications or educational achievements. Sites like UpWork and Elance provide tests for you to prove your skills and enhance your resume, helping you to demonstrate your aptitude for different types of role.

Where Can I Go From Here?

Starting out as a freelancer or online worker isn’t always easy, especially if you’re looking out for a more creative role. On most freelancing sites the more feedback you get from happy clients, the more likely you are to find new contracts, but you have to start somewhere. Many freelancers and work from home entrepreneurs start out part time until they have built up their portfolio to the point where they can fill a full time schedule and earn a full time salary. If you’re in a specialized career like software development or web-design you have a much better chance of finding a full time, online role simply based upon your resume.

Top 20 US Employers in This Field

Source: FlexJobs.com.

In addition to the employers listed above, there are many leading US employers that hire permanent work from home employees.

1. Teltech
2. Convergys
3. Sutherland Global Services
4. Amazon
5. Kelly Services
6. Kaplan
7. First Data
8. IBM
9. SAP
10. Westat
11. UnitedHealth Group
12. Dell
13. Working Solutions
14. Intuit
15. US-Reports
16. Xerox
17. PAREXEL
18. Aetna
19. Humana
20. VMware
21. Salesforce
22. American Express
23. HD Supply
24. Forest Laboratories
25. ADP
26. K12 Inc.
27. Cybercoders
28. U.S. Department of Transportation
29. Connections Academy
30. World Travel Holdings

Sources:

• http://www.businessinsider.com/
• https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm
• http://www.payscale.com/
• http://www.jjkeller.com/shop/Category/content_category_Human%20Resources_article_Employees-working-from-home-on-the-rise-BLS-survey-shows*072015_10151_-1_10551