Rob H
June 2, 2016 at 2:23 pm
It depends. One criterion is where you live. Per capita income in affluent countries may be 20 times what it is in other places. The internet helps level the playing field so you may be competing with workers happy to earn just 10% of what you might need.
You can factor in considerations like the benefit of working at times you choose and without the cost and journey-time to a workplace. As a parent working from home you may avoid having to pay for child-care.
The home-working field is wide-open to exploitation, there are plenty of scams, not just thinly disguised pyramid schemes and "money mule" operations but those where first you must pay for training or equipment only to find that there is no work or it is so badly paid as to be not worthwhile. You may do some work on the promise of generous payment but no money is forthcoming, you complete the work but get no response or are told "it's not to the required standard" so no pay and the "employer" is in another country so what can you do?
The most important thing to say is that you should regard all unsolicited email offers of work by email as scams. They may be supported by flashy enticing web-sites proposing high income for little effort and featuring (fake) testimonials. Sorry but there is no Father Christmas. If it sounds to good to be true then it isn't true.
In any case seeing what someone else is doing then doing the same is not smart. They have an advantage, they've been doing it for a while, they have knowledge and experience, if they are smart they'll be charging the right price for the right service and delivering to or above expectations. They will be using their experience to improve their offering. Commonly a new entrant will try to win customers with lower prices. You can end up with a race to be cheapest and end up earning almost nothing.
I guess this is sounding rather negative - but I hate to see people being ripped off and it's usually those who can least afford it who suffer. So some more positive suggestions:
If at all possible deal directly with your end-customer - or keep the chain as short as possible.
Of course there is money to be made if you can become the middle-man in that chain putting customers in touch with suppliers but adding value by helping the customer choose the best product/supplier for their need.
Place strong emphasis on maintaining good relationships with suppliers and customers (but stay alert, don't let anyone take advantage of you).
Look for something you can do which is creative, innovative, unique and for which there is a need. If I knew what that was I'd be doing it!
Innovate: There are jobs for which there's a standard tried and tested solution and nobody sees a need to challenge the status quo. Can some new thinking identify a radical new approach to the task - cheaper, better, quicker?
I know one guy who started a blog on a topic he knew a lot about, did well, became the recognised expert, created and sold some related products and now it makes him GBP 3,000 a month without much effort. In reality he was an expert to start with, the blog was important in spreading his reputation. There was some "competition" but not much and not very good. Any "new" competitor now would have a difficult task to get to the same level.
Promising areas of enterprise tend to be "new" so 15 years ago web-design might have been a worthwhile choice, now there's a web desiger on every street corner ready to work for peanuts so forget it.
One to one tuition using Skype works for some people, a lot lower pay than face to face tuition - bad as if you're the provider, good if you're the customer.
People will pay well to get the jobs they don't like done (unblocking sewers?). They'll pay well for rapid results.
There is value in expertise and knowledge. For example it is possible to buy and sell at places like eBay using expert knowledge to help you spot under-valued items and again demonstrate your expertise in the sales process to maximise the price. First become the expert.
