To ask what you do if you work from home?

[Onesieone]

I'm a SAHM and recently have read about lots of mums who WFH. But no one says what they do. I'm i tributes and think I might want a piece of that action. So can ye tell me what u do if u WFH please.

[Dorris83]

My DH works from home. He is a graphic designer with his own business.
He studied design at university and spent a year working a 'normal' job and working on his business outside of that to get it to a place that he could do it full time. It's brilliant now as he works flexibly and does half day childcare for our DS.

[Nyborg]

My DH works from home as a freelance writer and editor. It's a nice lifestyle but he spent 15 years at the start of his career building a reputation as he worked his way up from staff writer jobs to editorships / group editorships, so it's not an immediately accessible sort of work.

[Hoppinggreen]

I'm a webinar trainer, freelance writer and Business Consultant.
Mainly do it from home but I do go to meetings etc about once a week

[Onesieone]

Hmmm. I see. My child health degree wouldn't help with those jobs at all. I wonder should I retrain? My OH works from home a couple days a week as a financial manager. Again no job in that area for my qualifications.

[NumptyNameChange]

i am in the process of switching over to working from home. i've had my first interview and a lot of interest from a prospective employer for whom i'd be providing their online and phone customer support and dealing with a few simple business issues. second interview with the partner coming up soon.

i have also registered a ltd company that may be pie in the sky but may also become a way of me using all of my skills and creating genuine work from home on a salary opportunities for some of the mass of overqualified wonderful women with a ton to offer but no desire to sell their soul to the world of work in order to make a living. in the very long term it would also be good to sell training and consultancy services for high quality customer service systems.

it can be done and no you don't have to a qualified accountant or designer or such - there are ways that working from home can benefit companies and employees alike and i suppose i'm hoping to prove and sell that fact and help me and others like me get paid for our skills and reliability and motivation rather than our conformity to an outdated system of 'work'.

fingers crossed.

[minibmw2010]

I'm a legal secretary/PA to the head of a small law firm and work remotely from home. My boss works either out of his house or his office and I have a full office set up at home. We communicate by email or phone and it works well, we don't need to see each other at all I can do work from my iPhone if it's just diaries, meeting arrangements etc when I'm not in the house.

[NumptyNameChange]

you need to focus on transferable skills and on the WHO YOU ARE element. think outside the box in terms of what your background or quals are and think about jobs where they could hire someone cheap as chips but shit or YOU for slightly more but you'd be a zillion times better and more reliable.

[Baileyscoffeeandcampfires]

I sell dd to KK cup bras via my shop on ebay

[FrankUnderwood]

I'm an analyst working in technology for a financial services company. Doesn't matter if I'm at the office or not, because the team are all overseas.

[MetellaEstMater]

I work from home three days out of five on average (though not necessarily full days IYSWIM). I'm a consultant with one of the big accountancy firms. I'm based at home and travel to visit clients (most are closer to my home than to my office). I try and be in the office for a day a week to see colleagues but because of the way we work often there's not many people in!

[ConfusedPixie]

A friend of mine writes articles for the article type sites where you get money. She started by writing a few science-y/psychology ones for free to get people interested in her (her area of interest), then a few that are 'pay-per-view' but most of her income comes from commissioned work. She gets £30 per article on average depending on how long it'll take her to research and write it (a £30 article would take roughly two hours to complete, including research). But she has to spend time on the 'pay-per-view' ones to get the commissioned ones. It's not a well paid or regular job but you can get into it like that and build up a reputation.

There are a few who do child-related subjects, I've looked into it as that's my field and they can be nice little earners, especially the health-related topics.

[TwistAndShout]

I'm a childminder. Gives me all the flexibility I need for my own DC and running my own successful business.

[Tailtwister]

I'm a project manager and it's common for us to work from home. Our teams are generally based all over the world. Right now I have team members in 12 countries. Most of our client meetings are teleconferences with the very occasional face to face. I work part-time, usually start at 7am then work to 4 and then an hour or two in the evenings (I have team members in Australia).

Cutting the commuting hours works for me but it can be quite isolating. It's nice to get into the office now and then for meetings and to see people. I've worked for years with people I've never met and it's always really strange to meet them for the first time as they NEVER look how I pictured them.

[glenthebattleostrich]

Another childminder here.

It allows me to be with dd whilst earning and I get to play all day.

[Pigsmummy]

This has come up before. Working from home doesn't often mean that you don't need childcare.

What did you do before?

I work for a large IT services organisation and all the field sales, project managers and support staff work from home. Over 10,000 in the UK. I am field sales, when I am not in front of my customers I work from home. It's great as I get to drop off baby at nursery later if I am having a quiet day and on a nanny day I get to see a lot of baby by popping to see what they are up to between calls and loo breaks etc

Companies that offer this are BT, Cisco, Juniper, O2, Alternative Networks, Vodafone, NetApp, Azurri, Capita, SAP, Michael Page, Forest, Gartner, Cap Gemini, KPMG, most software companies and many more.

Good recruitment companies are Michael Page, Huxleys, Computefutures, progressive, CD recruitment, BM and others. checkout Monster and Total jobs.

[WaffilyVersatile]

I run my own website (and more recently Facebook page) selling gifts I make. I'll never make my millions from it but it has meant I could be at home for the last 8 years.

[InMySpareTime]

I'm a children's storyteller and author. I run workshops for events and schools. The work is varied, fun and interesting, but there's a lot of marketing and chasing leads for little gain, especially at first.

[MmeGuillotine]

I'm a novelist. Right now that means I've spent weeks lazing around reading about the Third Reich, eating Reese's and working my way through a Gilmore Girls boxed set as I'm on a research phase, but when I'm actually WRITING it's pretty intense and feels like very hard work.

[PollyIndia]

I work from home - I have a digital music consultancy and my main clients are in Germany and USA. It is good for me as am a single mum so means I don't have to commute into central London and can manage my own time. I still have childcare though.

[arethereanyleftatall]

I call myself a sahm but actually I do about 4 hrs pw remotely marketing for one friend who runs her own business, and the same amount of admin for another. I might also learn how to wax, and them might offer that from home.

[SantasLittleMonkeyButler]

I am a Business Seller on eBay & Amazon. I sell swimwear/beachwear.

No specific skills needed, but you do need a certain amount of money to start up. You need (obviously) to purchase stock before you can start to sell, and anything you make goes back in to new stock for quite a while. Once you have your reputation & listings built up you can make a decent profit.

You also need basic book-keeping/spreadsheet skills to correctly record everything - both for yourself & the tax man!

Oh, and you also need a spare room or a watertight shed or garage to keep your stock in!

I'll never make millions but it fits in well with the DCs and I am much happier working for myself than I was as an employee.

[redandyellowbits]

I work from home - I am a freelance writer in a specialist are and have a PhD in the subject. I also spent my pre-marriage years working all hours in the same industry and built a good reputation for myself. So the reward is that I have a good stream of freelance work coming in and am never short of work.
But I couldn't do it without childcare.

[ISeeYouShiverWithAntici]

Tourism website.

I used to design training courses (cipd qualified trainer) and also bespoke policies and procedures for the care sector (risk assessment, fire safety, disciplinary, etc) I still have my massive resource on that, hundreds and hundreds of policies, procedures and forms, but I only do word of mouth stuff as favours these days because, frankly, it's as dull as dishwater.

[softlysoftly]

Marketeer, WFH for a national company but do travel a day at least once a fortnight, more frequently if necessary.

Also do marketing for our own business and help friends out, the main job pays, the others don't as yet!

I think there is going to be a generalised shift to home working where possible, it makes more sense than centralised office costs as long as you get the right kind of people (ie not slackers!).

Doesn't mean you don't need childcare though unless your child is school age and over. Anything under that and you can promise a "mummy i've done a POOOO, WIPE ME" mid conference call'