to ask what you do if you are self employed/work at home

[PocketFluff]

In a few threads recently people have talked about being self employed, some only doing a few hours a week, or being able to have a work at home job that fits around the children.

Can I be nosey and ask what it is you do and get a bit of the action myself?

mumteedum My daughter goes to nursery 9-3 and i manage my work around those hours. When i get busy (like now!) I work evenings after she's gone to bed at 7. Think i crawled into bed at 1am this morning... i am looking forward to 'maternity leave' (Ha!) in 6 weeks time!

Artist and printer, have converted front room of our house into a studio.

stubbornstains - if I didn't already love my job, id be after yours!

Copy-editor/proofreader.

Counsellor

Writer

Waves back to TheSmallPrint :)

Freelance sub-editor.

Freelance trainer.

I have fulltime employment now but was self-employed for a while as a writer/editor a few years back.

Nearly every gig I had, I got through previous employment (I had worked in both magazine and book publishing).

The only job I've ever had that wasn't with a previous employer was someone who wanted my copywriting experience that I'd got in a very specific niche for one of those employers.

In other words, the best way to get freelance proof-reading/editing/writing work is get a fulltime job OR (as it's not easy, I know), to be very lucky and very good and land a gig somewhere else.

Once you have one it's much easier to build up a portfolio.

I'm a private tutor. Work at home during the day preparing lessons mnetting and doing admin and then tutor after school and on Saturday mornings. Most tutoring is in the students home but I do have a few students who come to me!

Gardener,grower and sometimes I work on the farm.Generally I work 9-3 Monday to Thursday,but during lambing,shearing or busy times I'll do the sheep and feed the lambs first thing,go to my gardening jobs,come home,pick up the DDs and go back down to the sheep until 6 or later if something is lambing. I've been self employed for 13 years now and can't imagine not being.

As Ive been asked, our glampycampsite is here

there goes annonymity.....

Freelance writer, mostly stuff for trade mags but also training materials. Some editing.

Monday, I am trained in the professional field I write for. I worked as a journalist on one of the business to business mags, held a variety of roles and met lots of people from other similar publications along the way. After eight years and two children, commuting and childcare plus a husband who works long hours, combined to make my position untenable, so I went freelance and looked up all the contacts I had made over the years. They remembered me (always smile, never be rude!), liked what they had read of my writing in the past, and gave me work.

It is still a juggle, especially as I do voluntary work too (PTA, governor) but worth it for the huge change it has made to our family life.

Nettletea
WOW, I'm not often jealous of other people's self employments.

I'm still working but pregnant with number 3 and won't be returning.

I'm a speech and language therapist. My plan is to do a bit of additional training in mindfulness and behaviour analysis to become a sort of language/behaviour/parenting consultant/offer tutoring to children with language difficulties/run language/behaviour/early parenting workshops etc. I already can offer a range of things like Incredible Years, early communication training, specialist training for school support staff that's accredited, dyslexia support etc but I try to expand my "portfolio" of what I can offer each year.

I'm not really looking for loads and loads of work, just to do enough to keep my hand in and pick up a bit of money. I have been acquiring and stockpiling assessments and resources since I first qualified and have put a lot into training, so for the next few years I just intend to do enough to keep my professional reg active, keep me up to date etc and then scope out what sort of business I can make out of it (if any).

I love studying and training so I am lucky that way, I will always happily sidestep.

Illustrator doing children's stuff, and the very odd bit of prop-making. I'm not exactly busy, but it's been what I've been able to cope with while DS is at nursery.

Same as educatingarti, except I've recently also taken on someone else as well to cover areas that I don't cover. I have a few daytime students (post-16 and post-18), but mainly I'm out of the house from 4pm-9pm.

I also carry out data analysis and run training sessions on a consultancy basis for pharmaceutical/biotech companies, medics and academics (to keep up some of my past research interests and knowledge).

I do exam marking too and serve on the editorial boards of a number of scientific journals, though the latter is unpaid.

Pluses, working for yourself. No company politics. Minuses, work creeps into everything because your home is also your work space. The benefits definitely outweigh the negatives though.

I'm a maths tutor, currently do about 5 hours in the evenings and hoping to do more daytime work when dd is at school. I was a maths teacher before the children were born.

I also do A level exam marking around May/June which is a nice extra, especially since this is when the tutoring dries up for the summer.

Pluses, working for yourself. No company politics.

This ^

It is so nice not to have to deal with "politics" and interesting relationships between colleagues. I also have no problems getting on with my boss these days!!

I'm amazed at the range of interesting and creative jobs you lot are doing! Very inspirational.

To the tutors - how do you get your pupils? Is it all word of mouth, do you advertise or do you 'sell yourself' to schools to promote you?

I signed up to a company a few years ago now to do exam marking (ks1 and 2) but never heard anything back. Is there any in particular that people would recommend?

And to everyone, thank you! Hope this thread has been an inspiration to people as much as it has to me!

IT consultancy - lots of aspects.
Don't always work from home, sometimes have to travel away/offshore/ sequestered premises for weeks/months at a time.

Lots more travel once kids grew older/left home
XW was a bit of a cow, so I tended only to get weekends, and only when I fought hard for them up to 2 a month.

Worked for a major corporate, offered a job by a contractor, did that for a bit and now contract for myself/others.

Sadly, get bored easily at home which is why when working on some types of documents you may see me on MN more often.

Getting some in - hard to do as you need 10+ years of experience on doing the stuff I do - much of which you could never get if you managed kids :-(

pocketfluff I get my students through advertising. I advertise on Hometutorsdirectory. I have let if slide a bit because I also have a P/T teaching job that is eating into my time. i want to go back to tutoring though.

I have also applied to do exam marking and haven't heard anything back. Normally the jobs are online at the examining boards. EDEXCEL is the big one, also AQA and OCR.

Sorry, I was trying to correct my typos and hit post instead. ( I'm not really an illiterate teacher