Ravi’s Gadgets

Telecommuting is quickly becoming one of the most desirable types of employment. The ability to telecommute, either full time or part time, is appealing to employees for a number of reasons. Some of the reasons telecommuting is so appealing to many include the opportunity to spend more time with family, the ability to work according to your own schedule and the chance to avoid the hassles of commuting. While telecommuting is appealing for all of these reasons, there are some pitfalls to telecommuting.

Using Craigslist to Find Telecommute Positions

For those who are interested in securing a job where they are able to telecommute there is no better place to begin the search than Craigslist. While other popular websites designed specifically for job seekers have been slow to make telecommuting a prominent part of their community, Craigslist is leading the way in promoting telecommute options.

When employers post their job advertisements on Craigslist they are asked a series of questions regarding the position. These questions include some of the standard questions such as the salary range, years of experience required, education required and job locations. However, Craigslist also includes questions referring to whether telecommuting is an option for the position. The simple inclusion of this question makes it possible for job seekers to include whether or not telecommuting is acceptable in their search criteria.

Spend More Time with Family

Why are so many users of Craigslist seeking telecommute positions? As previously mentioned there are a number of appealing aspects to telecommuting. Those who have a spouse or children prefer telecommuting because it gives them more time to spend with their family. Employees who telecommute do not have to spend time traveling to and from their job during rush hours. This travel time can really add up and can take time away from the family. Parents who commute to a traditional job are often much more tired than those who are able to work from home. Those who commute also endure additional amounts of stress which can detract from family time.

Work at Your Convenience

Another reason job seekers are flocking to Craigslist to find telecommute positions is because they enjoy the ability to work around their own schedule. Parents of young children who telecommute can wake up early and work for two or three hours before their children wake up. They can then spend the morning with their children and then work a couple more hours after lunch while their child naps. Finally, the parent can conclude their workday in the evening after their children go to bed for the evening. This allows the parents to put in a full eight hour workday without compromising anytime with their children.

Parents who have school aged children can be available to drive their children to school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon but spend the time while their child is in school working. The parents may also wake early to work before their children wake up or put in additional hours after their child goes to bed. Again, it is clear why so many members of the Craigslist community are seeking these types of positions.

Avoid the Hassles of Commuting

Still another reason why Craigslist members are delighted with the ability to search for positions which specifically offer a telecommute option is the desire to avoid the hassle of commuting. Whether an employee commutes to a job via car, bus or train, it is likely to add a significant amount of time to the workday. This is time for which the employee is not usually paid and is time which detracts from family time. Also, depending on the difficulty of the commute it can result in dramatically increased stress levels.

The Downside to Telecommuting

Although many Craigslist members fully understand the appeal of telecommute positions, it is important to note there are some pitfalls to telecommuting. One of the obvious downsides to telecommuting is friends and family members do not always respect your personal time. They often feel as though imposing is possible because you are at home and have flexibility in your schedule. Another downside to telecommuting is it may sometimes be difficult to separate work and home. Those who work in a traditional office often have an easier time leaving their work at the office while those who work from home are not always able to make this distinction and may spend too much time working just because it is convenient. One of the most important downsides to telecommuting is the employer may question the amount of work the employee is doing. Although many employers offer telecommuting options, these same employers often put less faith in these employees and do not allow them to climb the corporate ladder as quickly as those who work within the office.

Marking the first anniversary of going full-time as a professional voice talent, Janice Downes has plenty to celebrate including her spectacular success at the online voice over marketplace, Voices.com

Several people tell me these days that they thing that I have been making too much of money from blogging. But I never look at it that way. If only I had been a full time blog monetizer, I would have made lots more, and am not at all happy with the pocket money, if you can call it so, from my blogs. If a waiter or a barman make $100 a week from a few blogs it might be good for them, but for me its almost nothing.

Well, I could definitely earn more if I spend more time on it, say perhaps $2000 a month, but trust me, it is really a boring job. Nothing bigger than the job of a Data Entry computer operator. Just read stuff somewhere, and write them on your blog, and get a paid post, and write about it. It is boring, and you will get fed up very soon. And it is not a challenging job. So fi you are just a bloody clerk, you could do that, But I dont think that I would be able to do much of that anymore.

By the way, I just spend a few minutes this afternoon thinking of all the opps that I have missed in the past few months, and that counts up to a few thousand dollars. I do remember the names fo the websites who wanted a blog article writen on them, but as payperpost says, I think it is unethical to contact them and get the opps for myself. After all, they have been paying me all these days and giving me oppertunities.

In blogging it is just loss of profits, and not really a loss. I am not loosing any money from my pocket, and the $10 that I pay for the hosting for my blogs every month, I dont really mind that.

I guess Im the only buy who has made about $1000 in the past 3 months from my blogs in Pondicherry. In Chennai and in other big cities in India there might be induviduals who make more, but in Pondicherry, being here for about 4 years now, and knowing quite a lot of IT people, I dont think many make money online with a website of any sort, let alone a blog.

When I googled, I didnt find a few blogs on Pondicherry, but most of them belonged to Expatriates, who dont really have a full base at Pondicherry, and their blogs are vague. My blog is not about Pondicherry, but I am at Pondicherry, and I write about a lot of things and capitalize on that.

It has even occured to me to stop doing everything else that I do, or leave them all to professional management, and get into real full time blogging and providing online advertisements on a big bunch of websites and owning a huge domain portfolio, and make money just writing and while sleeping.

Payperpost is a website that pay bloggers to blog about the things you love. I was very uncomfortable with the idea of making money from your blog by writing your reviews for companies that you have never heard of, and just doing a research on them with the very little time that you have to complete the task, about 6 hours, seemed weired to me actually. Making money with adsense is different, though I didnt make much money from it. But when advertisers are paying you for the link and a short review of them that would appear on the search engines when people do a rearch for the appropriate keywords, and if you get traffic to your blog with that, then why not do it? Payperpost is a community of bloggers where people get to scan all available oppertunities, and flag them if they are fake and scam. So no one would ask you to promote a scam or an illegal business. Its all legitimate. So writing a good review about a website isnt a bad idea, when you get $10 to $200 per post. You have a limitation of 3 posts per blog per day, and the advertisers can choose the blogs in which they want their posts to appear, with categories such as Page Rank, Izea Real Rank, alexa rank and a good lot of other stuff.

Sponsoredreviews.com lets advertisers Buy Reviews from bloggers. They just list the advertiser oppertunity on the sites, and the bloggers are asked to bid on them, and if the advertiser likes your blog, you are given the oppertunity, and you write your review, and get paid. The market place provides an option where the advertiser and the blogger can negotiate with each other for the rates. You can earn anywhere between $5 to $2000, and there is a 35% cut that goes to Sponsored Reviews. I unfortunately have made only about $20 from this site, since I havent had the time to bid on products and wait for the advertisers to get back to me.

ReviewMe.com is a similar site, where they pay out thru a Prepaid Payoneer debit card, while all others pay thru paypal, and unfortunately, i havent found the time to spend on review me and find out how it works. But my fellow bloggers say that it is a good source of income, and the pays are great though you are allowed to take up only about 10 oppertunities per month, and you get around $100 per review. Thats nearly $1000 a month if you are good at it.

is a service that not many are using these days for some reason. It used to be very good about 6 months ago, and this was the site that I first started taking paid posts from till I became a full time Payperpost Postie. Rates start from $6 and at times can go higher. You can take as many oppertunities as there are available. Absolutely no limitations.

Blogitive, bloggerwave, blogsvertise are all very slow. You cant find any real action there such as a big pile of reviews to choose from every day for your blogs and stuff like that. Why would you work with a company that pays you $5 once in a year for one single review?

Payu2blog is a few months old, and they rejected all my blogs, since about 50% of the posts in the blog are reviews, and they have ways of finding if the posts are paid or my own reviews. Well, I think i can get in there and find out how they are some time.