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THE WEBSITE STORY
Posted Date: 22 Mar 2008 Resource Type: Articles/Knowledge Sharing Category: How things work
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Posted By: arunkumar Member Level: Gold
Rating:  Points: 5
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‘Now you can work on your own terms’... or so they say
The Internet is brim full of Web sites
that claim to offer big money with
minimum work hours. But like
everything else on the Net, many of
them are just database mining sites that
require you to sign up for a fee or pay for
the training pack. The exact nature of the
work is ambiguous. But some offer genuine
solutions for those sitting at home.
Some Web sites offer data processing
jobs such as converting books or PDF formats
into online documents and other
text conversion jobs. Other jobs include
medical transcription, which involves
receiving dictations of medical notes and
then transcribing that data into a digital
format and rerouting it to the respective
doctor. These jobs require you to have
some kind of scientific or medical background
to aid your understanding of the
scientific terms. Other work opportunities
include basic data entry, replying to
e-mail, receiving mail responses, pursuing
helpdesk on mail and chat. This is
quite on the lines of a Call Centre.
Some sites offer to pay for just clicking
on advertisements to assure advertisers
of user response. Given below aresome
sites that let you work from home:
Elance.com (www.elance.com) is a workfrom-
home site. As cited by one end user,
for a particular project you might have to
pay Rs 6,000 towards registration, but at
the end of it you could earn up to
Rs 15,000. Even though you have to pay
a certain sum at the commencement of a
project, this amount is usually recovered
by the end of the project.
Guru.com (www.guru.com) guages your
potential and directs you to the right job. The mode of payment can be chosen
between a monthly salary and an hourly
rate. They have a ‘Workstyle at a glance’
section, which is designed to help the user
and the staff learn more about the preferred
work environment. Once your skills
are assessed and you’ve entered the cycle,
it is fairly easy to find the right kind of
work. Make sure to read the clauses associated
with each type of job.
Datamatics.com (www.datamatics.com)
is one of the pioneering work-at-home
sites in India. However, a previous user hence you have to make use of their
resources,” explains Ellur. Naik, on the
same note, needs to coordinate with the
editorial team of the magazine he works
on and hence is required to be at the
client’s workstation. But Peringatt, being
a programmer, can work from his home.
His typical hours are from 11 am to 6 pm
and then again from 11 pm to 3 am. “The
most productive hours are during the
night with absolutely no disturbance.
Also, the Net is quite fast then,” he
explains. But he generally prefers to
“work till I drop, as I’m working for
myself. It is very important that I finish
work as soon as possible, so that I can
move on to other interesting stuff”. Naik
has a better work discipline. His work
rotates around the other people in a
given team and hence it isn’t completely
at his convenience, though he can
choose a particular project depending on
his personal ability to handle it.
Show me the money
The crucial concern any individual set complains that the site no longer offers
the opportunities it initially did. Some
unpleasant experiences by a few users
prompted them to quit, but there are
others who continue to be influenced by
the concept.
Many of these sites operate worldwide,
but the vendors handle currency
conversion and the user is paid in the
local currency. Most of them require you
to pay a registration fee as deposit, which
is refunded once the job is done. This fee
is a precautionary measure to assure
delivery on the scheduled date. In case
you do not submit work at the designated
time, the compensation would be
reduced. This is where you need to be
cautious as most of these services have a
‘do so at your own risk’ clause.
setting
out on his own faces is
that of money. After all,
money is the reason most of
us are in it. A regular job
ensures a salary deposit in the
bank at the end of the month.
With freelancing, the work-topay
ratio is always negotiable
and never assured. How one
discusses the pay packet again
depends upon the nature of
the work: Naik prefers to be
paid by the day as it works very well with
his work scenario since he is required to
work from the client’s site for unpredictable
hours, with focus more on the
quantity of work rather than the quality.
For Ellur, charging depends upon the
project specifications and the customer
comfort. “In cases where the customer
himself is not clear about his requirements,
it is advisable to charge by the
hour where the specifications are frozen
on a daily basis. When the customer is
clear about the output, you can charge a
lump sum,” says Ellur.
Peringatt, on the other hand, charges
for the work put in and not the hours
spent working, “so I don’t have to keep
reporting to the client on how much
work was done in a day, as I may be working
on other parallel projects.” He continues,
“Sometimes, charging by the hour
is not justified. If the developer is skilled
and has experience, it will take him
much less time to finish the project compared
to an inexperienced developer who
would take months to research. An
umbrella amount takes care of all these
factors. The client is informed of a date
when I will be able to present the demo
or the deliverables and that date is
adhered to.”
So how much can you hope to make
on your own? And is this payment
assured? Peringatt has had many distasteful
experiences in this regard—“Getting
money out of the client is a big
headache. The money invariably gets
delayed for some reason or another.” But
Ellur begs to differ—he maintains that
clients pay, at even a premium, provided
that you deliver quality on time. A novice
freelancer can hope to earn between
Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 in any field,
depending on the kind of contacts he or
she has and the quality of the work. A
seasoned IT consultant, in the opinion of
Ellur, can make anything from Rs 30,000
to Rs 1,00,000 a month. A layout artist
can make around Rs 7,000 throughout
the year and up to Rs 15,000 during the
end of the year and festivals when magazines
get out their special editions.
Bag of tricks
What you need to work on your own,
besides a PC with all the peripherals of
your trade, is a good database of contacts
and people who will give you work.
If you’ve already been working for a
while, people are already familiar with
your work and the trust hurdle is
bypassed. Once the ball is set rolling,
each project well delivered will ensure
future work, as work relations with freelancers
are based on trust. In the words
of Ellur, “Being a freelancer, if you have
five satisfied customers, then you are
assured five more job offers for the
future.” You can also tie up with a Web
site online that trades services with
companies that are on the lookout for
them such as www.elance.com and
www.freeagent.com. These sites are meeting
points for those who are seeking specific
professional services and those who
can provide them (see box, ‘The Website
Story’).
The availability of projects, like in
any other profession, depends on the
overall economic scenario and your own
skill sets. The key is to constantly reinvent
yourself and keep abreast of the
skills and technologies in your field.
Along with that, you need to cultivate a
firm discipline and mark out your work
hours. Always understand the nature of
the project to its last detail so that there
are no misunderstandings that could
wash away hours of your work. With
that, also calculate a rupee per work unit
ratio that you can justify to your client—
you don’t want to come across as exorbitantly
priced, nor should you sell yourself
short in anyway. Once you have
these few things in place, all you need to
do is work hard and the money will keep
streaming in.
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Responses
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| Author: Jonathan Phillip Obregon 23 Apr 2008 | Member Level: Gold Points : 5 | This has been a very interesting story. A lot of people are actually earning from the internet. From simple paid to click programs, making blogs, posting at forums and joining affiliate marketing sites, multi level marketing programs etc. What is important is to choose the one that fits you and the avoid those that are scams. We have to admit that there are also a lot of scams in the internet. So we will just have to be careful. Great story indeed!
| | Author: Karthika M 29 May 2008 | Member Level: Gold Points : 2 |
This is very interesting.Thank you.
| | Author: kanthi 29 May 2008 | Member Level: Bronze Points : 2 | this is really nice keep posting
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