And no not that kind of work! Yeah, I know what your thinking.

I did tech support for nearly two years for an internet provider and took order phone calls for another company. Now days I mostly look for a job and blogging is now my work at home job.

There are somethings about working at home you should know and prepare for.  However, there are somethings that you could never prepare for such as your dog having puppies, while you are on a call she walks in the room and drops one right beside you. And I mean drop by having it right there.  True story, it happened to me and I just had to keep rolling through the call and then when it was over give her hand with the baby.

But the tips I provide are probably going to be most helpful for a Telemarketing WAHM stand point. Since that is what I have most experience with.

1. Be organized! This is one of the most important. Try to have everything you need at your fingertips or at least on your computer desktop a click away. I am one of the most unorganized people that there are and I know my job performance suffered when I had to start digging through papers to find the right script for a call or disclosures that I needed.
2. Keep a quiet environment. This is very important especially if you are taking calls. Often times it is a requirement of the job that there be no background noise. So it is important to be sure to not have any background noise in order to keep a professional environment. And make sure that those around you know this.  I had to actually make a sign for my front door as a reminder to a neighbor who would not quit coming by and ringing the door bell even when I asked her not to.
3. Keep your schedule! With a lot of at home call center jobs you are scheduled certain hours. And sometimes family and friends don’t understand this since you work at home. However in order for your productivity to survive and to keep your job it is important to keep to your schedule! The good thing about a lot of work at home jobs is sometimes they have the flexibility to schedule your hours around events that you know are coming up ahead of time.
4. Find a support system! There are several forums out there that cater to WAHMs and actually put you in touch with your very own co-workers. When I was doing tech support very often an awesome  group of ladies and myself had a yahoo conference going. It was great to have others to talk to who knew what was going on and who could offer support and help when they could.
5. Be professional. I know it is sometimes hard to remain professional when you are essentially working in your pajamas.  Believe me I know as well as anyone how difficult it is. But you are getting paid to do a job even though it is from home, you still need to put on facade of professionalism as if you are right in their face or in a brick and mortal call center. Just think of it as get comfortable just not that comfortable.

I hope these tips help in your work at home endeavors whether they be over the phone, chat, or emailing clients and customers.

~sharon

Some of the good things about it are:

1.  I save almost $200 a month on gas!

2. I save about 150-200 a month on eating out during the day for breakfast and somestimes lunch

3. I am always around for my kids unless of course I am on the phone.

4. Not always true for some people, but I am actually making more money now (my other job was just going down)

4.  I get to work in my pajamas, ummm hello thats just awesome and I don’t even have to worry about if I match or not.

And the bad:

1.  I go days and days at a time without leaving the house, sometimes I have to go to the store just to get out of the house.

Someone else’s list of good and bad of working at home may be different, but the good totally out weighs the bad in my house.  And some people might think it may get boring without anyone to talk to, not for me I am constantly talking to friends and communicating with people that I know online, so I totally don’t drive my husband crazy with talking.  I think he just says that to get a rise out of me, he is good at that.

And I know that sometime it is hard for people to find legit work at home jobs, you just gotta know where to look there are tons of good ones out there.  I have worked for 3 and am working for a good now.

 enjoy,

~sharon