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Ask Writing World: Is it possible to make money at home by proofreading?

 

Is it possible to make money working from home as a proofreader?

This is one of the questions I get asked most often, and the short answer is: yes.  It is.

I happen to think most things are possible if you work hard enough, though, so perhaps a better question here would be: is it EASY to make a living working from home as a proofreader?

Actually, I suspect this is what most people who ask the first question really wanted to know anyway, and the short answer to that one is: no. It most definitely isn't.

The majority of home workers work less than eight hours per day? Surely not!

In the four years (Is it really that long?!) I've been working from home, I've worked much longer hours than I ever did in an office. There are lots of different reasons for this:

1. Motivation is higher

Not having a guarenteed wage coming into the bank at the end of each month, and depending on your own efforts to keep yourself and your family afloat is a powerful motivator, I find.

2. Job satisfaction is higher

I hated working for other people; I love working for myself. It's as simple as that. I'm being paid to do something I genuinely enjoy, so of course I'll want to spend more time doing it.

3. Earning opportunities are greater

In my last few jobs, it didn't matter how many hours I worked per day, week or month - my salary would remain the same regardless. Similarly, I was paid for sick days, bank holidays and vacations. In other words, unless I was promoted (and there were no opportunities for promotion unless someone else left the company), there just wasn't a whole lot I could do to improve my take-home pay. By working for myself, I know that my earning potential is limited only by how hard I'm prepared to work, and this motivated me to work harder and longer.

4. Distractions are fewer

I know this isn't true for everyone who works from home, but without colleagues constantly interrupting me, phones ringing and other distractions, I find that I concentrate harder and am less likely to break off what I'm doing for trivial reasons.

5. Work is always there

Even if you close the door on the home office at 5pm every night and make a deal with yourself not to go back in until morning, it can be very hard to resist the lure of checking email or just finishing off that last project. It's even more difficult if you use the computer to relax, because the Internet, along with all of its work-related purposes, is always right there in front of you.

6. When people know you work from home, they take advantage of it

I'm not sure if this is the case for everyone, but my experience has been that once clients know you work from home, they tend to make an assumption that you're always available, no matter what time of the day or night. When I worked in an office, people wouldn't have dreamed of calling me in the evening or at the weekend with non-urgent queries, but they think nothing of doing it now, because they assume that I'm always "at work". I now switch the answer phone on every evening and all weekend, and try to only answer non-urgent emails during business hours, but it's amazing the number of people who contact me outwith those hours - and expect me to be available.

7. Guilt

Yes, good old-fashioned guilt. When you work for yourself, you can't avoid it, and every time you try to put your feet up and switch on the TV, a little nagging voice will pipe up saying, "You know, you really should be working," or "You could use this time to do some paperwork/marketing/start a new project/whatever." That little voice can be very hard to ignore... and sometimes I just don't bother.

Now, I don't necessarily think it's either good or healthy to work long hours as a freelancer: in fact, I know it's not. You just end up getting burnt out and exhausted, and not producing your best work as a result. All the same, I was still fairly surprised, when I looked at the results of our last poll, to see that the majority of those who answered the question "How many hours per day do you spend working?" with "Eight hours of less." I reckon those who gave this answer - or who spent even less hours per day working from home - have got things figured out better than I have in terms of work/life balance, and working smarter, rather than harder.

So tell me: what's your secret?

Poll Results: How many hours per day do you work?

The best thing about being a self-employed writer

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an actress when I grew up.

When I did grow up, and entered the world of employment, I achieved my ambition. Oh, I wasn't paid to act - or not literally, anyway. I was paid to be a newspaper journalist, a press officer, even a call centre operator, but as far as I was concerned, no matter what my official job title was, most of my time was spent acting.

I would arrive at work in the morning and act like I was happy to be there.

I would act like the early mornings didn't bother me, although I am far from being a morning person, and don't generally feel human until at least 10am, and the second mug of coffee.

I would pretend to like and respect people I actually couldn't stand.

I would say I didn't mind staying late to finish that urgent press release, when really I wanted was to go home and get to be myself again.

I would sit in endless, pointless meetings and act like there was nowhere I'd rather be.

I would grit my teeth and smile when my boss asked me to work through my lunch break - again.

I would pretend to find my work interesting and stimulating, even when it involved answering the same questions over and over again, or covering the dullest committee meetings known to man.

In general, I made a living out of pretending to be someone I most definitely was not: a happy little worker bee who lived for the job and could think of no better way to spend her time than trapped in a windowless, airless office, earning money for someone else.*

These days? I don't do a whole lot of acting.

Oh, there are bits and pieces of pretense scattered throughout my weeks. Not being overly-fond of the phone, for instance, I have to pretend to be pleased every time someone decided to call me, or ask me to call them. And there's the odd difficult client or advertiser who I have to pretend not to be frustrated by, but for the most part, I wake up every morning and don't have to act like anyone other my myself. There's an honesty to my working life that was sadly lacking before, and it's perhaps the biggest reason why I'd never want to go back to office life. Well, that an the early mornings, of course.

I guess acting really wasn't for me, after all.

*It had its good points, too. 

The Trouble With Working From Home: the drive-by client

I love working from home, wouldn't change it for the world. The problem with that, though? Well, there are three.

1. It becomes very, very easy to just not bother getting out of bed in the morning

2. What clothes? This here dressing gown does me just fine, thanks very much. (Note to self: buy selection of dressing gowns. Maybe a black one. Black goes with everything.)

3. The house gets messy.

Yes, number three surprised me, too. I'd always assumed that those who worked from home would have perfect palaces of houses, given all that lovely time they have to clean. Yeah, I was clearly on crack when I thought that. People who go out to work have much tidier homes, and that's purely because they're not there enough to make a real mess. We are at home, and, by-God, we do make a mess. For this reason, we do not invite clients into our home.

Warning! Working from home can be bad for your health!

When I first started working from home, the last thing I considered was that I'd put on weight.

I, you see, am one of those women who are just naturally skinny. Or so I'd always assumed, anyway. I'd put it down to genetics, if it wasn't for the fact that as soon as I quit the day job, my weight started to creep up. And up...

While I didn't get "fat" exactly, I did reach a stage where my clothes became uncomfortably tight, and I considered going up a dress size. The reason? I was working from home - and, in my case at least, that meant I was hardly taking any exercise.

It's amazing how much exercise you get in a normal working day. Sure, most office workers rarely break an actual sweat, but just walking to and from the car, popping out for a sandwich at lunchtime, and all of the to-ing and fro-ing that office live involves added up to much more exercise than the typical day working at home. Hell, just the walk from the car to the office and back probably added up to more exercise than I was getting at home.

As I mentioned in yesterday's entry, when you run your own business, it becomes very easy to become a workaholic. I'd get up in the morning and go to the computer to check my email: before I knew what happened, it would be lunchtime, and I'd still be in my dressing gown, having not even bothered to brush my teeth (nice!) let alone take some exercise.

My house is small. Those journeys to the kitchen and back for coffee weren't exactly burning off the calories: and even if they had been, I'd have very quickly replaced them with my frequent trips to the fridge.

These days, I'm a member of a gym, and try to go at least three times a week - more, if possible. There are, however, some easy steps you can take to make sure that working from home doesn't lead to an increase in your waistline as well as your bank balance...

Working from Home: The Duvet Day

Yesterday, I decided to have myself a duvet day.

In my defense, it was Black Monday: officially the most miserable day of the year. Black Monday is the day when the weather, work and the fact that we're all still broke after Christmas, combine to make more of us than usual decide to call in sick and crawl back under the duvet.

For once, I was one of them.

Taking a duvet day - or any kind of unscheduled break - was actually a pretty big departure for me. It's the first time I've done it in almost four years of freelancing, and even although I badly needed it, I still felt guilty. But Saturday night had been a bad one: I'd had one of my infrequent bouts of insomnia which meant that I didn't sleep at all until (as is the way of it) minutes before I had to get up on Sunday morning.

Sunday was a long day, too. We were out for most of it, and didn't get home until after midnight, by which point I'd been awake for getting on for 36 hours, and was feeling almost jet lagged with tiredness. When Monday morning dawned, it took me just a few minutes to decide to snuggle back under the covers and give myself a break.

Not that it was much of a break, mind you. I'm too much of a workaholic to be able to take an entire day off, so although I let myself sleep as long as I wanted to, and only completed those tasks that were absolutely necessary, I did spend some time at my desk. The short break did me good, though, and reminded me that sometimes it's important to be kind to yourself, and let yourself have some time off now and again. When you work from home, or freelance, it can be very easy to get into the trap of working non-stop, and feeling guilty every time you allow yourself to sit down and put your feet up for a few seconds. I know I've felt like that for years: in fact, it's only recently that I've started to allow myself to have weekends off, and even then I feel the need to rush to the computer every chance I get. It was never like this when I worked for someone else...

My point? Sometimes we all need a bit of a duvet day. Even those of us whose offices are just a few shorts steps away from that duvet.

Are freelancers really happier than office workers?

HR World have just published a really interesting list giving 101 Reasons Why Freelancers Do It Better - with  "it" being happiness, apparently. They claim that us freelancers enjoy better lifestyles and greater levels of happiness than our office-working friends, and it's hard to disagree with them, really. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I know I've felt much happier since I've been freelancing, and a large part of that comes down to the reasons given in this list.

There are a few points I don't agree with, though, namely:

It's hard to get bored

These days I just don't have time to be bored, but in the early days of my freelancing career I took on more than my fair share of boring projects, and I still do from time to time. Unfortunately, not all of the interesting projects pay well, and some of the boring ones are lucrative - we all have to make ends meet somehow.

Lunch is a home cooked meal

Ha! Well, maybe if I could actually cook, this would be correct, but as things stand, lunch tends to be a couple of slices of toast in front of 'Neighbours'.  I guess the toast is cooked at home, though - does that count?

Your house will be cleaner

I already answered this one in an earlier post on working from home, so let's just say we're working on it...

Those points aside though, I think I'd have to concur that I, for one, have a much better standard of life as a freelancer than I ever did as an employee. What does everyone else thing?

Five Myths About Working From Home

People tend to make a lot of assumptions about working from home, and what it'll be like. Some of them, such as the "you'll save time on commuting" one, are absolutely true. Others  - well, not so much, really. In fact, some of the assumptions people make about working from home are just plain wrong. Here are just five of them:

1. You'll be able to set your own hours

This is true to an extent, in that people who work from home tend to have more control over their working hours than people who work for someone else, but only to an extent. The truth is that most clients will expect you to be available during normal working hours, and, for most people, that means Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm. So while it's true that people who work from home can choose to have a lie in anytime they feel like it, they shouldn't be surprised if that lie in is disturbed by a ringing phone at 9am on a Monday morning.

2. You'll spend more time with your family

Again, this is true to an extent, but only if by "spending time with the family" you mean "being in the same house at the same time as them". Of course, it is possible to manage your workload in such a way that you have oodles of free time in which to take the dog for long walks and spend time playing with the kids, but I don't know many freelancers who've managed it. Most freelancers I know actually work longer hours than people who're employed by someone else, and many of those with children have been forced to employ a child minder for a few hours each day or week to allow them to get the work done. While you may not fall into that category, if you do, you can forget all about those long walks in the countryside and quality time with the kids.

3. Your house will be spotless

When I first started freelancing from home, I fondly imagined that all of those chores I was struggling to keep up with when I worked for someone else would suddenly be done with not even the slightest bit of fuss. No more would I rush home at lunchtime to empty the washing machine and clean the floors! No longer would I return home, exhausted, only to be faced with a mountain of ironing and a sink filled with dirty dishes! Why, I would have time to cook meals from scratch! And bake! Um, well, not really. Now that I work from home and have to be both boss and employee (not to mention secretary, accountant and receptionist), I need a cleaner/gardener/ironing service more than ever. Go figure.