Wednesday, December 03, 2008 12:00:00 AM

Big New Opportunities For Freelancers
To Make Money At Home

The advent of the Internet has created new opportunities for freelancing, particularly for software developers from countries with low average salaries, such as Bulgaria, China, India or Romania. A number of websites have become bustling marketplaces for farming out software development projects to foreign freelancers at rates generally considered rock-bottom by American or Western standards. ...

A freelancer or (freelance worker) is a self-employed person working in a profession or trade in which full-time employment is also common. The word's etymology derives from the medieval term for a mercenary, a "free lance," which literally described a knight who was not attached to any particular lord, and could be hired for a given task.

Over two and a half million men in the U.S. are full-time stay-at-home dads, and it is a number on the rise. In this book, media executive and working mother Libby Gill provides a step-by-step blueprint for transitioning into a stay-at-home-dad family. She takes you into the homes of families who have successfully created this child-centered lifestyle, to show how you, too, could benefit from such a change. Stay-at-Home Dads reveals how to: create a business plan--from budget and mission statement to job description and performance evaluation, make the most out of one income, overcome gender stereotypes, maintain a healthy work-family balance, and return to the workforce when (and if) the time is right. The book includes a comprehensive resource guide, questionnaires, and advice from families who have made this transition.

You need some extra money each month and you're thinking of starting a new business. You know deep down that you have what it takes to do almost anything. But you're torn. You're not sure you have the time to undertake a home business. The financial investment, the time investment...is it feasible? But one thing's for sure--you know that you have the talent and ability to sink your teeth into something. But what?

Work from home, running your own business and take control of your own future. Sounds great, huh? And now you can make it happen. Freelance Work Exchange is dedicated to bringing you all the latest freelance jobs and projects, with new listings added daily. So whether you're an experienced professional, or just starting out, we can bring you hot leads and cool projects in every work-at-home job and freelance sector.

An example is my grandfather who was a salesman for the same suit company for 44 years. There is nothing wrong with this. His job was secure; he knew there would be a superannuating fund when he retired, and that there would always be food on the table for his family. These days in the 21st century things have changed, and they are still changing rapidly as we speak. Nowadays it isn't strange for a person to have around five completely different career paths in their lifetime. You might think that job security is much lower, but there are new types of jobs emerging everyday with the advent of modern technology.

Older people can go back to schools and be educated in totally new areas that are greatly desired in society. One of the greatest changes in recent times is the fact that a lot of people are now working for themselves as freelancers from home. Society is still getting all the necessary work done, but the structures in which individuals pursue their dreams and goals in their areas of interest have changed completely.

If you are working at home for your own business, you sure don't have the old hierarchy of bosses watching over your every move, judging your worth, and threatening you with dismissal. People are now self-motivated as they know that if they don't get out there and share their skills and attributes with society, they simply might be forgotten.

There is a new way of acquiring work these days that is so very different than the days of perusing the job-ads in the newspaper or going door-to-door asking for work. Surprise, surprise, its on the Internet! There are now on-line marketplaces for both employers to offer work and for potential freelance employees to show their portfolios.

On the other hand, if you are an employer, you can go to the category of work you need done (E.g.: Creative Writing) and search through a list of professionals that you can then contact to do the job. These professionals exhibit the amount that they charge per hour, how much they have already earned through the site and a portfolio of examples of their work. They are then given a rating that has been compiled by the employers who have used their services.

It is quite unbelievable; they've got people and job types from a multitude of different areas, just about any type of freelance work you can imagine: E.g. Website design, marketing, writing, graphic design, legal, engineering, photography, finance-the list is quite extensive. So you see, "the times they are a-changin'" my friends. Imagine if you were frozen in time one hundred years ago and then thawed out today. All the basic human beliefs and emotions would be the same, but how would the world look to you? We've got to go with the flow and not get lost in the structures of old. What's your goal? Get on the Web!

The New Economy is spurred on by the growth of the Internet, the best transportation infrastructure we've ever had, and, finally, by the growing numbers of work at home entrepreneurs. It's not a matter of luck that we find ourselves in this favorable position, nor is it mere coincidence. It's a matter of good old American Capitalism mixed with appropriate government investment over most of the last century's last decade that has brought us here.

The Founding Fathers pledged political and economic freedom and it is the adherence to that promise that has allowed the citizens of the United States to lead the world for about the last 225 years in the area of entrepreneurship. In fact, the Federal government even went as far as creating a whole enterprise, the Small Business Association(SBA), in 1953 to assist American entrepreneurs to become successful businesses. It is under these circumstances that the Internet has flourished. And it has done so in America much more than anywhere else. The Internet has made it far easier to be a successful entrepreneur than the SBA ever could have.

Who could have imagined in 1953 that one day a business could reach a market of millions with the click of a mouse? While the Internet has made it easier for businesses to sell it has also made it easier for consumers to buy. Again, American entrepreneurship stepped in with the proliferation of so many overnight delivery services. I'm sure our parents saw this sort of activity at the neighborhood science fiction picture show. With just a few clicks you've made your purchase and low and behold it's on your doorstep the next morning. Never mind what the media tells us.

We've made it so easy to buy and spend that a recession is practically an impossibility. Perhaps our only fear is inflation, but not on Alan Greenspan's watch! But again, this could not all happen without a solid infrastructure of roads, airports, railways and waterways. Investment in this area was always a priority for the Clinton Administration and much more so than the administrations of President Clinton's predecessors. This philosophy culminated in Clinton's proposed budget for 2001 where a record $54.9 billion is allocated to infrastructure. Of this $39 billion is to be spent on improving mobility and this amount represents a whopping 86% increase over the average allocations for improving mobility in the Federal budgets of 1990-1993. So, here we are.

We've got the Internet and we've got the infrastructure. And we've also got runaway healthcare costs. Perhaps future generations will look back fondly at 2001, when affordable health insurance was still a subject of science fiction. But for now, it's our dilemma. And this problem is in large part responsible for the layoffs we get to read about everyday. Employers can't afford to pay for their employees' healthcare and more and more the cry from the corporate boardrooms is "OUTSOURCE." Enter the Freelancer. He/She has the skills. He/She has the knowledge. He/She has the desire.

And with a computer, printer, scanner, phone, fax, internet connection, etc, available today for under $2000 he/she has all the necessities of work right at home. And guess what - he/she likes working at home and all the benefits that come with it. But who's going to pay for health insurance? Who cares! That's not the employer's problem anymore. And like everything else in our wonderful consumer driven economy, health insurance can be sought and bought by the individual based on his/her specific needs. And the sources of affordable health insurance for the individual are increasing at a fast pace…about as fast as the freelancing population. Today's freelancer is not alone.

Freelancers are proliferating and succeeding more than ever and are becoming more and more a viable source of workers for corporate America across a wide spectrum of occupations. 

So don't be bothered by the recent news of economic gloom. The transition to a work at home, freelance society, is just the next step in our economic evolution. Even though the economic statisticians haven't quite figured out how to account for it yet.

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