Working from home isn’t for everyone, so first you need to consider your own personality traits and expectations. Now, I’m referring to realistic expectations. Realistic expectations will bring real income for real people.

Begin by considering three different expectations.

Work Expectations

The first involves work expectations. Working from home has many benefits but there is real work involved. In fact, working from home can often mean working longer hours than your ordinary forty-hour work week at the office. In addition, there’s no boss available to keep you on track. Okay, “no boss” is a good thing, but you have to rely upon your own work ethic to keep you productive. If you’re the slacker type, you may end up doing very little work at home and that means little to no chance of success.

Income Expectations

Now consider income expectations. I don’t deal with the typical work-from-home scam that promises you’ll be rich and jetting around in your private plane. No, I do work designed to create real incomes for real people.

Can you make a fortune? Sure, but you’ll be working towards making a living before making a fortune. When some people hear that, they wonder, “What’s the point, then”? The point is that you can earn a living from home. For those of us that are just completely fed up with waking to an obnoxious alarm clock, getting all dressed up, and going to a J-O-B every day of our lives, we would gladly trade all of that in order to make the same living from home.

Because I now work from home:

• I wake up when I want to
• I work when I want to
• I take breaks when I want to
• I run errands when I want to
• And most, importantly I nap when I want to. (Hey, a girl needs her nap).

Do I work a lot? Yes I do, but I do it when I want and not when I’m told.

One question I often see is this: “Will I immediately be able to make a living by working from home?” More than likely, the answer is a solid NO, not immediately. This isn’t the same as quitting your job, and getting a new one the next day. There won’t be an automatic paycheck waiting for you 2 weeks later.

I highly recommend that if you need your current employment income to survive, DO NOT QUIT. Try the whole ‘work from home’ thing part time for a while. You may only make enough money for a cup of coffee the first month. You need to understand that and be prepared for that. Of course, if you aren’t currently making any money, or the money you make is not needed to pay bills and survive, then by all means go ahead and try working from home as a full time job. But again, don’t expect much right away. This takes time; in fact, it may even take one full year or more before you can say you are making enough money to make a living from working online. A year? Am I kidding? No, I’m not kidding, and while a year might seem like an eternity, it really isn’t. If you knew you could quit your job, and a year from now, you’d never have to go through the monotonous office routine ever again, would you get all excited in anticipation of that time? Sure you would! Just because it might take a while is no reason to completely avoid the process.

I’ve been working from home for several years now. But before that, I worked office jobs for thirty years. Thirty years of ‘day in, day out’, slogging through the hassle of working in an office even when I was so sick I should have been in bed. The one year that it took to be able to replace all of that with the joy of working from home is nothing compared to those thirty years of office grind.

So now you’ve considered both the work expectations and the income expectations. What’s the third expectation you should consider?

Friends and Family Expectations

You need to be prepared for friends and family expectations. If you intend to work from home, be prepared for the onslaught of criticism you’re going to receive from friends and family. Although they may be well-meaning, these people will chip away at your self confidence as they attempt to dissuade you from what they believe will be a mistake. Of course, in some cases, they may be right. But if you truly believe that you can make a living from home, then you’ll need to have the willpower to resist the negative attacks that will likely come from your friends and family. Listen to their advice, acknowledge their good intentions, but understand that they aren’t the ones who have the drive and determination to make this work – you do!

If you can deal with all three of those realistic expectations: work, income, and friends and family, then you’re ready to take the first steps. You may want to begin by reading my How To Make A Living In Your Pajamas series or pick topics that interest you from my archives. And of course, if you’re ready for private, one-on-one coaching, consider hiring me as your eBusiness coach and consultant. You can get more information about how that works, at my site, www.eBuzzCoach.com.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: eBusiness coach and consultant, work from home, working online
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That is a huge and wonderful truth about this business of working online (in your pajamas). It isn’t the fact that I can take long, luxurious vacations when I want. (I never do that, but I guess I could). It isn’t the fact that I can take short, weekend vacations in the middle of the week (I sometimes do that). The wonderful freedoms of what I do are the littlest freedoms of all.

If I get bored, I can get up and go watch the hummingbirds fight over the food in the feeder, without timing myself to make sure I don’t go over my allotted 10 minutes for a break. Or, if I can’t figure something out, and really need some quality “think time”, I can get up, walk around my land, and let the heat and hay smells clear my brain enough to let the creative thoughts through. Again, I don’t have to look at the time to make sure I get back to the office before the boss notices I’m gone.

Every day, after lunch, when that oh-so-sleepy feeling washes over me, I don’t have to struggle to fight it. I don’t have to continue to work through it, hoping my boss won’t notice I’m not being very productive. I just get up, crawl into my bed, and take a nap. A nap is the biggest little freedom I have these days, and I absolutely love being able to sleep for an hour or two in the middle of the day.

I could ramble on and on about all of the little freedoms that working from home has given me, but I think you get the point. I never underestimate these little freedoms. I know that no matter how many more hours I may work, each one of those little freedoms makes it all seem like no work at all.

I don’t need to be rich, and I don’t need to travel to far-off exotic lands. I only need to make a living, and have the little freedoms that I’m blessed with by working from home. Those things mean the world to me.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dawud Miracle, food, freedom, in your pajamas, little freedoms, naps, self-employed, work from home, working online
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.