Home-Based, Part-Time Jobs
A part-time job used to mean working in the town library, fast food joint or grocery store. With the internet, though, more and more people are finding part-time work online. The opportunities are there and include jobs like online customer service representatives, virtual office assistants and concierges, freelance web content writers, mystery shoppers and professional freelancers.
Other People Are Reading
-
Online Customer Service Representatives
-
Customer service representatives handle customer service issues over the phone or by web chat and usually work off a script. Two companies, LiveOps and Alpine Access, hire part-time work-from-home customer service reps who have a home office with a PC and high-speed Internet connection. Remote customer service representatives often work for companies that run virtual call centers all over the world. Most companies insist on a high school diploma or the equivalent, a credit check, drug test before hiring. Most also train new hires.
Virtual Office Assistants
-
Virtual office assistants answer phone calls and emails, make appointments and handle customer complaints all from a home office. VirtualAssistant.org is a helpful website for finding these part-time, home-based jobs.
-
Virtual Concierges
-
Virtual concierges work for the hospitality industry and book travel, run errands, schedule events and take hotel reservations from their home offices. VIPdesk is a company that hires part-time virtual concierges.
Freelance Web Content Writers
-
Writers and editors can work part-time out of their homes, usually on an independent contractor basis. Some online publishers, like Demand Studios, offer revenue sharing in addition to a flat rate for writing or editing articles.
Mystery Shoppers
-
Mystery shoppers secretly rate restaurants and retail and other businesses on cleanliness, customer service, quality of food and overall competence. According to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) North America, mystery shoppers help a business measure how closely the typical customer experience matches its expectations of what it should be.
Avoid mystery shopping scams by visiting the MSPA's Assignment Search page to display current mystery shopping opportunities. You can also get certified as a mystery shopper on MSPA's website.
Professional Freelancers
-
Writers, programmers, graphic designers, software developers and other professionals looking for part-time, home-based jobs can register on websites such as Guru, GetAFreelancer, Elance and Sologig. These sites generally require bidding for projects, so work isn't guaranteed. A professional freelancing website called Sologig, however, doesn't allow bidding. Instead, client and freelancer can work out the details of a project between themselves. A freelancing site should have a system to guarantee payment. Watch out for job listings that fail to provide a clear and detailed job description, an indicator of a potential scam.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit at home office image by Pix by Marti from Fotolia.com
