Work At Home / Online Marketing etc.

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Pilforgod

Silver Knight of the Realm
211
33
Just wondering if we have anyone else that works at home? I've been doing it since 2003 now and have had basically the same job since then in managing affiliate programs for large merchants online. If anyone here wants to get into affiliate marketing feel free to PM me and I can try to help you out. However, this thread is more for tips and tricks of working from home.

How do you deal with family vying for your time and not respecting the fact you're working?
How do you keep organized?
How do you keep yourself from working insane hours?

Those types of questions...
 

BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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I don't work at home and never have, but do you feel like you are productive? I used to work a desk job and I always felt like if I worked at home where nobody ever saw what I was doing I would spend half my time beating off, playing flash games, or arguing on message boards.
 

Sparko

Silver Knight of the Realm
256
31
Man I would love to work from home. My stepbrother has been doing it for years (he does mortgages).
 

Asshat Brando

Potato del Grande
<Banned>
5,346
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It's been about 5 months now that I've been working from home though I wouldn't call it that so much as being mobile as I'm out of the house meeting clients, attending office meetings or prospecting at least half the week while my assistant is still sitting in our main office handling the paperwork.

It took a while for my kids to understand that when my office door was closed to not barge in and it ended up in one odd call while I had a client on the line but other than that it's been fine. The wife does get a bit ornery when it's after 6pm and I'm still sitting in front of my computers working but considering she hasn't had to work in 7 years now and gets to do what she wants she just ends up toughing it out. Though if it does get too late then my chances of getting any action later that night are somewhere between slim and none.

The biggest difference for me though is there are just a lot more distractions, plenty of stuff to find to do around the house or turn on the TV to watch soccer or play some games. I'll get behind at times but I'm getting better and better at it. I hardly have the TV on now and just try to get everything done by 3ish so then I can relax for a couple of hours before dinner.
 

Pilforgod

Silver Knight of the Realm
211
33
I don't work at home and never have, but do you feel like you are productive? I used to work a desk job and I always felt like if I worked at home where nobody ever saw what I was doing I would spend half my time beating off, playing flash games, or arguing on message boards.
Yes, I'm very productive. My company expects a lot out of me as do my clients and it becomes very apparent when you're slacking off with what I do. Also, I'm our only income so having to support both our kids and my wife weighs heavily on me. Now, when I first started my answer may have been a bit different
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Tmac

Adventurer
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I work from home and my efficiency is super low. I find myself procrastinating and playing League of Legends, watching Youtube, or just wasting time. For me to get any real work done I have to leave the house. Being behind is somewhat of a motivator.
 

BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
<Silver Donator>
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I guess it would sort of depend on what kind of job you have. If you have specific things that are expected of you every day it would be easier to stay focused. I was designing circuit boards so once I had my requirements there were long stretches where I had no real deliverables and all that happened was the project manager coming by once or twice a week and asking how things were going so it was easy to goof off a lot even in the office, and doing it at home would have been hopeless, for me at least. I imagine it also helps to have the family there so your wife at least goes "aren't you supposed to be doing something?" once in a while if you're just playing video games all the time.
 

Tmac

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Currently I'm doing a lot of web design for one of my businesses, which is mostly just back and forth with my coder. I'm also supposed to be studying (online) to get my real estate license so I can hook up with the big land sales company that consolidating my two co's in January. I've finished half of the requirements (a total of 75 hours in class) by going to a class in Atlanta, but this online part is impossibly boring. I can never get myself to focus...it's that dull.

Ultimately I find myself wasting a lot of time and don't really know how to get my day structured properly.
 

Pilforgod

Silver Knight of the Realm
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33
I'm going to try to use a whiteboard to help me structure my days. I start out with a game plan, but then I let emails and requests change the flow of my day completely away from where I wanted it to go.
 

Anomander Rake

Golden Knight of the Realm
704
14
I am a small business owner with my wife (wedding and portrait photography), and we work from home sorting /editing photos / designing wedding albums, etc, when we aren't out shooting. I haven't always been the greatest when it came to not fucking around in front of the computer when I have had shit to do, but since we hired an office manager (just 2-3 days a week, 5 hours a day), it has done wonders keeping us straight. I still allow myself to jump on the internet from time to time while working, it just isn't anywhere near where it was before we hired her.

To the point above, it was always a challenge not to get sucked into emails (we are highly customer service oriented, and are always communicating with clients about questions), but we found a solution. We set aside a chunk of time in the morning, and in the evening where we check & answer emails, and nothing in between. Keeps the never ending cycle of constantly checking our outlook from keeping our productivity low.
 

Tmac

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We set aside a chunk of time in the morning, and in the evening where we check & answer emails, and nothing in between. Keeps the never ending cycle of constantly checking our outlook from keeping our productivity low.
I've heard this same advice before and it works wonders.
 

Pilforgod

Silver Knight of the Realm
211
33
We set aside a chunk of time in the morning, and in the evening where we check & answer emails, and nothing in between. Keeps the never ending cycle of constantly checking our outlook from keeping our productivity low.
I've thought of doing this. However, I have a few clients who expect responses immediately and will continue to email with CAPS in the subject line along with the message in the subject if I don't email fast enough. I actually have a good relationship with them, it's just how they are. I've thought of making an auto-responder stating on when I respond to emails and to see if it will be respected.

My fear here is that then they'll call me all the time instead, this would be worse.
 

Tmac

Adventurer
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I've thought of doing this. However, I have a few clients who expect responses immediately and will continue to email with CAPS in the subject line along with the message in the subject if I don't email fast enough. I actually have a good relationship with them, it's just how they are. I've thought of making an auto-responder stating on when I respond to emails and to see if it will be respected.

My fear here is that then they'll call me all the time instead, this would be worse.
I have a question before I respond. Does your business require that much communication with them or are they just high maintenance?
 

Blide_sl

shitlord
188
1
Despite the drawbacks, every study I've seen shows at home workers as being significantly more productive on average.

To the point that not doing it is rather silly for most places.
This totally doesn't surprise. I honestly think many office environments are toxic due to all the bullshit that happens there. There's little chance you can be as productive when no one in the office really gives a shit.

As much as I hate going to the office some days, I do like having a separation between home and work. I'm just not able to relax when I feel there's something I should be doing. I think for me, the ideal work environment would be an office with flex hours.
 

Pilforgod

Silver Knight of the Realm
211
33
I have a question before I respond. Does your business require that much communication with them or are they just high maintenance?
My biz requires a decent amount of communication, but a lot of it is maintenance too. I'd say 1/2 of my clients leave me alone to do the work and the other half are the opposite.
 

Heylel

Trakanon Raider
3,602
428
I work from home one day a week, and go into the office the other four. I'm the only employee to do this (we're a research non-profit), and it's purely because I have an excellent relationship with my supervisor and I've never dropped a deadline. Mostly I negotiated it to save on commute time, and I telework on Wednesdays so no one can accuse me of trying to sneak a three day weekend. It's really nice breaking up the week into two day blocks where I have to drive downtown. It's about 25 miles one way to my office, so the gas savings are actually kinda significant.

I use my home day to do jobs that are too taxing for my laptop like video work, and for grunt work on writing assignments where I'm better off just powering through it for several hours without office interruptions. On slow days, I just stay on call and take a long lunch to run errands, or work from my laptop in the basement while I catch up on weekend tv. Even then, I'm exponentially more productive than I am at work, and our lab consistently accomplishes more than anyone else in the building.
 

awfal

Silver Knight of the Realm
87
2
Been working at home for 1.5 years in my current role (sales exec). The flexibility + not having to get up early to commute is truly priceless. Rather than sit in traffic from 7:30-9:00 I can get shit done when I roll right out of bed. I do kind of feel like a bum when I go grab a coffee from Starbucks in my track pants and everyone else is in their business attire, but I know I've got the last laugh. I can't see ever going back to an office environment unless I was in a management position that required it or something.

I find that customers will only be as high maintenance as you train them to be, eg. if you respond to them right away they are going to expect that kind of SLA all the time. I'll purposely hold off on replying to customers for a few hours even if it's a quick and easy response just to try to re-train them to not expect an answer right away.

That comic is pretty lol.