MadJourney.com - I'll work from home or die trying!

TeleTech - Another Legitimate Work at Home Opportunity

2007-04-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

A co-worker ran into a friend recently who is working at home as a customer service agent for TeleTech.

I checked out their website and this is a legitimate work from home opportunity. Apparently they handle call center outsourcing for a number of large businesses and while they do have several call centers, they offer work at home positions as well.

You can check out the at home agent website and apply online here:

TeleTech@Home

Do you currently work as a TeleTech at home agent? If so, we'd love to hear from you! Drop us a line at madjourney@gmail.com to share your experiences with our other readers.

Port PC Services Website Under Construction

2007-04-16T07:16:00.000-07:00

I mentioned I'd be covering website statistics next in my last post, so I'll have to ask for your indulgence as I side-step that topic for the time being.

I still plan on covering the topic in the future, but it is going to be a bit larger in scope than I originally thought.

So for now, I'm announcing my plans to start doing computer service work full time once I'm cut loose from Time Warner.

To that end, I've started working on a website for my PC Service / Repair business that can be found here:

www.portpcservices.com

The site is still very young so I'd appreciate any comments, feedback, or suggestions anyone may have about the site in general or any products and information you'd like to see on the site.

If you need any computer service work done in the mean time (before I'm officially in "work from home mode") don't hesitate to call:

Port PC - (814) 642-7401

I plan on offering service to a fairly wide region within Potter, McKean, and Cattaraugus counties. Here is my approximate geographic service area via Google Maps:

Port PC Service Area

Work at Home as a Webmaster?

2007-04-02T17:59:00.000-07:00

Would you be interested in taking a class on the profit making side of being a webmaster? If so, please email me at madjourney@gmail.com and let me know. I will be contacting the Potter County Ed Council about teaching a few different courses soon. If you have any topics that might be of interest to you, let me know.

Ok, back to the post...

A few posts ago I mentioned that I was working on getting my first website launched, perhaps you remember. Read it Here

Anyway, that was only partially correct. I previously had a Wedding Photography site up and running, but have since moved away from that.

What that post was referring to was my first for-profit site. A site whose sole purpose was to make money by presenting PPC advertising and affiliate links to relevant topics. This is actually a very legitimate potential work from home business model.

Unfortunately, it is quite competitive and will require a good bit of effort to really do well. None the less, it is very lucrative as well; with some affiliate marketers making 10k - 50k per month.

So far the site is holding its own and although it hasn't generated any affiliate sales commissions yet, I am still breaking even or slightly profitable on my advertising costs. In other words, I am getting as much or more from visitors clicking on my ad links as I am paying to get visitors to the site.

Take a look at the difference between February and March:

Figure 1 - February 2007

Figure 2 - March 2007 (Note: Today's earning above are for today 4/2/2007)

The site is also starting to see some natural (unpaid) search traffic as well. This is the key to keeping the site in the black and will only happen over time with good meta info and keyword rich content.

Next time we'll look at the site's traffic statistics...

A Legitimate Telecommuting Work at Home Opportunity

2007-03-28T09:46:00.000-07:00

A couple friends of mine have started telecommuting for the West Corporation as Inbound Customer Service Representatives.

Pay
Current pay rates are $0.17/min or $10.20/hr for weekday hours and $0.30/min or $18.00/hr for weekends. They occasionally offer higher wages for Monday as well. Note: you are only paid for actual time spent on the phone.

Requirements:
You are required to complete their official training program prior to becoming a work at home agent and you must have a personal computer and internet connection.

What to expect:
When you first start out you can expect to be busy approximately 50% of your scheduled hours. Once you are a bit more experienced you'll find yourself on the phone approx. 70-75% of the time.

A choice of schedule is offered, but you are competing with other reps for the time slots, so the earlier you choose the better.

Website:
http://www.workathomeagent.com

95 Days to Go - Just Made a HUGE Discovery

2007-03-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

I want to take a moment and mark this date... OK, marked! What's the big deal you may ask? Well, I just discovered some powerful information that offers a virtually unlimited earning potential.

This plan requires a moderate amount of work upfront and then you can coast along doing occasional maintenance on the existing income stream, or you can start a new stream using the same technique.

I'm going to get started on this ASAP so I can get my first stream, and hopefully more, in place by D-day.

As a heads up, don't think I'm going away after D-day. I'll continue to chronicle my progress after leaving the current job and keep you on top of any new information and resources I might find.

I can't wait to share this system with you once I put it into action. Until next time...

Regards,
Rob

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2007-03-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

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101 Days to Go & Not Much Progress

2007-03-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

Wow, who would have thought adding a third child to the mix would have impacted my available work from home time the way it has?!?

I must say that adding a newborn son to our family has certainly monopolized most of my free time. I thought having a seven year old son and a five year old daughter was getting to be pretty manageable, but not any more.

Unfortunately for that reason, I really don't think I'll be able to begin my attempt to work from home in earnest until I actually find myself home for 8 hours a day.

To that end, I've updated my resume and sent it off for review in preparation to circulate it in the near future.

I guess I'm not a work from home purist, but I need to take whatever steps are necessary to provide for the well being of my family and if that means taking a regular 9 to 5'er so be it.

I have learned a great deal though and am continuing my research. I'll try to compile it all into a legible framework soon.

Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to share this with anyone who might be interested!

109 Days - Some Good News on the Work From Home Front

2007-03-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days, I was busy getting my first website launched. I'm still doing a ton of research, (months at this point), but have found several disparate work from home businesses that can be combined to produce a synergistic conglomerate.

Wow, did I just use synergistic and conglomerate in the same sentence ... lol!

Anyway, the businesses mentioned above will most likely not be anything new to most, but here they are:

eBay
Affiliate Programs / Affiliate Marketing
Running a website
Google AdSense - or other PPC revenue generating programs
Google Adwords - or other pay for traffic programs - (This isn't so much a money generator, but will be used in conjunction with PPC to generate revenue.)

I'll be creating separate sections for each of these later, but for now I'll let you in on the good news. I'm seeing positive advertising revenue from my websites. Well, to clarify that a bit, I haven't received more advertising revenue than it's costing to host the sites yet, but I'm getting paid more for visitors clicking ads on my site than I'm paying to get them there.

This is a great passive revenue stream or esentially a "set it and forget it" money maker. Once established you shouldn't have to invest much time on it to keep it going.

I'll expand more on all of these later. Don't forget to email this post to anyone else who might be interested in these topics or let them know about this blog. I'd appreciate it.

Work From Home Countdown - 112 Days

2007-03-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

I really don't like watching those days countdown, but I have to have a specific target date in view as to not let too much time pass without taking some action.

Truth be known; I've actually been running my own business(es) on the side for some time now, but I haven't invested enough time, energy, or capital for them to actually support me. Then again, they haven't had to either.

When I started my first business I had been doing research for a while and ran across an article that discussed turning your hobby into a profitable business and mentioned some of the reasons to do so.

They stopped short of actually stating the primary reasons I decided to go ahead and make my photography hobby into an official business. These reasons for me were:

A business is allowed to show no profit or a net loss for its first 2-3 years of operation and then additional yearly losses after making a profit within a 5 year period. Be sure to consult a tax professional or read the appropriate IRS Publications covering the specific rules before you make any decisions based on this information.

Essentially what this means is: even if your business loses money initially, you still make money because the losses will reduce the amount of federal tax you must pay or raise the amount of your income tax refund.

Remember this: $1.00 profit is still profit.
The number of businesses that fail within the first 5 years of operation is staggering. This can be translated another way. If your business doesn't profit after the first 2-3 years you may be required to close it. However, that doesn't mean you can't immediately open another business doing the same thing under a different name or leave the business closed for a year and then reopen it.

Again, make sure you consult the IRS or a legal professional prior to developing any strategy around this.

In my next post, I'll discuss some of my recent research and relay any strategies or resources I've found that may be helpful.

Work From Home Countdown - 114 days

2007-03-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

Ok, so you may be asking why work from home in the first place? Well, other than the growth of Adelphia that swelled the Coudersport, PA and surrounding areas until early 2002, we live in a very rural setting.

The area is known primarily for farming, timber, and hunting. There are a few other small manufacturing plants around as well as the typical retail merchants, hospitals, and schools.

Anyway, my wife and I just celebrated the birth of our third child on February 7, 2007 and we're currently living about an hour away from her parents and mine. We were both born and grew up in the area. The community and school system are great, crime is low and it's just a good place to raise a family.

That's not to say we haven't been out of the area before. We both attended college near larger cities and I served two years in the US Army on Oahu, Hawaii.

So the main reason to try starting my own business, becoming self-employed, or working from home is simply that there aren't any other jobs in the area that will pay the same salary you get working as a Senior Programmer Analyst for a major cable company with 10+ years of service.

Besides that, it just seems to me that the days of going to work for a company, putting in 20 years and retiring with a nice pension and gold watch are quickly vanishing if not already a thing of the past.

Alright, with that out of the way, we can finally get down to talking about the actual subjects of self-employment, working from home, or starting a business.

Let The Journey To Work From Home Begin...

2007-03-05T20:18:00.001-08:00

Welcome and thanks for stopping by. Hopefully you'll be able to find some helpful information here over time as I share my research with you.

For now, I'll give you a little background on myself (just in case you're interested in knowing why I'll be spending my time posting to this blog), and more importantly, why you would want to spend your time reading it.

My name is Rob Briggs and on July 31st of 2006 the company I had been working at for ten years, Adelphia, was sold to Time Warner and Comcast after one of the largest bankruptcies in US History. What that meant for me and thousands of other employees of the company was that there would be a determination as to who was neccessary for ongoing operations and who was not.

I was luckier than some, but also not as lucky as others. I landed a transitional position for a period of up to 1 year, because some of the web applications I built and currently maintained were needed during the transitional period. Unfortunately, that period is set to expire on June 30th of this year (2007) and I'll be forced to join the ranks of the unemployed.