Who doesn’t want to work at home. Having the privilege to work at home is simply a bliss. You might have seen the ads before, about hiring people to work at home. While some of these ads are scams, there are some that are genuine.

Let us have a look at the jobs that you can do at home.

1. Customer Service Representative

This is common. Usually small companies would choose to hire freelancers to fill in this position. This is because they have a smaller budget. Sometimes, large companies might do the same to cut cost. In order to take up this job, you need to have a PC or laptop, a reliable internet connection and among other equipments such as telephone line, fax line, fax machine or scanner (depending on the requirements set by the company).

2. Travel Agent

Have experience in travel? You can turn travel into a business. Travel business is doing big nowadays. People are looking for help when they plan their holidays and being a travel agent, you can help these people to customise their travel plan according to their requirements. Find suitable lodging or holiday packages for them to choose. This is relatively a fun job if you like to go on a holiday.

3. Teacher

Love to teach? You can stay at home and teach young children. Depending on your qualifications, you can teach kindergarten students, primary students or even secondary students. You can provide private one-on-one classes to those in need. Teaching is a rewarding career in Malaysia.

4. Web Designer

Love art and designing? Why not work as a web designer at home? This could be your successful business if you are very good at web designing. The world is changing. People need websites to promote their products and so on. You can do web designing freelance to earn some extra income. If you do full time, you can earn big figures, if you have a lot of clients.

5. Writer

If writing is your hobby, turn your hobby into a money making scheme. These days you can write for blogs, websites and even newspapers, if you are good at journalism. Writing is not limited to books, magazines and newpapers. Blogging can be a career as well, in this era. Give it a try before you say no!

Do you love to write? Writing has been your passion? Perhaps writing could be your break through career to be successful. People have been asking me “how to be a freelance writer?”.

So, I have decided to write a post on how you can be a freelance writer in Malaysia.

1. First of all, you have to understand that there are many types of writing. In the past, writing might be limited to writing books and journalism (for main stream newspaper). However, with blogs and websites emerging on the internet, we need web content writers, bloggers and article writers. Freelance writing is very different from writing books or journalism. Basically, you don’t need to have a degree to be a freelance writer.

2. To be a writer, you must have experience in writing. In order to build up a portfolio fast and easy, you can create your own blog and write for your own blog. This way, any prospective clients can refer to your blog for your writing sample. You can write about anything you want. It would be great if you can write different topics. Not sure how to blog? Learn more about blogging. Apart from that, having a resume is useful when you want to apply for any writing gigs.

3. You might be wondering where to get your first freelance writing gig. You can try to search local job sites such as AsiaPartTime but if you are interested in international writing gigs, you will have to try international freelance job sites such as Elance. There are many job sites you can refer to, but you will have to research on the sites to make sure they are credible to avoid any job scams.

4. How do you accept payment for your services? If you are doing freelance writing jobs for local clients, consider local bank transfer (internet banking). If you are accepting payments from international clients, consider using PayPal. PayPal is a popular international payment gateway. Learn more about PayPal.

5. To be a writer, you must be determined and persistent. For the first few months, you won’t be able to earn much but once you have established a name in the industry, you will be able to earn better income, perhaps even better than your previous job.

Recommended posts:

25 Reasons Why Blogging is a Real Career

10 Reasons Why You Should Start Blogging

Learn how you can set up a blog

When it comes to providing the employees with flexible working hours and structure, BT (formerly British Telecom) is one of the best examples to emulate not only for employers in UK but also other regions including America, Asia and Africa.

While many companies have the doubt that the business operation will be compromised, the scale of success of BT’s flexible work system, called the ‘BT Workstyle’, deserves praises.

The telco giant presently provides the largest flexible working scheme in the Europe, accommodating over 70,000 staff, with more than 10,000 of them working from the comfort of their homes. Even more compelling, the employees can have a fulfilling career and can certainly enjoy the immense advantages of working on flexible arrangement.

The robust work culture has been implemented for more than a decade, and from the look of it, the trend will continue for a long time. It has saved the company millions of dollars and cut the need for space while at the same time increased the productivity and churned out positive results.

“We would certainly encourage employers across the UK to take full advantage of the great opportunities offered by smarter working. With the cost of transport continuing to rise there couldn’t be a better time for people and organizations to ask themselves whether they could work more flexibly.” – Mike Galvin, BT South East Regional Director.

Empowering the flexible working system requires a string of advanced technologies to be put in place which include Wifi, 3G access, Blackberry devices, VoIP and other interconnected traffic system and peripherals embedded with high-level encryption and security standard. For instance, employees working from home can gain access to the office network using the BT iDisk platform that requires the multi-tier remote access password and security approval.

But BT’s flexible work scheme is not only about working from home. Apart from having a home-based office, the employees can also choose other types of preferred working scheme which include being a ‘mobile worker’ or even based in office but with flexibility in job function, grade and location.

With changes in the way things work, BT’s flexible work culture could not come at a better time. There is a clear indication that the need for employers to provide such a scheme imperative. Recently, a survey conducted by O2 discovered that a big portion of small and medium companies in the UK have started to shift their office from commercial area to independent or home offices.

Many reasons drive people to quit their job. Some quit, do a little bit of stuff but then out of fear or failure, go back to their usual 9 to 5 daytime job.

Not for Gobala Krishnan. Knowing that he had a lot lose did not stop his determination to take the plunge. He knew it’s either boom or bust. Either gold or nothing.

In making the the great escape, he chose one of the most riskiest, yet the most rewarding move – striking on his own and build his own small, but powerful empire based in PJ town, Selangor, Malaysia. It is now powerful enough that his home-based, internet business rewards him with an income only matched by the CEO of his former company.

Upon graduation from the university, Gobala landed a job with a well-known, public listed telecommunication company and after 3 years of toiling in his job, he realized he was going nowhere. Apparently, the corporate world is nowhere close to what he had imagined. His talent had not been nurtured to its best.  Slow growth, workplace issues and company politics compounded his misery which eventually drove him to resign.

All he wanted to do was to focus on his quest for freedom in his own way – from the comfort of his house, using the power of the internet. All this without the presence of company bureaucracy and politics. He wanted to prove that people can attain success outside of the corporate world and in the way they want it to happen. In other words, he wanted to do things with his own style, and has struck gold in the process.

Gobala went from a dead end job earning barely RM3,000 to almost nothing (and was on the verge of giving up) and eventually made more than 10 times his full time income. Even before reaching 30 years of age, he has surpassed many levels of expectations, and has experienced his first thousand-dollar income day, married to his girl of choice, bought a house, featured in the local newspaper and becomes a published author. All these are remotely possible had he continued working at his old job and not making the life changing decision.

The New Millionaires (NM) is a term he refers to this new breed of those achieving freedom from the robust internet applications, and those who choose to work at the comfort of their home, or any other places they like. Selling at RRP of RM39.90, the New Millionaires book is available in major bookstores across Malaysia.