Working at Home

Buyers
As a buyer, Elance provides you with an great opportunity to get high
quality work done on the cheap. Let’s take a look on how that works.
Working at Home
First, the market is unbalanced. There are more sellers than buyers.
Second, one reason for the imbalance is the slow economy. Nonetheless,
even in a strong economy, the imbalance will remain for most categories.
Third, many freelancers work out of their home with minimal
overhead and can do the work less expensively for you than people
working in an office. Fourth, most freelancers don’t charge enough.
They establish fees based on what they need to make to get by and seldom
cover the benefits they would get on a normal job. Such benefits
typically add 10 to 40 percent to an employee’s salary.
The bottom line is that you can purchase needed services at bargain
rates. The question then becomes, How can I use these services?
Keep in mind that a considerable percentage of white collar workers
work at home today. The Census Bureau shows Colorado with 4.9
percent home workers while some communities have as high as 6.4
percent home workers according to the Rocky Mountain News, June 5,
2002. These are freelancers. These figures, however, don’t take into
account employees who work at home for employers, so called “telecommuters.”
The Maryland Department of Transportation did a survey that indicated
12 percent of the employees in the Washington metro area telecommuted
in 1998 (for at least part of their work week).
What do these figures mean? Simply that a significant percentage of
the national work force works at home. With inexpensive telephone
service, fax, cheap computers, and the Internet, one can work at home,
do productive work for a business, and fit right in at the office from
afar. In fact, my wife telecommutes one day a week for her employer (a