Assuming you don't already... Could you make $50K/year from home? What would you do?
 

If you couldn't perform your current job/profession any more and were in a position that you HAD to work from home, what would you do to net $50K/year?

I would teach technical classes(Microsoft/Cisco networking products) via the internet.

Or gay porn. I haven't quite made up my mind.

You'd make more money with gay porn. ;)

and thats no joke!!! I have a few friends that run gay porn sites and let me tell you, big loads of cash! :(

I work from home but I spend a lot of time travelling between client sites.
It's not what I expected and you can get "cabin fever" at times.

write...(gay porn)

I do better than that and do work from home. The only problem I have with it is that I'd never be able to replace this gravy train of a job if I lost it. I have zero tolerance for the BS my wife deals with in her office. I'm removed from and immune to it all now and that means I'm totally spoiled. I'm riding my bike to LA in a week for work, will expense the mileage and live well. When I get back home, I'll work in my underwear, cook what I want for lunch, take naps and still git er done. My Blackberry is glued to me, but I can live with that.

Let's say not officially, but good aptitude for sales.

I guess the other important parameter is that you would not be a W2 employee.

Virtually everyone I know that's still in a "corporate america" IT dept. has been working from home for years.

I must be the exception.

I can do most of my job from home, but when the $h!t hits the fan, it's nice to be able to get everyone in one room, come up with a plan of action, and disperse to get it done. It would take much longer to have that kind of meeting over the phone/internet.

Chris, I never did either, but I was primarily referring to folks I know from my career in banking (mega-banks). With data centers and departments scatterered all over the US, when they began working from home, it was really no different from when they went into the office. I was always on call, 24x7x365, so there were many times that I got that 3 am phone call for an issue several states away or overseas. I never wanted to "work from home" on a regular basis however...it was much easier to forget about "stuff" on the drive home :).

KC,

That bolsters my theory that most "mega-banks" are still running the legacy back-end systems of the dozens of banks they have acquired over the years. I saw some evidence of this when I tried to close my dad's checking account with BofA. It also tells me that their IT infrastructure is overcomplicated and operating in a diseconomy of scale. I further assume that back-end systems have not been consolidated because of the significant one-time costs (despite the huge potential for reoccuring savings), and because they will just acquire another bank next year and have to do it all over again...

Feck... I make $43K, commute, and put up with BS all day...

If I could make $50K working from home I'd think I had died and gone to heaven.

YMMV

Yes, you are indeed correct. Fact is, they couldn't consolidate systems even if they wanted too...the expertise to do so has long been gone (although they do in fact consolidate data centers, etc.) I haven't been in banking IT for 15 years, but began in the "rodeo" you refer to (first with what is now BofA, and later with the now defunct Wachovia (half of Wells-Fargo). Yep, they are still too big too fail, but the irony is that attempting to "break them up" would be an utter fustercluck too. Deregulation of banking that began in the mid-80s has proven to me that we certainly don't want to go down that same path with the Insurance industry. The powers that be at the top brought this mess on, and convinced the regulatory agencies that it was a "good" thing back when Reagan was in office...hindsight proves otherwise imo. Sorry to get off topic and PARFY :)...

Not likely you would make that kind of money even if you didn't. Ask me how I know.

50K in commissions from sales at home seems unlikely to me.

Now all the exceptions will speak.

Crap. How do you afford to live in CA on $43k?

I make $80k and live in central Illinois where I bought a 4-bedroom, 3400 sq. ft. house for $219k this year. (I say this to give you an idea of the cost of living, which I assume is much cheaper than anywhere in CA). I presently can't afford a P-car and feel like I'm just squeezing by. I feel like I'd need to earn $150k a year to live in the same house, have my wife not work, and be able to afford a decent P-car.

43K is not impossible to live on. 1500 rent, low car payment and there's plenty enough for a good solid life. Don't bring in the p-car hobby though.

See my sig... can't even keep a 944 running.

I bought in real estate early... $180K mortgage on a (now) $490K house... two houses on the lot and I rent the front house out... hate being a landlord but it help make ends meet.

That sounds reasonable.

I was just thinking that if I made $43k a year, at my current tax rate, after withholdings and benefits, that would leave me about $1600 a month in take-home pay.

My ex makes $200K+ a year working from home. You can too - just need a phd from a top science department, a jd from a top law school, and the ability to make nice between engineers and the uspto.

Well I have my 7 to 4 - but I moonlight from home and make decent bank just moonlighting...

Art tart - I have clients all over the world - I never see them, we email, I create what they want, I upload it, they pay me. (well if they are a new client that is a bit different, we email, they pay me, I create it, I upload it).

I take home $2500 a month after taxes...

But after I finish my ninja assassin correspondence course I figure I will clean up!

That's where you went wrong. "...at my current tax rate"
Plus the standard deduction on the 1040 favors lower income.

$50K a year is not enough for me to do gay pron. $51K a year, now you are talking.

Too bad we can't ask a certain someone how much he made doing it. He had to have those pictures for some reason...

I kid I kid

I'm in IT and I get to work from home occasionally, not as often as I would like. My "dream job" would be to work from home 100% because then I wouldn't have the wasted time, expense, hassle of the daily commute (1 hour minimum each way) and I could be home with our Golden Retriever (stress reliever).

Working from home is the secret to running a small business. Avoid the big outgoings such as renting office space/furniture/paying staff. So when things get a bit quiet you don't go bust because you have nothing to lose, and when things go well, YES the money is all yours.

First question would be what exactly do you mean by "work from home"? Sit at home and do work or have your job/work/field based form your home?

2nd question as an employee or self employed?

3rd question gross or net?

4th question what filed are you looking at do work from home or are you playing the field?

Currently, I'm self employed as a bookkeeper and QuickBooks consultant catering to small businesses. I work from home about half the time and at client's offices the other half. I do a variety of tasks for a variety of clients. There's plenty more work if I want it. Really, not a bad gig IF I liked accounting. My degree is in business majoring in management. I've owned/grown/sold a decent sized small business in the past, which was more my speed. I never would have picked accounting as a profession, but ended up here via a random set of circumstances.

Since my wife travels somewhat randomly for her job and we have an 11 year old, I need extreme flexibility. 9-5 isn't in the cards for me. I'm really just brainstorming for other possibilities. I've spent several years building a clientele and reputation among CPAs so I'd have to be fairly confident of success in another venture to make a change.

Lee what are your interest other than P-cars?

Fox: Are you an artist? I work in pastels and I have a studio in home. I'm looking for avenues to promote my art.

My wife and I are self-employed, have a 50 acre hobby farm in Wisconsin with a seasonal pizza restaurant. We kill ourselves for 4.5 months and get the rest of the year off. We do well over 90K a season before taxes, net out around 65k or so. Enough for us, as all of our stuff is paid off. However, we just bought a big house in AZ and now have a mortgage. Have a beautifully remodeled house in southern NM to sell if anyone is interested~!

My brother with no real "education" works from home and probably makes more than $50K a year. Self taught programmer, started small while working in a factory, client base kept growing, dropped his job and eventually and now has so many clients its hard to make room for more.

Me personally, I like to make things, and that's not as easy to do from home without a significant cash outlay, I do CNC programming/machining, I could use my savings to buy a machine and do it from home if I built a shed to house the machines, but I've worked for my current employer for about seventeen years and I'll keep going as long as their open I hope. :)

I've done marketing strategy consulting from a home office off and on and have done okay.

I'm very familiar with a mid-size global company that is essentially 100% home office based - designed from day 1 to be a virtual company. Project Managers typically make more than the target figure here. Sales folks (who do need go so see clients as well) do pretty well.

BTW, skilled professional translators can make six figures, work from home and live most anywhere they want in the world.

I had a home-based consulting firm for a few years. My cell phone was my office, I always met clients at their office, why would they want/need to travel to my office? I had contacts when I found myself suddenly unemployed by my former employer and my start up cost was about $50 in business cards. I billed about $100K my first full year, and my business expenses were mileage on my vehicle. I had the home office (spare bedroom) already. Maybe a few other minor expenses like a lunch here and there for a client or potential client. Created letterhead and invoices on the computer.

Court-certified translators can make a ton on legal documents.

I'd invest a small amount in machinist equipment and a TIG welder that would fit in my garage and spend my time making 700$ sets of drop links and toe links for idiots with Porsches willing to pay that much for a tube with two rod ends on the end of it.

I didn't get my engineering degrees to be a machinist/TIG welder, but it is a set of skills I am grateful for and I think, with the right business model and a set of clients, money can be made.

Don, any pointers on where to look for these opportunities?

I'm sure the local consulate gets requests all the time. Tons of info on the Net.

Sites like this:

Atlanta Association of Interpreters and Translators* Atlanta Association of Interpreters & Translators
Austin Area Translators and Interpreters Association AATIA - Austin Area Translators and Interpreters Association
The California Court Interpreters Association CCIA - - Home Page
Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters* Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters - Welcome
Colorado Translators Association www.cta-web
Florida Chapter of ATA* www.atafl.com
Metroplex Interpreters and Translators Association www.ticnet.com/mita/
National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators NAJIT - The Professional Association for Court Interpreters and Translators
National Capital Area Chapter of ATA* Home
New England Translators Association NETA
New Mexico Translators and Interpreters Association internet.roadrunner.com/nmtia/
New York Circle of Translators* New York Circle of Translators | Translation & Interpretation Professionals
Northeast Ohio Translators Association* Therapy Clinics
Northern California Translators Association* Northern California Translators Association
Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society* NOTIS Home Page
Society for Technical Communication STC.org
Southern California Area Translators and Interpreters Association* Welcome to SCATIA!
Translators and Interpreters Guild
Local 32100 of the Newspaper Guild/ Communications Workers of America
Trans-Learning
Washington State Court Interpreters and Translators Society Washington State Court Interpreters and Translators Society

The most active translator community is ProZ. Within the US, the ATA is a good professional association - these are good resources to learn about the profession.

Most translators work consistently for a larger translation agency or two (or more) on a freelance basis. If they have unique expertise, then they can call their own rates.

PM me for more info.

Don

We're working on this, 700 BofA employees transferred from BofA to us on Jan 1st we will modernize and consolidate their banking system onto our combined platforms. The transformation will finish later this summer. We're doing the same thing for Cap 1, Wells, and just about everyone else.

What I exactly do is design these large consolidation platforms just for this. Then we bring in banks from all over the world and standardize them onto unified platforms with new service offerings to their customers.

I work about 80% from home, but only by choice since my office is nice and quite compared to my house. As KC said most IT is probably closer to 95% at home these days. Salaries for IT folks are going to be 60-100k for admins 150-300 for Architects and management types where I work.