Work From Home – The Real Deal

If you have ever had dreams of working from home and you gave up those dreams to work for someone else and commute hundreds of hours per year – then the solution is quite simple – learn how to really work from home!

Quite often I see people drudging their way to work while I simply skip in for a coffee only to walk back to my condo refreshed from my walk and ready to write. You see, I am a writer by trade and a coder by choice – and while I enjoy working as a freelancer for vWorker.com I also enjoy being a person able to work from my livingroom, bedroom, kitchen, or even out on my patio when the weather is nice.

One of the ways I got my start was able to Get Paid To Write From Home! – was signing up with a couple of great services that allowed me to choose my clients by working only on what I wanted to. You have to love what you do, really.

The best place I have come across for writing and being able to work from home is by seeking out where all the real writing jobs were – click here and you’ll find out my secret – Get Paid To Write From Home!

by Vago Damitio

A new book by Vago Damitio is designed to motivate and help new freelancers in the ins and outs of this lifestyle. Vago brings his wit and classic writing style to an adventure filled book.

Whats refreshing is there are no claims of overnight “get rich quick” or making tons of adsense cash (we know this is a dead horse), but instead a way of thinking about the industry and how to make it work for you.

Its a quick read, just shy of 8000 words, and will certainly motivate and lift your spirits in this little entrepreneurial world of “Freelancing”.

As an IM’er, this is a perfect read to maybe get you re-motivated into your product or other aff product. Every great once in a while we burn out doing promotion after promotion and launch after launch – with almost nothing to show for it except a paycheck. While that’s great, I think what is better is to actually spend some of that hard earned online cash into travel and new experiences.

I urge you to check it out – especially if you are stuck in learning how our little industry can be worked.

Click here to check out the full writeup: Vago’s New Book

Take a moment – take a breath – relax – focus – now get back to work.

Here was the project:

Would like a simple flash feature where sentences (5 words max) float in for a couple of seconds and then disappear while the next sentence appears and then of course dissolves – probably a max of 20 sentences.

1. Will have an all white background and no border
2. The sentences will all have different font styles and sizes
3. the colours for the sentence fonts will be a mix of “#CC0000″ to “#000000″ and “#F5F5F5″ and dark grey.
4. Only 2 or 3 sentences will be #CC0000 as they are in order of use.
5. I will determine the order of the sentences and the colour
6. The flash box should be 500×300 and also should be able to be reduced in size with no problem reading the font.

This coder did an outstanding job and in record time – he not only created the perfect flash file for my catch a cheating spouse programme but nailed the flash file on the first try. You really need to see it live and here it is:

If you want great graphic designers like Khaver – simply click here:

Now, the vWorker only needed to get me 250 vendors out of a possible 423. There were certain criteria they had to meet in order to go on the list and a spreadsheet was assigned to handle the data into proper fields.

This is not to say that every vWorker is like this – but most new workers often have trouble conforming to the stringent rules. Albeit good rules which are in place to keep everyone focused and the projects flowing smoothly.

This particular vWorker that I hired was very new – this in fact was his first project.

After giving him all the details of the project, the spreadsheet and all my contact information should he get stuck or have a question – the vWorker started the project. Apparently though, he didn’t check his email as frequently as one would like and the project crept up to the ending date with no word from him after the project was assigned.

Upon questioning him about the project he finally responded:

“Sir, I am really very very very very very sorry because i did not respond you for many days, once again i am really very sorry, actually the reason of my absence and about to not fulfilling my promises is that, i was busy with my exams so that’s why i was not able to respond you about your work. It is my humble request to you to just give me 2 more days so then i will submit you your work, it is my request please sir please, i will be very thankful to you if you allow me to do this.”

I am looking forward for your reply.
Regards,  NAME WITHELD

Now then, I gave him an additional two days as he had asked, believing that he was new and just didn’t get how things worked here – or that he at least did ask for an extension.

The two days had come and gone, and inevitably turned into 7 days – as a Buyer, this is not the thing to do – but when you are as busy as I am, often the small projects aren’t too much of a burden or a necessity to have completed on time… but I digress.

Hi, I have already done your work, i will submit you by tomorrow, only check up your work is remains that’z why

Regards, NAME WITHELD

…and again, the next day had come and gone without a word from this vWorker. Now as a knowledgeable buyer – I know when someone is blowing smoke. Its like this in every industry – but, this project was again, too small to worry about – I had bigger fish to fry.

He then contacted me a few days later after I asked if he wished to simply cancel the project:

Hi, I am going to submit your work to you in two hours time.

Nope – that didn’t happen either… it was 9 hours later… and of course the work was entirely incomplete.

As a Buyer – what would you do? First and foremost I documented the posts where he has stated he was 50% complete and also when he stated he would send the work. I then told him we should cancel becuase I knew if this went  into full arbitration that he would receive a negative mark (-3) and this would really affect his ability to get work in the future.

But, the noob decided to post an arbitration against me… dumb move. He wound up losing the arbitration, and pretty quickly I might add. So, the escrow money was returned to me and I am on my way to find a new vWorker to work on this project.

So, long story short – as a Buyer – keep up on your project and whatever is committed to stay on target. If the vWorker states they will have the work completed by a certain time – you can either agree to it or find a new time or try to cancel altogether. It is best though to find a way to complete a project.

As a vWorker – if you are having trouble completing the project or simply cannot finish it – let the Buyer know straight away – one bad mark will carry with you the entire time on vWorker – its best to have a neutral comment rather than a negative. Just be open and honest.

How To Find the vWorker for Your Project

Finding someone to work on your new vWorker project can be nerve wracking. What with all the vWorkers applying and bidding for the project it can totally consume an afternoon reading all the posts and checking portfolios.

One of the easiest methods I use when trying to find a vWorker for my projects is to simply look through some past projects that somewhat fit my description.

If your project is for OsCommerce installation or fixes – you can do a search for a vWorker with that skillset, but often I find it much easier to do a search for a project with those keywords and then find the winner of the project.

Once you have the winner you will also have the others who bid on the project. This is also a great way to find out what the average price will be for your project!

In the image above, you’ll see the high bidder and that there were 2 other bidders. What you don’t see is that there were 40+ other people interested in this project but hadn’t posted a bid. Some vWorkers will chat with a customer to find out more information about the project, while others will chat a little and post a bid. Its often the vWorker who exactly knows the project and can bid and chat at the same time.

Once on the vWorker site and you have found a project somewhat like yours, click on “Click Here To See All Bidders” and it will open the project to show you who bid. You can then click on their name to find out more about them. You can even offer them a private project or simply add them to your vWorker list to build up a great team of outsource staff.

How Much Should I Charge For The Project?

This question comes up a great deal. Most new vWorkers don’t really know what to charge for their labor, or are coming from another site and don’t know how vWorker operates or are even new to the labour market based on outsourcing work. Usually based on the project scope and your knowledge and resources, you can easily come up with a good rate that will win you the project and also help your client.

But…

If you haven’t worked on that particular project, programme or theme before, it may be difficult to come up with a fair price. You obviously want to give the client a great price and make the most money for your time.  Giving a new client a good price and doing a great job will assure you get great feedback and also repeat business. One of the resources I use is to simply look at past vWorker projects that other vWorkers have completed.

I did a search for those terms and found this entry: “Writing Posts for Website” You can see that the project was completed, who bid on it and what the bid amount was. This really helps when you are stuck for what price to give.

Once you have the information you need I would suggest doing this search a few more times to get a good average project price. This little tip will also help you in the future as it always helps to know your competition and to see what they charge…

Operating Systems Exams:

Linux Test : Basic Concepts, Networking and Security, Commands, Utilities

Mac OS X 10.5 Test : Printing, General, User Interface, Network, Filesystem, Command Line, Internet and Email, GUI

Redhat Linux 9.0 Admin Test : Installation, Grub, Boot Process, Boot, Network, File system, Device Configuration, Proc Filesystem, RPM, Trouble Shooting, Users and Groups, Crontab, Kernel, Printer, RAID, LVM, xserver, Quotas

Redhat Linux 9.0 General Test : Printing, Regular Expressions, General, Linux Documentation, Basic, Linux Commands, Linux Command, Unix Shell, Redirection, User Groups, User Permissions, Vi Editor, Symbolic Links, Disk Tool, Linux Process, Linux Basics

Solaris 10 U4 Test : Installation, Security, General, SERVICES, ZETA FILE SYSTEM, Zones, Projects, NFS, UNIX Commands, Runlevels

Unix Shell Script Test : Concepts, variables, operators, Decision control instructions, Loop control instructions

Unix Test : Commands, Basic Concepts and Administration, Filters, Commands, Filters and Shells, File Commands

Windows NT Test : Installation, Administration, Fault Tolerance, File Systems, Concepts, Integration, Performance Monitoring, Troubleshooting, Printing, Performance Optimization, Performance

Windows Vista Administration Test : Troubleshooting, Security, Backup and Restore, Features of Windows Vista, Deploying Windows Vista, Windows Vista Desktop Management, Disk Management, Windows Vista Networking, Desktop Health Management, Network Troubleshooting, Internet Explorer

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WebSite Design Exams:

Principles of Web Graphics Design Test : Typography, Layout and Composition, Color Sense, Texture, Imagery

3ds Max 7.0 Test : Animation, Particles, Lighting, 3d Modeling, Materials and Texturing, Rendering and Effects

3ds Max 8.0 Test : Animation, Particles, Lighting, 3d Modeling, Materials and Texturing, Rendering and Effects

Adobe After Effects 7.0 Test : Rendering, Compositions, Masking and Transparency, Animating Layers, Video and Audio Effects, Managing Layers, Managing Layer

Adobe Flex 3.0 Test : Modules, Basics of Flex, Introduction to Flex UI, Data Providers and Collections, Events and Event Handling, Working with Controls, Containers, Effects, View States and Transitions, Styling of Components, Item Editors, Item Renderers and Repeaters, Validators and Formatters

Adobe Flex Builder 2 Test : Adobe Flex Builder Interface, Flex Controls and Components, Developing Applications, Working with effects, Action Script, Charting Components, Flex Data Development

Adobe Illustrator Test : Filters, User Interface, Toolbox, Layers and Actions, Output and Formats, Working With Objects

Adobe Premiere Test : Standards and Formats, Audio and Video Mixing, Clip Animation, Editing, Title, Superimposing, Transitions

CSS 2.0 Test : Fundamentals, Advanced Techniques, Selectors, Basic Styles, Text and Font Styles, Page Media

CSS 3 Test : Fundamentals, Selectors, Basic Styles, Page Media, Basic User Interface, Color Styles, Font Styles, Speech and Ruby, Text and Style Attribute Syntax, 2D, 3D and Animation

Dreamweaver 4 Test : Tables in Dreamweaver, Using Templates, Using Cascading Stylesheets, Creating a Webpage in Dreamweaver, Inserting scripted functionality with Behaviors, Manage and Upload projects through Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver 8 Test : Tables in Dreamweaver, Using Cascading Stylesheets, Workspace & Interface, Files & Site Management, Templates & Layout, Code & Page Contents, Dynamic Pages & Sites, Scripting and Behaviors, Scripting & Behaviors

Drupal 5 Test : Drupal Interface and Database, Working with Users, Nodes and Filters, Blocks and Themes, Taxonomy and Caching, Sessions and Forms, Drupal Style Sheets and Module

Drupal 6.14 Test : Advanced Features , Interface, SEO, Install and Upgrade, Content, Admin, Concept, Basic Features

Facebook Open Platform Development Test : Facebook API Information Scripting, Facebook FBML, Facebook API Basic Concepts, Facebook API Methods, Facebook Data Store API and FQL, Facebook Authentication

FrontPage 2000 Test : FrontPage 2000 Fundamentals, Frontpage 2000 Advanced Features, Designing Web Pages, Analysing Webs using FrontPage 2000, Ensuring Web Compatibility, HTML and CSS

HTML 4.01 Test : Advanced Tags, Fundamentals, Tags, Tables, Links and Images, Forms and Frames

JavaScript 1.3 Test : Events, Cookies, Form Handling, Advanced Techniques, JavaScript Syntax, Document Object Model, Built-in Objects, JavaScript Basics, Strings, Javascript Operators

JavaScript 1.8 Test : JavaScript Basics, Regular Expressions, Advanced Topics, Javascript Built-in Objects, E4X

Joomla 1.5.x Test : Installation, Configuration, Media Manager, User Manager, Content Manager, Menu Manager, Extensions

Macromedia Flash 8 Test : Architecture and Interface, Design and Animation, Actionscripting, Sound and Output

Maya 7.0 Test : Modeling & Tools, Animation, Particles, Lighting, Materials & Shaders, Rendering

OpenSocial Test : Miscellaneous, OpenSocial API, Configuration and Implementation, OpenSocial for Orkut, OpenSocial Namespaces, Integration with Google App Engine, Persistence API

osCommerce v2.2 Test : Configuration, osCommerce Interface and Tools, Catalog, Stylesheet Definitions, Shipping and Payment, Errors and Classes

Joomla 1.5 Test : Files and Folders, Interface, Installation and Configuration, Joomla Extensions, Plug Ins, Managing a Professional Deployment, PHP and Security

XHTML 1.0 Test : Fundamentals, Tags, Images and Links, Tables and Forms

XML Schema Test : XML Schema Components and Namespaces, XML Schema Validation, XML Schema Datatypes, XML Schema Framework

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Translation Skills Exams:

English To Arabic Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English To Brazilian Portuguese Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English To Danish Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English To Dutch Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English To European Portuguese Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English To French Translation Skills Test : Prepositions, Articles, Pronouns, Verbs, Participles and Gerunds, Indirect Speech, Time expressions, Adjectives, Syntax

English To German Translation Skills Test : Prepositions, Articles, Pronouns, Verbs, Participles and Gerunds, Indirect Speech, Time expressions, Adjectives, Syntax

English To Italian Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English to Japanese Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English To Korean Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English To Mandarin Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English To Spanish Translation Skills Test : Prepositions, Articles, Pronouns, Verbs, Participles and Gerunds, Indirect Speech, Time expressions, Adjectives, Syntax

English To Swedish Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

English To Tagalog (Filipino) Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

French To English Translation Skills Test : Prepositions, Articles, Pronouns, Verbs, Participles and Gerunds, Indirect Speech, Time expressions, Adjectives, Syntax

German To English Translation Skills Test : Prepositions, Articles, Pronouns, Verbs, Participles and Gerunds, Indirect Speech, Time expressions, Adjectives, Syntax

Italian To English Translation Skills Test : Sentence Structure, Pronouns, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, VERB TENSES, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS, ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS, DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH

Russian To English Translation Skills Test : Prepositions, Articles, Pronouns, Verbs, Participles and Gerunds, Time expressions, Adjectives, Syntax

Spanish To English Translation Skills Test : Prepositions, Articles, Pronouns, Verbs, Participles and Gerunds, Indirect Speech, Time expressions, Adjectives, Syntax

Understanding differences in British and American English Test : Vocabulary, Grammar, Numbers, Spelling, Writing, Pronunciation, Verbs, Common Phrases

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Third Party Tests:

ooVoo Client API Test :

ooVoo Web API Test :

PBworks – Pages and Files Test :

PBworks Test :

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