Two of our family friends are single moms with kids. They asked me to give them some ideas of how they can get started and develop income by working over the web. One has a degree in software development, while the other is a real go-getter and can learn things very quickly. Here are some of the ways you can make money using your PC and working from home.

7 Web Careers For Single Moms

In no order of priority, here are the different ways you can get started and make money from home:

1. Product Reviews – setup a blog reviewing expensive technical products, such as digital cameras. Write reviews that are over 700 words and possibly over 1000 words. These will be picked up very quickly by the search engines. If you do this right, you’ll be asked to write (and get paid) by others sites.
2. Screen-casting – with the explosion of video technology, you can help software and educational companies with their training materials by developing screens casts. You can also branch out and develop services that help others to do this. You’ll need Camtasia or other Screencasting software to do this.
3. Software Testing – not every company has dedicated software testers but need people who can test software at all stages of the development process. If you have skills with computers, the ability to write reports, and analyze software, then this can work very well. You can promote your services with a niche site that talks about software testing and the benefits of outsourcing this task.
4. Virtual Assistant – I use oDesk all the time for project work that my Virtual Assistants can do faster than me. I’ve found two that are very reliable and use them most every week. So far, I’ve spent over $2,000 dollars this year on Virtual Assistants. If you can provide a high-quality reliable service, then register with oDesk and develop your profile. Link it to your blog and get as many endorsements as you can. Focus on one area, such as bookkeeping, design, finance, coding, typing and nail this.
5. Market Researcher – if you have good writing skills and like to gather information, then Market Research is for you. Who do you target? Any company that develops products, especially mid-size ones that may not have dedicated Market Researchers. You can work with the Sales team and use Social Media, Google and other tools to gather data on trends, brands and customer expectations.
6. iPhone app developer – this is a very lucrative area if you have software skills or know how to develop new products. For example, you can learn how the process of developing iPhone apps works and then offer to do this for other companies. Most businesses want to be on the iPhone but don’t know how to start. If you can solve that problem, and have the development team lined up, then you’re in business. Your development team is out there on oDesk
7. Translator – one of the big surprises when I lived in China was the number of US and European students coming there to learn Chinese. Some of these were charging 50 USD per hour to do translation and interpreting work, which isn’t bad for a 20 year old. I got to know two of these and they made very good incomes teaching other English over Skype and doing translation work. If you have language skills, then target the business sector and you’re setup.

Conclusion

One of our friends is half Spanish and now works with clients translating documents over Skype. There are almost no setup costs. She gets paid very well as these are business documents, such as Request For Proposals.

The other helps small companies setup Facebook pages. She’s used Facebook for years now and has it inside out. Why not monetize what she knows? She charges $299 to setup a new Facebook account with pages and links it into their Twitter account. She works when the kids are off in bed and restarts before they begin their work day.

What other careers can you do online?

If you decide to start contracting, one of the hardest things to work out is what daily rate to charge. Many of the readers on this site are looking at ways to escape the 9-5 and moving into contracting is one way to start this process.

How much should I really charge?

I’ve heard people use different approaches to determine what to charge. Some make sense, others are a bit flaky.

For example:

Divide your annual salary by 52 weeks and then add on 20 percent. If you’re on 52k, and divide by 52 weeks, you’d get 1k per week.

Add 20 percent and you’re up to 1200 per week.

Divide this by 5 days and you get 240 per day.

I’m not so sure about this. It doesn’t take into consideration the real world, so to speak, or at least why your peers are charging for their work.

How to Work Out Daily Rates

Here’s an approach that I’d take:

1. Look at the recruitment websites and find the type of job you want. Make a list of the daily rates across several sites. The ideal is to get an average daily rate and not rely just on one site. If you’re a total beginner to the field, say just out of college, your rates will be more towards the lower end.
2. Contact the local Recruitment companies, explain the type of positions that you’re after. Ask them what daily rates you can expect to get based on your experience. Let’s say they believe you can get 200 per day. Now, as a rule of thumb, Recruiters add 20 percent to the rates they charge clients. In other words, if they offer you 200 per day, they’ll probably charge the client 240 per day. The extra 40 per day (i.e. 20 percent) is their fee.
3. Once you know the average daily rates, you can go directly to a company and offer your services from 200 – 240 per day. If you charge 220 per day, then they stand to save 20 per day, 100 per week, and 400 per month. Try to highlight this when talking to them. Otherwise, they may assume that you’re rates are the same as the recruiters.
4. Contact the HR Dept of the IT companies. Ask if they hire ‘direct’ rather than through recruitment companies. Some companies, especially large multi-nationals, have a policy of using recruitment firms only. It’s mostly for legal reasons and no reflection on your abilities. Smaller companies tend to be more flexible.

Tip: if you’re new to contracting, target local companies with less than 50 employees. These are usually more receptive to independent contractors and, even if they don’t have large 3+ month contracts, may have many smaller pieces of work. This can be a good way to build your portfolio while paying the bills.

Succeeding as a Freelance Contractor

Your success as a freelance contractor depends not only on your ability to do the job but to sell your services to prospective clients.

I can’t emphasize this enough.

Companies won’t come to you offering you work. You have to go to them. Before you do this, prepare everything in advance, from your sales pitch, writing samples, business cards, and of course the answer to their last question: how much do you charge?

Conclusion

If you have done your homework, you’ll feel confident when discussing the rates. If the person refuses you, at least you know its not because of your prices but something else.

Try to find out what that is before you hang up!

Let me know how you increase your daily rates.

Most people think it’s difficult start a career as a business consultant. I used to think the same in my early 20s when I started in IT.

In retrospect, I should have made more efforts to establish myself as a consultant earlier; the benefits certainly outweigh the downsides. As luck would have it, I was forced into a consultancy role when I lost my 9-5 job. Time to learn to hustling and bring in business. Harvard Business Review refers to it as The Hustle Strategy. More on that later.

3 Types of Business Consultant

Before we start, there are 3 types of consultants:

1. Academic — those with academic achievements, e.g. PhDs, who are brought in to solve/explore/test problems. Their skills match the problem at hand. So you have it or you don’t.
2. Management — those with senior management skills, such as in M&A, legal, international business development and
3. Solutions — this includes the broad spectrum of 9-workers who’ve ‘repositioned’ their skills, want to work for themselves and/or have others working for them. This, I assume, it where you fit in. It’s where most consultants start out.

How to get started as a Business Consultant

The next question is: how do I get started? Here’s one way of approaching it.

1. Focus — identify your top 3 skills (not technologies). Be honest. If someone put a gun to your head and said “what are the three things you do best?”, then you’d say ”what I do best is…”
2. How do you see yourself — write a pen portrait (100 words max) of how you see yourself. So, if you were introducing yourself person to someone at a conference, you’d say “Hi, this is Amanda she,….” Remember, focus on the benefits you offer, not the tools. Tip – Start to visualize the person/consultant you want to become.
3. Role Models — identify 3 business leaders and use them as role models. For me, Richard Branson is a good example, for you it might be someone else. Read everything about these people, soak up how they made it. It’s not in the words of their bio – but the energy, the drive they had. Having a role model gives you a frame of reference, something to use as a compass/anchor.
4. Meet and Greet — Contact 10 people who are in a similar position as yourself. Meet up, for example, on a Saturday afternoon and see how you can help each other. Remember, you’re looking to link up with people for the long haul. Ignore the tire-kickers. Find 1 or 2 decent people that you trust and keep connecting with them.
5. Be the Glue — Define one common goal with these folks and make it happen. For example, aim to run an event, workshop, training course (whatever) by a specific date. You have to have targets, otherwise nothing will happen. It will just be talking shop.
6. Action Plan — doesn’t need to be fancy. List what needs to be done, assign names, and dates.
7. Examine your USP – I know this sounds lame but you have to differentiate yourself from the competition. This is the key. If you become ‘that guy’ who does, for example, Facebook training, Social Media business communications, Proposal development for biotechnology or whatever, then laser focus on this. Your aim is to dominate this one area. You have to become ‘that guy’.
8. Promotion — once you’ve all your ducks lined up, start getting the message out. Write guest articles in blogs, contribute to events, share information on LinkedIn, send free White Papers to people in your target market – do whatever it takes to promote yourself (and your colleagues) so that you become you become ‘that girl’. Girls, when I say ‘that guy’ I mean both guys and girls. You know that, right?
9. Personal branding – get your site, business cards, sharp suit etc in place. People still judge on appearances. If you look successful…
10. Network — Look for places to get out and meet people. People do business with people they meet. Again, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Find fast ways to meet up and find out where it’s happening. Tip – if you’re a single mom, link up with other parents who want to run their own business and take turns minding each other’s kids:  that way you both get one night a week to get out there and network.
11. Stick to the plan — If you keep this up for 3 months, you’ll change your perception of who you are and also by meeting people, you’ll learn new things. While the web is great, the human touch is what counts.
12. Follow the leader — Tom Peters, Chris Brogan, Richard Branson, ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ have all helped me in different ways.

Chris Brogan made a very interesting observation recently when he said that he tries to be there ‘before the fire starts’. What he meant was that everyone wants to help (i.e. sell you something) when things go wrong but it’s the people you know before it happened that count. I bet there you’ve been in that similar situation yourself. It’s the people you already know that you trust.

One last thing – the harder you try, the luckier you get. Take it one step at a time. Remember the turtle and the hare. Use everyday opportunities as ways to close the gap between where you are and where you want to go.

PS: Started to read this. Impressed so far. Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

What’s your first step?

What advice would you give to those who want to start as a Business Consultant? What’s the one mistake they must avoid? What’s the best tip you ever got on starting your own business?

Tom Peters says, “the value of services will continue to fall” and that the only way to survive is to differentiate yourself from the competition. Is this true? How do you as a technical writer make yourself stand out from the crowd? If you don’t, what impact could this have on your career?

How to Differentiate Yourself

Here are five suggestions to do this:

1. Video Blogging – use your Camtasia skills to create videos that show how products work. Cisco is doing a great job in this area. They gave flip cameras to the IT people and encouraged them to make short, snappy videos that show how to use their hardware, networks, and systems. Which would you prefer? To read 20 pages or watch a 3 minute video?
2. Screencasting Training – now that you know how to make the videos, why not use this to teach others to do this same. Position yourself as a screen-casting expert, setup the blog, get involved, and show others how this works. FWIW there is a very active video marketing group on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanwalsh) that you may want to join.
3. Web-based Training – if you’ve spent years writing guides, you must have developed an in-depth knowledge of 2 or 3 fields. See which of these are most in demand (Google searches and forums will be a starting point) and then develop training modules that you can present online. Lynda.com does a great job in offering training over the web. Sign up with them and see how it works.
4. Social Media Writing – you know how to write, right? Well, most people don’t. As Social Media continues to explode leverage your writing skills and show (“the benefit o f communicating well on Facebook is…”) others how to get their message across on these Social Network. Look at how Debbie Weil does it. http://www.debbieweil.com
5. Business English – the upside of all these jobs getting shipped to India, China, Brazil is that their Management teams want to do more business in the west. How can you help them write better reports, communicate more clearly, protect them from being misunderstood – you get the idea!

These are just five ways you can stand out from the crowd and position yourself as a specialist. My suggestion is to look at who is doing this right, e.g. Debbie Weil, and study them diligently. Then develop an action plan and start getting the rewards you deserve.

What other careers can you think of? Is it possible to differentiate yourself as a Technical Writer? How would you do it?

PS: Tom Peters is here: Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution and Debbie Weil The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right is here.

Outsourcing is not going to go away. Our recent Technical Writers survey showed that US companies are now outsourcing technical documentation projects big-time to India, Poland and Portugal. This is not going to change. It’s just a business decision.

Feeling bad/sad/mad about it won’t change it.

But what you can do is make it work for you. Here’s how I did it.

3 Ways to Turn Outsourcing to Your Advantage & Travel the World

In 2005, my technical writing team in Ireland was told that there would be changes. Clouds on the horizon.

Over the next 6 months we trained a lovely group of writers in Bangalore to take over our technical writing duties, showed them the style guides, and held their hands while they took over the reins.

Then we were all let go.

Some found other work, a few struggled and moved into other less-paid fields — I moved to Asia.

Difficult but great.

Life-long dream to live in the Orient, learn a new language (getting there…) and escape the depression of life back home.

And yes, we have offspring. More on that later.

So here are three ways to make outsourcing work for you:

1. Learn a language.

It’s naïve (and lazy) to think that everyone has to learn English. Now it’s your turn to learn a language.

The boom areas are in the Middle East and Asia.

If you learn one of these languages, coupled with your current expertise, you stand a great chance of developing a great business — and moving away from the current dilemma you’re in.

I can’t do it!

This is just being lazy.

If millions of people can learn to speak Russian, Arabic, and Japanese — well, so can you!

2. Mentor technical writers in other counties

I work with companies in Asia that don’t have an experienced technical writer. They can’t afford me full-time, so we arrange conference calls and I guide their team through the larger projects.

I do it all from home.

No setup charges. We use Skype and Google Docs.

3. Setup a specialist online service

It has to be very precise and almost impossible to replicate.

For example:

1. Convert obscure file formats, e.g. PageMaker files into Microsoft Word
2. Translate technical documents into Arabic or another language where there is a shortage of these skill-sets
3. Perform technical edits on business critical documents, such as business proposals that must have perfect English

Outsourcing is not all going to India

What surprised me when I did the survey is that outsourcing is not going to India, which is what I’d expected, but Poland and other eastern-European countries, such as Latvia and Estonia.

Most of the writers there are English graduates and judging the samples that they have produced, can produce quite good documentation.

Some of the wording and phrasing is a little awkward— but on price they can’t be beat.

The trend towards outsourcing technical documentation is now a fact of life.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone in the field —that means you!—who is either working with offshore companies or has identified ways to protect their career.

What I’d like to know is how it’s affected your career prospects and how you can take ADVANTAGE of this situation.

Another thing

I think Programmers have more to fear that Tech Writers when it comes to outsourcing.

Does writing a blog constitute work? Forbes reports that the New York State Department of Labor recently declared a laid-off attorney ineligible for unemployment benefits as she was bringing in $1.30 a day from blog ads.

In April, Karin started a blog, called STL Meal Deals, where she wrote about local restaurant promotions. Since she received no payments from the businesses she mentioned, Karin decided to try generating some income by signing up for Google AdSense.

Google sends bloggers checks when their earnings hit $100–a level that took Karin three months to achieve.

Here’s what happened when the first check arrived:

Lawyer’s Unemployment Benefits Yanked Over $1 a Day From Blog http://www.forbes.com

Ariana Green on HarvardBusiness.org asks Is Freelancing Right For You?

“The perks are tempting: mid-morning jogs, hours billed from a café in Paris or from your back porch, not needing permission to skip a day to take care of a sick child. But does it make sense for you to take the plunge into freelance life?”

Read more at: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/

I’ve made a list of the top 50 technical writers with a web presence. Some of these you might know, such as Darren Barefoot and Tom Johnson. I have also added some other writers from India, Russia and Israel to reach out to a wider audience. I’m sure there are others that I’ve missed. Let me know and I’ll update the list.

This week’s new additions include Alan Houser, Char James-Tanny, Cheryl Locket-Zubak , Colum McAndrew, Joe Welinske, Michael Hughes, and Paul Mueller.

[ad#black]

Update:

Thanks to everyone who sent in other technical writers that I overlooked. I’ve now added:

Geoffrey Sauer, Addison Berry, Jean Hollis Weber, Jim Campbell, Sarah O’Keefe, Shaun McCance, Shira Stepansky, Svi Ben Elya and Scott Able

Back to the list…

Top 50 Technical Writers

In alphabetical order, here is the list.

1.  Aaron Davis and Scott Nesbitt http://www.dmncommunications.com

2.  Amanda Abelove http://www.abelove.com

3.  Amy Gahran http://contentious.com

4.  Andrew Brooke http://techwriters-world.blogspot.com

5.  Andy Schaub www.andyschaub.wordpress.com

6.  Aneesha Myles Shewani www.linkedin.com

7.  Anindita Basu http://writing-technical.blogspot.com

8.  Anne Gentle http://www.justwriteclick.com

9.  Apoorv Durga http://www.apoorv.info

10.Arden Gatlin www.liveperson.com

11.Avi Aharon: GUI Yourself http://gui-yourself.blogspot.com

12.Barbara Stuhlemmer http://techwriterblogs.com/doku.php

13.Berkun blog http://www.scottberkun.com/blog

14.Bill Albing http://www.keycontent.org

15.Bobbie Jo Morrell www.morrellimage.com

16.Bokardo.com http://bokardo.com

17.Chris Borokowski www.user-advocacy.blogspot.com

18.Dan Mabee http://managetechpubs.wordpress.com

19.Darren Barefoot http://www.darrenbarefoot.com

20.David Farbey http://www.farbey.co.uk (updated url)

21.Dawn L. Brown www.dawnsdesktop.com

22.Dr. Macro http://drmacros-xml-rants.blogspot.com

23.Edward W. Dodds http://edodds.blogs.com/conmergence

24.FastForward http://www.fastforwardblog.com

25.Gordon McLean www.onemanwrites.co.uk

26.Heather Leigh :http://blog.CrazyforWords.com

27.Ivan Walsh, Ireland www.ivanwalsh.com

28.Janet Swisher http://www.janetswisher.com

29.KJ Maas www.kjmaas.com

30.Laura Shaffer Mills www.redwriteblue.com

31.Liz Carver http://www.is-people.org

32.Mark Glinsky www.markglinsky.com

33.Mark Watson www.markwatson.com

34.Matt Anderson http://www.montagecomms.com

35.Mike Brannon www.mikeabrannon.com

36.Mike Unwalla http://www.techscribe.co.uk

37.Paul Pehrson http://blog.paulpehrson.com

38.Paul Stamatiou http://paulstamatiou.com

39.Prakash Rangarajan http://www.cloudtrance.com

40.Robert Wisbey http://www.robertwisbey.com/main.html

41.Robert B. Stepno www.stepno.com/bobres.html

42.Sarah Maddox http://ffeathers.wordpress.com

43.Seth Gottlieb http://www.contenthere.blogspot.com

44.Steve Borsch http://borsch.typepad.com

45.Steven Jong http://stevenjong.net/WordPress

46.Suresh Digital Dreams http://www.techpings.com

47.Susanne Dyrhage www.proz.com/profile/72014

48.Tim McGuinness www.timmcguinness.com

49.Tom Coates http://www.plasticbag.org

50.Tom Johnson www.idratherbewriting.com

New Additions

51. Geoffrey Sauer, EServer Technical Communication Library

Geoffrey Sauer, for his EServer Technical Communication Library at http://tc.eserver.org. Tom Johnson reckons that this is the most popular technical communications site in the world (http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2008/12/02/tceserverorg-the-most-popular-technical-communication-website-in-the-world/

Its readership data at http://tc.eserver.org/about/recent.lasso, shows that it serves 167,000 hits to over 22,700 visitors per day.

52. Addison Berry, Drupal documentation lead: http://rocktreesky.com

53. Jean Hollis Weber, documentation co-lead for OpenOffice.org: http://www.jeanweber.com

54. Jim Campbell, documentation lead for xfce desktop environment: http://j1m.net

55. Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium

President of Scriptorium Publishing, setup in 1996 to provide editing and production services to technical writing departments. In 2002, Sarah received her Certified Technical Trainer (CTT+) accreditation from CompTIA. Her presentations at international, national, and regional conferences (including STC, tekom, and WritersUA) have consistently earned high ratings. http://www.scriptorium.com/about/people/sarah-okeefe

56. Shaun McCance, Gnome documentation lead: http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm

57. Esther Shira Stepansky – Technical writer, Web Site Administrator (Webmaster), and content contributor to http://elephant.org.il.

58. Svi Ben Elya – Founder of Elephant.org.il in Israel http://elephant.org.il

59. Scott Able – The Content Wrangler

“Content management strategist and social media choreographer with strengths in helping organizations improve the way they author, maintain, publish and archive their information assets.”  http://thecontentwrangler.com/about-2/

Update Nov 19^th

This week’s updates take up to 66, the year I was born, so that can’t be so bad.

60. Alan Houser – http://www.groupwellesley.com & http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/alan/houser

61. Char James-Tanny – www.helpstuff.com & http://www.linkedin.com/in/charjt

62. Cheryl Locket-Zubak  - www.workwrite.com and www.linkedin.com/in/workwrit

63. Colum McAndrew, The RoboColum(n) blog at http://notcolin.wordpress.com

64. Joe Welinske – President of WritersUA www.writersua.com/jwbio.htm

65. Michael Hughes – user-assistance.blogspot.com

66. Paul Mueller – www.useraid.com

Honorable Mention

I’ve also added these three sites as, while they are a great resource. I’m not sure who the editor is. Of maybe there are several people involved. If you know, please tell me and I’ll update.

1.  Svi Ben-Elya and the Elephant organization http://www.elephant.org.il (Thanks Svi!)

2.  DMN http://www.dmncommunications.com/weblog (Aaron Davis and Scott Nesbitt)

3.  Le Blog d’Habib http://elhabib.fakir.free.fr (still trying to find out)

Where did this list come from?

I was preparing a report on freelance technical writers and noticed how hard it was to find technical writing sites run by writers, most were recruitment site.

So, I dug a little deeper and began to find writers here and there. There is nothing scientific in this list. It’s based purely on the websites that came up on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Other technical writers who may not have websites, such as those involved in the STC, didn’t make the cut. Nothing personal here it’s just that I have no visibility on their contribution to the tech docs industry so it’s hard to gauge their impact.

Add Me!

Let me know who I missed – maybe you should be here – with maybe a few words about your/their role.

I’ll update this list and, fingers crossed, we’ll get it up to 100!