Many home-workers will be self-employed and therefore need to find their own work to pay the bills. Jobs can come in many forms for the self-employed but whether you are promoting yourself as a freelancer, a contractor, a sub contractor or are simply selling a product or service, it takes time and effort to find suitable, sustainable paid work.

Finding work to do from home is a full-time job in itself. Having said this, those of you who have certain skills that are particularly easy to transfer to a home-based working environment are half-way there.  

These skills might have been honed over your past experience in office environments, through specialist training courses or even through voluntary work. However, you’ve acquired the skills, make sure you do some research to make sure the skills are required and that you will be able to get enough paid work.

The following skills are easier to transfer to a home-working role:

• Writing and journalism
• Translation
• Editing and proofreading
• Indexing
• Telesales
• Accountancy
• HR administration
• Research
• Book-keeping and basic administration
• Customer services
• Graphic design
• Web design
• Illustration
• Accountancy
• Law

Maybe you’ve spent years working in one of the above areas in-house for another company. Well, why not try setting up your own business and find your own clients? With a little hard work, persistence and self-promotion, you can develop your own regular clients book.