WORKING FROM HOME: secretarial/proofreading/editing

jjlothin

My main source of income may be disappearing shortly, and I was wondering if anyone could recommend reliable (and reasonably paid!) sources of income for secretarial work from home.

I'm also an experienced proofreader and editor, so any tips in those lines would also be welcome.

Thanks for reading this!

Mistral001

I would use your own personal contacts first.

If you are absolutely stuck, there are various freelance sites such as elance.com and odesk.com which are a good source of freelance work, but they are very competive as you are competing in a global marketplace with they and thus rates are very low.

jjlothin

Mistral001 wrote: »

I would use your own personal contacts first.

If you are absolutely stuck, there are various freelance sites such as elance.com and odesk.com which are a good source of freelance work, but they are very competive as you are competing in a global marketplace with they and thus rates are very low.

Thanks for your reply Mistral001!

I've got as many feelers out as I can (and am gradually tackling elance, which seems to demand an enormous number of hoops to be jumped through!) - just wondered if any of these work-from-home sites were actually worth bothering with.

Horace

why not set up as a self employed VA/proof reader? You would need to inform the HMRC of your self employment, you would also need to have some form of insurance (prof indemnity). Then use the connections that you have already - connect with them on LinkedIn (you can have a free basic account) and network with them and get work that way.

RadoJo

Horace wrote: »

why not set up as a self employed VA/proof reader? You would need to inform the HMRC of your self employment, you would also need to have some form of insurance (prof indemnity). Then use the connections that you have already - connect with them on LinkedIn (you can have a free basic account) and network with them and get work that way.

You would need to set yourself up as self-employed anyway to work on any of the sites mentioned as they generally pay a fixed price (either per hour or per project) and rely on you to take care of tax, NI etc.

jjlothin

Thanks, Horace and RadoJo! I actually already do some freelance proofreading in addition to my full-time job (which may be disappearing down the tubes!), so I'm already declaring tax on self-employed earnings ...