The Last Blog?

This blog page began as a mandatory assignment for a business writing class. And after chosing the topic of business women working from home, I anticipated my research would help me in deciding my emminent future. But it turns out, I'm even more confused now than ever.
It seems that most work at home, internet or telecommuting jobs are all sales-based pay--at least what I have explored are. I'm can't imagine having a job where I'm on the phone all day with potential clients while my 18 month old is screaming or laughing or crying in the background.
Not very professional. I could try to do a job like this during her nap time, but I'm usually trying to squeeze in a shower, two loads of laundry, dishes, bill paying, internet class assignments, light housework(last priority, haha) and feeding the dogs. And thats if she actually sleeps over an hour.
I could continue my ebay business of buying textbooks online and selling them back at the ridiculous bookstore to earn a profit, but it just seems morally wrong. Besides, there are no local companies here that can provide benefits(health, vacation, etc.) for a home based employee.
My focus now is to graduate in December and begin a slow process for finding a new job. My current job is not too bad--benefits are great, I'm valued there and its a respectable employer. I am just unable to be promoted unless I agree to transfer(likely out of state). And that is not a possibility when your spouse owns a local business.
So the new game plan is graduate, have another child, take some time off, maybe do free lance work through a great website like HireMyMom.com and then return to work after a year or so. At least I have explored some career options.
One drawback of this blog page is that 'mom team' lady that still calls me every other day. She is crazy! Over a month ago I left my name and email on her web page and bamm! Shes got my home phone number. Shes obviously into pyramid scamming or something because shes extremely eager to speak to me.
I'm not sure if this will be my last blog. I've enjoyed it, so I will continue it most likely, time permiting, of course.

Forbes Article

Forbes Magazine recently published an article in which they advised men not to marry career women. They concluded that divorce rates were higher in couples where the woman was career minded. They also said some other crazy things. They said that the more educated the woman was, ie higher education, the more likely the divorce.
The argument is essentially that marriages to educated, working women are unhappier, less stable, and more likely to divorce: as such marriage to such a woman is done at the man's peril.
I don't think the writers could possibly collect accurate facts. It seems like a wide leap. Where is the data that supports the claims?
The article

ebay careers that are selling involved?

Man of man, does Ebay have great benefits.

Health and Wellness
Medical Insurance Coverage begins on date of hire1. Blue Cross PPO (Preferred Provider Organization)2. Health Net HMO (CA and AZ only)3. Kaiser HMO (CA and CO only)4. Select Med HMO (UT only)
Dental InsuranceComprehensive coverage provided by Delta Dental. Maximum benefit of up to $2000 annually per person.
Vision InsuranceExams, contacts, lenses and frame coverage provided by Vision Service Plan, VSP.
Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) The Health Care and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) allow you to use tax-free dollars to pay for eligible expenses. You can set aside up to $5,000 per account and use the convenient debit card for health care expenses.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP) The EAP is a confidential counseling service designed to help you and your family members with a wide range of personal, emotional or financial issues. You are automatically enrolled, and the plan is provided at no cost.
Life and AD&D InsuranceAll employees are covered for two times their annual salary for basic life insurance and accidental death and dismemberment. We also provide optional life insurance and AD&D programs, which extend coverage to your family.
Short Term & Long Term Disability InsuranceOur short term disability insurance coverage is provided at 80% of salary. Long term disability coverage provided at 66 2/3% of your salary if you become disabled for a longer time. These benefits are provided at no cost to the employee.
Business Travel Accident InsuranceOur business travel accident insurance provides supplemental insurance and emergency travel assistance while you’re traveling on behalf of the company.
Time Off
PTOEmployees may use Paid Time Off (PTO) for reasons such as vacation, personal time or illness. PTO accrue at the following rates: 0-12 months = 16 days or 4.92 hours per pay period, with an additional day added for each year of service up to 20 days per year.
Holidays10 holidays per year (and one floating holiday of your choice).
Sabbatical After five years of service with eBay, you are eligible for 4 weeks of time off with pay. Your sabbatical time away from eBay is intended to provide you with a break from the pace and intensity of your work and allow you the opportunity to recharge and pursue areas of interest to you - be it family, travel, hobbies, personal development or education.
Leave of AbsenceeBay provides various leaves of absence to employees who need to be away from work for an extended period of time - generally more than seven calendar days. These types of leaves include: Short and Long Term Disability, FMLA, Maternity Leave, Personal Leave.
Financial Security
401(k) Plan eBay’s 401(k) offers a convenient, tax-advantaged way to save for retirement.
- Immediate eligibility to participate upon hire
- Opportunity to contribute up to 20% of pre-tax pay up to the IRS maximum
- 100% immediate vesting on all contributions including company match
- 100% Company match up to an annual maximum of $1500
- Tax-deferred savings—taxes aren’t paid on earnings until they are withdrawn from the account
Employee Stock Purchase PlanEmployees are eligible to purchase stock at a 15% discount, and lock in their premium for a 24-month period. Employees are eligible to contribute from 0-10% of their pay to ESPP deduction.
Employee Referral Program 20% of our new hires are through our employee referrals! You may receive up to $1,000 if your referral is hired.
Charitable Contribution & Gift Matching eBay employees make generous contributions of time and money to people in need. We support your efforts by matching your charitable contributions to eligible organizations.
Work/Life Balance
Work/Life Balance ToolkitManaging work/life balance is important to all of us. This toolkit provides one-stop access to the courses, programs, and policies eBay has in place to help you manage work/life balance, including alternative work schedules.
eBay Development WorkshopsDevelopment resources for all employees, including training for managers and career development planning for all employees.
Tuition ReimbursementeBay encourages and financially supports continuing education and development programs related to current or probable future work at eBay. We reimburse up to $5200 per year for expenses such as tuition, books, and lab fees.
Adoption Assistance Program We reimburse up to $5,000 per child for costs associated with adopting a child under the age of 18.
Pet Insurance eBay's Pet Insurance plan can protect you financially in the event of a pet's illness or injury.
Ergonomic ConsultationsErgonomic consultants provide assistance with office furniture and equipment to ensure employees are working in a healthy and comfortable environment.
Onsite ConveniencesComplimentary beverages and snacks, ATM’s, onsite dry cleaning, massage, auto detailing, oil change, hair cut and dental cleaning – just to name a few.

Sabbatical pay? what a dream. Here's the problem with employment with ebay. Its only in select cities. No work at home, telecommuting positions. Who would have thought?

I can always sell stuff on ebay, but where's the security? No insurance, 401K, etc. How come telecommuting jobs do not offer these great benefits?

Finally did it

Today I did it!

I purchased a car on ebay in hopes of reselling it locally. Sure the car isn't that far away, and I've never actually seen it, I'm still optimistic that its a potential money maker. The vehicle is in Toledo, Ohio, available to buyers for pick up only. Not a big deal for me, its only 2 hours away. Also, my husband and I were planning to go visit the zoo there soon anyhow.
Yeah! Its a classic car, a 1970s Ford convertible. Not my area of expertise or anything, but I am better at learning by doing. So we'll drive the car for a few months and then hopefully sell it at the Auburn Auction in the fall for a little profit. Hopefully all will end well.

Psycho Calling

Well, the mom at home business lady, Jackie, has called me 9 times in 10 days. I think shes eager. I think its a fair statement. It just proves that whatever scam shes running with the 'wellness industry' is truly a scam. If this business she has is so lucrative, why doesn't she have hundreds of people calling her, instead of her calling me hundreds of times, long distance?

Antique Show

This past weekend I sold antiques in a booth I rented from the greedy city as part of the Three Rivers Festival. Before I had my daughter last year, I was really into auctions and estate sales and had plenty of time to go bumming around to find old treasures. It used to be so fun to spend 8 hours at an auction, haul the crudy stuff home, sometimes make 2 trips, wash it, polish it, research it, compare prices on ebay, tag it fairly, pack it up, haul it to an antique store or show, and attempt to sell it.
This past weekend was not so fun. I do love the stuff, I collect lots of oddities--chalkware wall plaques, vintage pez, condom tins, flower planters that are animals from the 1950s, pixieware, aprons, vintage menus, captain kangaroo stuff, baby warming dishes and about 10 others things that I can't even remember right now. But the stuff I have currently in inventory is left overs from 2 years ago that I just can't shake. Sure, I make good money this week, about 2 weeks pay of my regular salary in just 2 days. But I just wasn't into it this year. I kept thinking of my baby that I could be with if I wasn't doing the show. Maybe thats how I'd always feel if I only had my own business. When I'm at my retail job I don't have time to think of anything else because the boss is always pushing to get something accomplished. Maybe my own business would not be successful because I couldn't motivate myself away from my daughter.

Ebay

While in the computer lab today, I watched a lady surf through ebay for several hours while I worked on my research paper. I wasn't really sure what she was doing, but I continued to watch her to see if she was buying or selling. She kept printing things off, and I was thinking how weird that was because there's really no need to print ebay pages. Listings change so often and most transaction are electronic and easy with paypal.

But I finally figured out she was reseaching recent costs on some electronics items that sold and was keeping track of their prices. Then she was going to other websites like overstock.com to see if they had the items listed. Kind of an interesting business. Buy from a discount website and then list it on ebay.com. Not too much different from me purchasing textbooks online and then selling them to the bookstore at school. Still feels a bit unethical.

Another internet find, creditbiz, actually sounds legitimate. It has to do with repairing individuals credit history and looking for errors.
This section will teach you all of the insider secrets of restoring bad credit by using the Fair Credit Reporting Act passed by the US Congress. First you will learn how to obtain and read a credit report, and prequlify your client. Next you will learn the tactics and strategies used by the experts to delete negative accounts. You will also learn some very effective techniques that you can use to help clients build awesome credit in record time.
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Yeah, and I sent them my information. Those websites are set up so nice. You have to submit your contact information before they lay the scam on you. Maybe I'll just create a scam website to lure poor suckers in to send me like $75 for and "information package". Then I'll mail them back a Mary Kay catalog, a Gold Canyon candle order form and a tupperware booklet. Sounds legitimate to me.

Maybe Not...

To sound totally against my last blog, I don't think I could really accomplish anything while at home. I have a really hard time just flipping the laundry without worrying what could happen to my toddler while I'm in the basement. Just sitting here on the computer is a struggle as my daughter is on my lap, beating on the keyboard while attempting to push the monitor against the wall. Receiving phone calls for job interviews is unpleasant because my daughter always seems to get injured and scream during those 5 minutes I'm on the phone. I have just been letting the machine pick up calls and I return them when she's napping.
If I had a telecommuting job, I would only be able to do it while she was asleep or really quiet, and that rarely occurs. Some type of commuting job would be a struggle with a big worm on my lap.
Yeah, come to think about it, its not a good idea. I don't do really any housework until my husband gets home because I don't want to neglect my daughter to do it. Even homework I put off until the absolute last minute, then I usually go to the computer lab at school to thinkly clearly and not be distracted. Maybe I should consider just working part time instead of at home.

Back from Vaca...

I'm officially back from vacation today. I am crispy golden brown tan, my hair has lightened from the sun, but my attitude has not changed. My answering machine had 5 messages from that work at home mom website that I contacted. That lady pyscho called me everyday I wasn't at home. I don't think I'm going to call her back. I'm not interested in selling wellness products anyway. It just sounds creepy. I had one phone call for a job interview next week. We'll discuss that next week after I go to it. But I have done a lot of thinking about working from home. And I still think I would like to do it.
There's always ways to make money. My personal business the last few years here at IPFW I see which textbooks are most expensive in the bookstore then I purchase them on ebay. I sell them to the bookstore and make a little profit. There's always potential there. I could get really gutzy and buy like 10-20 books instead of just one or two. Seems kind of unethical in a way, feel shady when I do it, even though I think its legal. Oh Well.

HireMyMom.com

I've found my favorite site so far, hiremymom.com. Its basically an outsourcing site for companies to find individuals, aka stay at home moms to develop projects or do tasks for them externally.
FACT: Over 5.4 million mothers put their careers on hold to stay home with children*. That adds up to a lot of talented women with experience, education, skills and the motivation to find flexible work that can be done from their home office. (*Source: U.S. Census Bureau)
The problem with the website, however, its that you must pay a yearly membership fee of $99 to post your resume so companies can find you. There are some big names listed though. AOL, NBC, and more.

M.O.M. Team

I did something stupid today. At first, I thought I actually found a legitimate website for work at home mothers. It actually said "legitimate." Haha. I should have seen the tell tale signs of women smiling, holding their children posted all over the page.

The warning words were there:

Work from home the way you want to:
No large investment
No selling, stocking or delivering products
No pressuring people
No complicated paperwork
No collecting money or placing orders for people
NO RISK!!

But it was not until I was filling out the questionaire that I knew it was trouble. After your contact information, they ask how motivated are you to make money? How much would you invest to make a large income? Yeah. And I had already submitted my name and phone number. A representative IS going to call me, probably tomorrow and discuss the prospects of the Wellness Industry. Could they be more vague?

Another interesting blog to come after my phone call from M.O.M.s

WAHM Blog

I found a WAHM's page, and here's some of the highlights. Its really easy to relate to,
I love to joke with people about my boss:
My boss is a real bitch.
My boss makes me work overtime.
I asked my boss for some vacation time, and she said no.
Boy, when I was talking to my Human Resources person about my kid being sick, she was so sympathetic! It was like she had just been through it too!
You can imagine my shock when I found out my husband was sleeping with my boss!
However, even though I joke, I am acutely aware that as a self-employed person, I wear all of these hats alone. And in order to be fair to my clients, my boss, and my employee, I have to divide myself into all of these people ruthlessly. My boss pays me once a month. She doesn’t care whether she has extra money in the business coffers when I am running low. And I do not ask her for advances.
My employee expects to be paid, regardless of whether my clients have paid the company for services yet or not. And she does not understand, nor should she be expected to, that academic departments, who provide the bulk of payments for our services, work slowly. She still has to pay for health insurance, a car loan, a mortgage, and her three children, as she reminds me every time she balances her checkbook.
The boss who is a mother and the employee who is a mother are often at odds as well. Take yesterday for example. As the boss, I was fully aware of deadlines and responsibilities, and I wanted my employee to make a certain amount of progress before the working day was done. As the employee, I wanted flex time: I wanted to take a break in the afternoon to take my kids to the pool and to attend my son’s baseball game, in return for working very late hours last night. My boss should have known better: By 12:25 a.m., I was exhausted and vowed to be a better, more focused employee in the morning.
It’s a balancing act every single day. Will I be a better boss today or a better employee? Will family responsiblities win out, or deadlines? Today, I will get more done on my deadlines simply by virtue of the fact that my son doesn’t have a baseball game. I usually go to karaoke on Tuesday nights with my husband, but he is out of town, and I have work to do. Every day, weighing and measuring, taking accounts. One person could go crazy with trying to manage it all, wear so many hats alone.
So, how do I keep from going crazy? It all boils down to one thing: My kids. It sounds cheesey and hokey, but actually it is a lot more simple and practical. I think for most people it all comes down to the children: I work to provide for my children. Some days, it is more important to meet the deadline that will feed them. However, I am not just a drone who feeds the children and ignores them the rest of the time.
Some days it is more important to remember why I became my own boss in the first place. It is more important to set less urgent work aside so I can thrill in my children. If I remember each day what the most important thing is– my children– then I manage to get the balance right. That is the trick. Simple, right? Underneath the bills, the dishes, and the deadlines, the kids are buried there somewhere. You just have to dig through all the other stuff to find them.

WAHMs

Many moms are redefining the stay-at-home experience by using today's technology -- and employers' growing reliance on free agents -- to earn an income without ever setting foot in an office.

These home-based working moms -- known as mompreneurs or WAHMs, which stands for work-at-home-moms -- also represent an increasingly attractive labor pool for employers, allowing companies to outsource domestically instead of hiring workers overseas.

They're moms such as Alyson Struwe, 41, of Beaver, Pa. The at-home mother of three fields calls from her office for LiveOps, a call-center company whose independent agents work from home.

"I can still feel I'm a productive member of society and bring in an income, but my children have never gotten off the bus and not had a parent there," Struwe says. "How many parents can say that?"

Agents for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based LiveOps handle incoming calls, such as inquiries from shoppers buying products. They have more than 3,000 agents in 48 states.

Many are work-at-home moms. In a poll of its agents, LiveOps found nearly 55% are mothers with children who are school age or younger and at home at least part time. Fifty-four percent say they're working to supplement household income.

"It's tough today to have a mom stay at home and not earn any income," says Bill Trenchard, CEO. "We make it flexible around their lifestyle. They schedule when and how they work. We have a lot of moms who decide to do this as a home-based business.

"The Internet has opened these new opportunities."

Setting their hours

Other companies are also capitalizing on stay-at-home moms. Working Solutions, based in Plano, Texas, provides Fortune 1000 companies with sales and customer service support using remote, home-based agents. They help consumers with travel, health care and consumer products.

The company has more than 28,000 agents. About 80% have some college education. Agents generally earn $10 to $14 an hour. Agents set their hours.

Says Scott Anderson of Working Solutions: "We have moms and single moms who want to be at home for their kids. We expect no pets, no kids, when you're on the phone. With broadband at home, companies can save money. That drives the movement to working at home."

There are no statistics on the number of work-at-home moms, but there are more than 10 million female-owned businesses in the USA, according to the National Association of Women Business Owners. Work at Home Moms (www.wahm.com), an online magazine for mothers who work at home, notes that the phenomenon is growing as more businesses tap this growing labor pool.

The labor-force participation rate of women ages 25 to 54 with at least four years of college declined from 84.7% in 1994-95 to 81.8% in 2003-04, and the decline was most pronounced for married women with children under age 3, according to Regional Review, a publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

"There are more mothers working for companies, doing call-center work," says Cheryl Demas, in Folsom, Calif., at Work at Home Moms (WAHM). She now gets 15,000 to 20,000 hits on her website a day, double the number from a year ago.

"Economically, it makes a lot of sense," she says. "(Businesses) don't have to set up large call centers."

She also warns that some moms can be preyed on by scam operations that try to get victims to send in money in order to do work from home. The job never materializes.

Technology helps

The ability of at-home moms to earn an income is also being driven by technology such as high-speed Internet access, the increase in home computers and a greater willingness by cost-conscious companies to rely on free agents rather than hiring full-time staff.

Brenda Gruss, 51, of Chevy Chase, Md., works as a lawyer -- handling criminal law, immigration and related work from her home office so she can spend more time with her three children, ages 19, 14 and 10. She says there can be some challenges.

"With the new technology, it's harder to separate work life from home life," Gruss says. "The kids are doing homework, and I'll work on my computer."

The work-at-home moms might work irregular hours, after their husbands come home from work or when their children are in school. They often work as independent contractors; most don't get health benefits.

Networking services for this labor pool are also growing. Home-based working moms are organizing their own business conferences, and many glean business tips from others through websites devoted to making money while staying at home with children.

Baby Magazines

Why is it that in the classified section of baby and parenting magazines are the job listings all called home based income???
Here you'll find the typical "party type" sellers like discovery toys and pampered chef. Also, there are some ambiguous ads that say "Paychecks available" "Play for a living." Most mothers, especially those with very new babies are exhausted, sleep deprived and may be more easily fooled into these ads. I investigated some of the ads that said things like "moms wanted, no selling" to see what they are really about. Websites like www.workathomeincome.com and www.workathomeunited.com sounded promising. But of course, all I found were great testimonials from "real mothers" and no listing of what the job is. Just a page to enter information about yourself, and the link to purchase and "information package" about the "career opportunity."
I wonder if its possibly, although probably not accurately, to find out how many people are suckered into these scams? And if any of them actually, legitimately earn money doing it?

Telecommuting, really?

Ok, so I have created "profiles" at lots of corporate website in order to land a career, preferably a telecommuting one. But seeing as how we are in Indiana, in a city with only a few big companies, well besides like GM assembly plant and things like that, I'm not having any luck. I don't think it is possible to get on a career finder website like monster or hot jobs and land a great at home job. There's always the option of selling insurance over the phone! I've had 3 phone call offering me jobs of selling insurance and the like. But what a competitive industry. And in another decade, are we really going to have insurance agents, or will we just get online to do everything?
Not a very stable career in my opinion. So I will continue my search for some type of reputable job that I can perform from home for a reputable company for respectable pay.

5 ways to find a legitimate telecommuting position

With gas prices at an all-time high, many Americans are looking for ways to do less driving and more companies than ever before are offering telecommuting options to their current employees and searching for at-home employees to fill open positions. The question for the job seeker is now how to find these opportunities.

Below are five methods you can use to find a telecommuting position.

First, check your local newspaper. When I began my search for an at-home career, I found my first employer through the Classified Ads section of our hometown paper. I was wary at first, but after thoroughly researching the companies through means such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB), visiting the corporate office and meeting some of their current employees you might be able to confirm that they are legitimate.

Second, search online using website such as Monster.com and Dice.com.
However, listings found online must be researched carefully to avoid the scams that abound on the Internet. There are also websites that will you allow to do job research in your own community. Craigslist.com is good because you can choose a city and then refine your search with keywords such as “telecommute.”

Posting your resume on websites such as Hotjobs.com is a third way to locate at work-at-home job. Putting your resume online can bring employers to you, depending on your skills and qualifications. Another bonus of an online resume is that you can easily direct prospective employers to view it. It also makes life a bit simpler when applying for jobs, because you can attach your online resume instead of typing out your job history, qualifications, and so on, each time you apply for a job.


A fourth option when looking for at-home employment is to open a phone book and call businesses in your area. For example, if you’re interested in doing administrative work, you might contact churches and small businesses in your area to see if they are looking for office help. Even if they are not currently seeking help, they may know of another business owner who is.

Along those same lines, the fifth way to become a telecommuter is to create your own opportunity. For example, instead of finding a company that will hire you as an administrative assistant from home, consider starting your own business as a Virtual Assistant. You can offer your services to many companies, which can both increase your income potential and allow you the flexibility of deciding which jobs you’d like to accept.

You can also create your own telecommuting position by talking with your current employer about work-at-home possibilities. More and more companies are finding that at-home employees are just as productive as those in the office, if not more. Companies also benefit financially by lessening office space and avoiding the costs of many office supplies. Many companies who are not ready to hire at-home workers will allow their current employees to work one or two days from a home office, so be sure to discuss this option.

The telecommuting field has become highly competitive as more and more people find that working from home is a possibility. Searching for a telecommuting position can be daunting, but by looking in strategic places such as online and in your local newspaper, theres a better chance.

FUMMO

FUMMO is found on many work at home blog pages, so I decided to TRY to find out exactly what it is!
Here's some information, well the ONLY information on their webpage!

What is FUMMO? Fummo is advertising company where members can earn free money doing simple and free offers, Searching using our search engine, viewing advertisments, and Inviting friends to join under your referal link!

1:How do I open my Fummo.com account?
It's quite easy and convenient. Simply click on the Signup button on this web site and follow the easy instructions.
2:Can I have more than 1 account?

No You can't have more than 1 account from one IP, our system won't let you login if you will try to login in 2 accounts from 1 IP address.

3:How much I'll earn?

It depends on you how much you want to earn with us, you will earn $5 from each registered user under you and also 10% of his earnings and also you will earn money by doing paid offers, searching web with our surfbar, watching advertisements.

4:How old I need to be to join fummo?
You must be at least 14years old.

5:How can I request my earned money?
You will be able to request cashout at any time when you want once you have more than $1 in your account, it will be sent to your e-gold or paypal or moneybookers account or with bankwire transfer. Your Payment will be sent in 2-14business days.

6:How much friend I can refer?
There is no limit how much referrals you can have! Example if you will invite 300friends to join under you , you will receive $1,500+10% from their earnings!

7:Do I need to pay for signing up?
No! registration is free!

8:How do I check my account balance?
You can access account information 24 hours, seven days a week over the Internet.

9:Can I refer someone that is already a member?
No. If someone is already a member, he/she cannot become your referral.

10:How can we afford to pay you?
It's simple, we earn from advertisers who are paying us to promote their business at our program.

11:How do I invite others?
Go to your referral link area what's located at your account, it will give you detailed information how you can refer your friends.

12:How do I change my personal information?
Go to your profile section to change your information.

13:Is Fummo.com already launched?
No fummo.com will be launched for real at 20.may at this time you can only invite your friends to join under you and earn $5 from each your friend!

14:When I will be able to start earn?
You can earn by inviting your friends now- $5 from each friend but you will be able to earn more by doing offers and searching at our search engine starting from 20.may!

15:Is there any limit how much I can earn?
No there is no limit how much you can earn, we will be able to pay you each time!



WOW, it pretty much tells you nothing! Why are internet opportunities always scams? There are several testimonial blogs all over the internet about how great Fummo is. But really, how great can it be if you must be at least 14 years old? That even sounds screwy. And we don't even know what you have to do to earn money. I guess you find that out once you sign up to earn that UNLIMITED MONEY. haha.
My quest for legitimate internet work continues...

New Stats

Recently I was doing some research for my blog and I found several articles that offered some eye opening statistics as far as women vs. men in the professional environment. Once again, discouraging for women.

In 2004, women in the United States were paid 76 cents for every dollar men received for comparable work.

• African American women earn only 71 cents and Latinas 59 cents for every dollar men are paid. Asian Pacific American women earn 86 cents for every dollar men make.

• Nationwide, working families lose $200 billion in income annually due to the wage gap between men and women.

• If married women were paid the same as men in comparable jobs, their family incomes would rise by nearly 6 percent, and their families' poverty rates would fall from 2.1 percent to 0.8 percent.

• If single working mothers earned as much as men in comparable jobs, their family incomes would increase by nearly 17 percent and their poverty rates would be cut in half, from 25.3 percent to 12.6 percent.

• If single women earned as much as men in comparable jobs, their incomes would rise by 13.4 percent and their poverty rates would be reduced from 6.3 percent to 1 percent.

• Half of all women with income from a pension in 2002 received less than $5,600 per year, compared with $10,340 per year for men.

• The 25.6 million women who work in predominantly male jobs lose an average of $3,446 each per year; the 4 million men who work in predominately female occupations lose an average of $6,259 each per year—a total $114 billion loss for men and women in predominately female jobs.

• In the global economy, women account for 60 percent of the world’s 550 million working poor—even though they make up 40 percent of the world’s workforce.

BlueSuitMom Website

I found an exciting new website that offers advice on how working mothers can balance everything going on in there life. There are interesting articles on what characteristics employers search for, how to make your coworkers happy, and how to unwind.

Here's a list of 20 annoying workplace habits that need broken:

Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations -- when it matters, when it doesn't, and when it's totally beside the point.
Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.
Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.
Starting with "No," "But," or "However": The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone, "I'm right. You're wrong."
Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we're smarter than they think we are.
Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.
Negativity, or "Let me explain why that won't work": The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren't asked.
Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.
Claiming credit that we don't deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.
Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.
Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we're wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.
Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.
Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
An excessive need to be "me": Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they're who we are.

Less Pay for Mothers?

A landmark study by Cornell University has quantified what many working mothers have suspected for years:
Women with children are less likely to get hired and are paid less in starting salaries than similarly qualified fathers or women without children. Bad news for career mothers :(


There is no federal law prohibiting a potential employer from asking a woman - or man -
about their family. Some states have such laws, but their effectiveness varies widely.



Shelley Correll, author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y., says she not only found proof of discrimination in her 18-month study, she also found salaries for working mothers tended to decrease exponentially with each
additional child.

She launched the study - "The Motherhood Penalty" - after hearing complaints from mothers for years.

To test her suspicion, she created two fictitious applicants seeking a job as a marketing director for a communications company.
Both had virtually identical qualifications and resumes with no indication of gender or family status. The applications were presented to
60 undergraduates - both men and women - for evaluation. The reviewers found the applicants to be equal and said they had no hiring preference.
Correll used undergraduates because she believed them to be most closely attuned to the
current hiring climate. She also assumed they had been raised in an age when sensibilities about working mothers had changed.

Next, the same resumes were shown to another set of undergraduate evaluators. This time, though, the applicants were both women.

A memo was slipped into one of the application packets mentioning she was a mother of two. Her resume was changed slightly to include a reference to being an officer of a parent-teacher association.

The outcome changed dramatically.
The evaluators said they would hire the childless
women 84 percent of the time.
The mothers were given a job only 47 percent of the time.
The mothers also were offered a starting salary of $11,000 less than their counterparts without children.

How horrifying to be entering the professional career field as a mother!

Facts taken for Womenwork.org/pdfresources/mothers
Article from the Denver Post

AT&T at Home

Large numbers of AT&T employees are moving out of traditional offices and into virtual offices as a way of increasing productivity, work/life balance and their quality of life. They rely on a structure that is more and more “net-centric” - organized around networks instead of buildings.

All of these advantages relate directly to job and career satisfaction, increasing teleworkers' organizational loyalty. About 2 out of 3 teleworkers (67%) report increased job satisfaction after beginning to work from home. Approximately the same proportion (64%) report increased satisfaction with their career. Roughly half (47%) of teleworkers who had received competing job offers factored the ability to work at home into the decision to stay with the company. If teleworkers were told they could no longer work from home, two out of five (43%) say they would seek another position that supported telework, in or out of the company.

According to a 2002/2003 employee telework research, 17% of AT&T managers now say they work in a full-time virtual office (or “VO”, defined as working all of a standard work week at home or from a customer location). This is almost double the 9% VO reported in 2001. Another 40% report less-than-full-time telework patterns including working from home, office sharing or hoteling arrangements.

Shifting to a frequency-based view, about 33% of AT&T managers now telework at least once a week, over four times the 8% who did so when our research first began in 1992.

AT&T has been conducting employee telework research since 1992. The objectives are to:
Quantify the benefits of this new operating model to society, the enterprise and employees,
Identify barriers to broader, more effective participation,
Enhance our products and services, and
Provide strategic guidance to our customers and clients.

2002-2003 results are based on a representative survey of 1200 AT&T managers. Confidential at-home telephone interviews were conducted by a leading independent market research company, using stratified random sampling techniques.

AT&T article link

Jet Blue

I went directly to JetBlue's webpage to see if I could apply for an at home telecommuting job since that company was mentioned in "The World is Flat". First you are asked to create a profile for yourself before you can even apply for a position. But YES there are at home jobs available as long as you live in the Salt Lake City region. You must have a local phone number so that you can network with the company as well as customers. But I did find a legitimate posting with a real company!

SCAMS

Upon researching some companies, I was quite shocked to find a huge amount of scams out there. Everyone knows that the internet is full of "get rich quick scams" and "work from home 10 hours a week earning $20,000 a month" scams. However, I couldn't find any, well besides Avon and the like, honest telecommuting career oppotunities through Google.

So I searched through Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com to find IT or Telecommuting positions. Every advertisement shows the same types of pictures--a woman playing in the yard with her kids; a luxury car in the driveway of a mansion; a laptop computer off to the side of a happy couple; a man hugging his child in front of a computer. How idealistic.

The job posting are always vague, don't tell the product or service produced by the company, or even the company name for that matter. I entered my information on two of the postings to see if I could get some concrete facts into what the company actually was. But no. All I received was a check "yes or no box" in acceptance of a fee for them to send you information.

I draw the line there. Scammers.

According to the textbook (www.prenhall.com/robbins) used in one of my classes, 10% of the workforce works out of their home. That does't even include those in business for themselves.

Where are these jobs and how to you get them if you can't even locate them?

Working Mother's Top 10

In Alphabetical Order, here are the top ten companies(although, not all home based) for mother's to work for:

Abbott Laboratories, IL (1st time on Top 10; 2 years on list)

American Express, NY (1st time on Top 10; 13 years on list)

Bank of America, NC (9th time on Top 10; 14 years on list)

Booz Allen Hamilton, VA (1st time on Top 10; 4 years on list)

Bristol-Myers Squibb, NY (2nd time on Top 10; 5 years on list)

Colgate-Palmolive, NY (1st time on Top 10; 3 years on list)

Computer Associates, NY (1st time on Top 10; 3 years on list)

Fannie Mae, DC (4th time on Top 10; 9 years on list)

General Mills, MN (1st time on Top 10; 7 years on list)

IBM, NY (15th time on Top 10; 17 years on list)

State locations are for corporate headquarters. Luckily, some branches and offices are right here in Indiana!

U.S. Polls say Women Want to be at Home

A few statistics that support women wanting to stay home:
A CBS News polled in April 2006 that 68% of women see a conflict between working and raising a family.
A study in 1997 by the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology found, “Stress appears to be strongly related to being employed outside the home and is more strongly felt by women working more hours, especially those working full-time.”
Eight out of ten women would rather stay at home with their children according to an article by Charlotte Gill published in The Daily Mail 2006. The research also found that 78% were likely to give up work to be with their children if money were not an issue.
The 2001 U.S. Current Population Survey found that twice as many women opted for fewer office hours than men.
Article Link

Yale and Harvard Women to Stay Home

Ivy League students, including 138 freshman and senior females at Yale, were recently surveyed about their plans for the future.
The interviews found that 85 of the students, or roughly 60 percent, said that when they had children, they planned to cut back on work or stop working entirely. About half of those women said they planned to work part time, and about half wanted to stop work for at least a few years.

The women said that pursuing a rigorous college education was worth the time and money because it would help position them to work in meaningful part-time jobs when their children are young or to attain good jobs when their children leave home.

It is a complicated issue and one that most schools have not addressed. The women they are counting on to lead society are likely to marry men who will make enough money to give them a real choice about whether to be full-time mothers, unlike those women who must work out of economic necessity.

It is less than clear what universities should, or could, do about it. For one, a person's expectations at age 18 are less than perfect predictors of their life choices 10 years later. And in any case, admissions officers are not likely to ask applicants whether they plan to become stay-at-home moms.

According to a 2000 survey of Yale alumni from the classes of 1979, 1984, 1989 and 1994, conducted by the Yale Office of Institutional Research, more men from each of those classes than women said that work was their primary activity - a gap that was small among alumni in their 20's but widened as women moved into their prime child-rearing years. Among the alumni surveyed who had reached their 40's, only 56 percent of the women still worked, compared with 90 percent of the men.

A 2005 study of comparable Yale alumni classes found that the pattern had not changed. Among the alumni who had reached their early 40's, just over half said work was their primary activity, compared with 90 percent of the men. Among the women who had reached their late 40's, some said they had returned to work, but the percentage of women working was still far behind the percentage of men.
A 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates found that 31 percent of the women from the classes of 1981, 1985 and 1991 who answered the survey worked only part time or on contract, and another 31 percent did not work at all, levels strikingly similar to the percentages of the Yale students interviewed who predicted they would stay at home.

NY Times Article Link

Photos from Harvard.edu & Yale.edu

Changing Demographics

The most significant change to United States labor force was in the last half of the 20th century when a large amount of women entered the market. In 1950, 29.6% of the workforce was made up of women.

By 1999, it was 46.6%. The workforce today is almost at a gender balance.

However, women now outnumber men on college campuses. Women are filling more technical, professional, medical, and managerial jobs. Perhaps with more men being stay at home fathers, women may tip the balance scales and drastically upset the labor pool.

Stay at Home Mom's Wages

Salary.com recently surveyed mothers to determine what they wage would be if they were in fact paid. Based on its survey of more than 40,000 mothers, Salary.com determined that the time mothers spend performing 10 typical job functions would be equal to an annual salary of $138,095 for a stay-at-home mother. And those statistics are only for 10 job fuctions. Think about the hundreds of different tasks that are completed arould the house everyday.

Also, noteworthy is the 'salary' that working mothers would receive outside of their normal paychecks. Working Mom's 'at-home' salary is $85,939 in 2007.

Equal Rights

Women have been struggling since the 1920s to have the same rights that men have. Although winning many battles, the right to short haircuts, to wear pants, to drive, it wasn't until the middle of the century when the really important rights were given to women. Women have been holding conventions(Seneca Falls), rallying, protesting, and petitioning for liberties that we take for granted today. And it wasn't that long ago that the American Constitution was amended to give women(and other minority groups) the right to vote.
* * *
Gone is the 1950s lifestyle where husband works Monday through Friday and returns home at dinner time to find wife waiting with hot, homemade meatloaf. Gone also is the lifestyle of the wife at home, cleaning, cooking, marketing, gardening, sewing, mending, laundering, meanwhile teaching, nuturing and raising several children.
Since women were so eager to work, that is in fields besides nursing, teaching, and typing, the entire economic balance has shifted. The workforce greatly grew when women came aboard to compete with men. Men can't often afford to be the single supporter of the family. Upon comparing the 2000s women with the 1950s women, sometimes its difficult to find any similarities.

I will explore the economic impact of working women in a later blog.

Selling From Home

These are some companies in the selling industry, besides Ebay, where you can work from home.


Ameriplan
At Home America
Arbonne
Avon
BreatheClean
Discovery Toys
Fifth Avenue Collection
Girls Night In
Home and Garden Party
Kaire World
Jewels by ParkLane
Lady Emily Natural Cosmetics
Lemongrass Spa
Lia Sophia
Mary Kay Cosmetics
Million Wishes
Moms 4 Net Profit
Noah's Ark Workshop
Passion Parties
ScentSations
Signature HomeStyles
Southern Living at Home
Suzanne (Zanco)
Swiss Colony Occasions
Swissjust
The Traveling Vineyard

My sister

My sister is very high up at Vera Bradley. She is the CMO and also wears many other hats for the company. She recently had a baby, by recently I mean 3 months ago. She was sure she would be ready and eager to return to work, but now she realizes how important it is for her to be home with her son. To ease her tranisition back to the corporate lifestyle, Vera Bradley is allowing her to work from home. She is communicating via phone, email and and webcam. She only needs to be in her office for direct meetings and trainings. Vera Bradley started as a small family company but now is going global.

Luckily, they remain family-oriented and can be personal enough to help career women care for their families.

Why Career Women are Staying at Home

Why are degreed women more than ever pursuing their rights to be full time mothers?

In my opinion, employers are making it easier to work fr0m home. It is estimated that more than 11% of people work directly from home.

Also, career women are also realizing the benefit of staying home with small children and providing constant care, versus full time day care. A recent article on today.msn explains why it is so important to spend the early years with your child. After all, this time you can never retrieve once it is gone.



http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/18616558/