What Is Online Work and How To Start

Yesterday my brother asked me, I want to work online but I am unable to understand what type of online work is available there. And does one must know programming to work online? Or anybody can do work online. And more importantly what does it mean by work online? Does it means one must be connected the internet, and what if somebody do not have an internet connection continuously. Here I share it briefly:

1. Online work means, doing some work to make money using Internet. This is not a requirement, that you should always be connected to internet to work online. For example, once you got a project (we will later see how) from someone via internet, and the work description is well understood. Then, you can work offline too, and when you work is done, you can submit the deliverable (code, design, article, or anything else) after connecting to internet.

In some cases, client may require you to install a software into your system so that he can track exactly how many hours you spent on his task. So if you have got the work of this type, then definitely you need to be online while you are working. So that the time spent is accurately logged, that will be billed by client.

2. It also depends on the type of work, there can be some tasks that may require you to be always online (means connected to internet). So it depends on the task. For example, if some asked you to research something on web on a given topic. You must need to be online to do this work. And if someone said, to make a website design and given you all requirements of the design. You no more need to be online, you can get offline and complete the work. Hope you got the idea, being online depends on the nature of work.

3. So what type of works are there that can be done online. It can be anything, here I give you few example just to understand.

1. You may get some work (related to accounting, data entry, programming, designing, articles writing) that after you have done it, the client will pay you (we will see, how) for the work completed. This is done generally using different websites. These websites work as intermediary between the client and you i.e. the service provider. Some of the sites are oDesk.com, eLance.com, GetACoder.com. I recommend you to visit these websites (specifically oDesk, and explore what type of projects are generally posted by clients. So that you could have a better idea of the nature of work.
2. You can also write articles on a topic that people may be interested in, and publish on your blog. If it is something that many people need and you got good number of visitor at your blog. You can display ads to make money. Whenever someone click on adds or view them, so accounts for some of USD.
3. You can make a software product, an e-book, too and sell it directly to people who need it. For example you can write a book on How to Trade, or How to Optimize Your Contents to Make Them Search Engine Friendly. You may prefer to write a software (say, inventory management solution) and sell it online. Don't forget to do market research before you do it, as there might be something already of much better quality and very low rate. To do so, you must have made your repute on the topic you are writing a book on, or you must have some unique about your contents. Otherwise why someone would spend a few USD to buy?
4. You can make a website by your own that you believe provide some service that real people need. When these people will visit the website. You can make money selling adds, or you can give some advance features to only people who pay you.
5. You can provide consultancy to clients (teaching, medication, etc) and get paid for it.

4. Getting payment is very easy in most of the cases. If you are displaying Google ads, the Google will send you the bank check, that you will deposit into your bank account and money will be transferred into your account. If you doing some freelancing online work (e.g. oDesk.com), they might send you in the bank account you give them or via Western Union. In fact, the payment methos slightly vary site to site, you can visit on a particular site (oDesk.com, eLance.com for example) to read about what methods they offer for payment.

Hope it makes the concept of online work very clear. I will share more on this topic later. Don't forget to share you thoughts, if you find it useful.