I just read a wonderful post by Richele McFarlin about how important it is to avoid taking on work that is not worth your time. I wholeheartedly agree, and I also think that sometimes home – based professionals have a tendency to underestimate what their time is worth simply because they feel so lucky to be able to work at home. It is a wonderful thing to be able to work at home, but it does not in any way diminish the value of your time. For example, if you are a writer who has been able to find and maintain employment as a freelance writer, the quality of the piece that you just spent two hours writing is no less than a similar piece that was written in two hours by a writer who works in an office outside of the home. Your two hours is worth the same as the two hours of other people doing similar work, regardless of where the work gets done.
Sometimes when my work load gets light and I am looking for new projects to bid on, I get tempted by an interesting project description. All I have to do is think back to my first couple of writing projects where I did not know how to estimate how long projects would take. I drastically underbid on a few and made embarrassingly little money per hour. This gets me in a frame of mind where I am protective of my time. After I check the budget for the project and calculate how many hours it would take for me to do it, I calculate what I would make per hour. If I am bidding on projects through a web site like Elance where the site collects a fee out of my earnings, I make sure to figure that in too because it comes directly out of the amount that I make. I would not say that I have a minimum hourly rate that is set in stone, but usually after doing the calculation I am able to get a clear feeling on whether or not it is worth bidding on or whether I should keep looking.
The amount of time that I have available to work is fairly limited because my son is only two years old and my full time occupation is that of a stay at home mom. Since I have precious few hours available to dedicate to work, I have become rather discerning about what I do with that time. I am happy to report that this discernment has not caused a shortage of work with which to fill my time. In fact, being discerning has actually made my working hours something that I look forward to because I am very happy with the choices that I have made regarding which work to take on. Making careful decisions about what work is worth your time will not only help you to earn what you are worth, it will increase your level of career satisfaction – and who doesn’t want that.
Photo by cohdra on morguefile.com.