Online and office work are unlike, in some aspects. For example, office work doesn’t often allow the flexibility offered by most online jobs. However, the similarities still outnumber the differences. And since the number of online workers has been steadily increasing—especially since the onset of the current COVID-19 crisis—many office jobs are getting an online incarnation.
Read: What Type of Online Workers Are You?
But what do being online workers entail? How does an online worker differ from a regular office worker? Is it easy to transition to online work from office work? To help answer these questions, we talked to a few individuals and asked them to share their online working experience with us.
“Before I turned to online freelancing, I was a high-school teacher. The work was great, and I was well compensated. But I hated the travel times. I live in a country where heavy traffic is practically a part of the daily grind. You have to allot at least two hours for travel. I live away from the city, and my daily commute averages from 4-5 hours of my day. One day, while on the way home during a heavy thunderstorm, I realized that I didn’t deserve all of the struggles I had to go through just for work. That was when I decided to fully shift to homebased. After that schoolyear, I resigned, and have been working as a freelance writer since.” – Yna, 30
“I’ve been working as a graphic artist since 2015. I was looking for a part-time job to help support our finances and I found this job post on FB. My client was a kind Brit who was just starting his own online business. My early tasks included creating thumbnails for my client’s Youtube videos. Which then expanded to creating original content images for my client’s website and other social media profiles. As his company flourished, I received an amazing raise. Now, I’m working for him full-time.” – Kevin, 29
“I graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy back in 2014. I always thought that I would be pursuing higher studies, but certain circumstances prevented me from doing so. My degree didn’t really equip me with the necessary skills I needed to survive…er…a desk job, as people call it. I got rejected on most of my applications, and if it weren’t for my friend who recruited me to work as a virtual assistant, I might be sulking in my parent’s basement right now. As a virtual assistant, my work is the same as that of a secretary (except, I don’t get asked to do my boss’s laundry. Lol!) I schedule appointments, do basic typing jobs, write emails, and update Excel sheets. The best thing about this job? I can work for as many clients as I can.” – Sam, 27
“Social media management is actually new to me. I started as a content writer, mostly writing for ecommerce sites. For some reason, it’s harder and harder to find great paying writing jobs so I decided to learn a new skill. I’m basically on social media all day, so when a client asked me if I knew anything about social media marketing, I just went ahead and said ‘Yes!’. Basically, my job requires me to schedule posts for social media. I think about what I can post to help market my client’s company to the people. But I don’t create the images myself, I’m just in charge of the descriptions. I make sure that I post at least once a day. The job is new, but the experience is something I am quite familiar with. I think I’m doing a great job.” – Gen, 29
“I’m a web developer. Most times, I create a website from scratch. Other times, I edit existing websites for my clients, usually from WordPress. It takes time to fully get a website to function as a client wants. My shortest project lasted for around two weeks, while my longest took a year and a half to finish completely. I still work for that project every now and then, especially when it needs updates.” – Jonjon, 35
If you’ve decided to finally enter the world of online work but are unsure of where and how to begin, Jobmofy is here for you. Jobmofy is an all-in-one job search platform that allows you to post or search for available work. All you have to do is to create an account for free.
(Note: Responses edited for clarity.)
