What is eWorking? How to Make Money as an eWorker?
The year 2020 had a lot of things going and the most obvious one, of course, was Corona Virus a.k.a. Covid-19, which was so powerful that it shook a lot of countries, from Nepal, a small country in South Asia and the developing economies India and Brazil, to the world superpowers like the United States, the UK, France, and Germany. When people around the globe were locked down in their homes and when a lot of people lost their jobs, they began to look for remote jobs and work at home jobs. Even though a lot of people started looking for remote jobs and work at home jobs because they were laid off from their jobs due to lock down, remote working and working from home was already popular among people who did not want 9-5 jobs or wanted to work from the comfort of their homes.
Remote Jobs, eWorking, Working From Home, Work at Home Jobs
Remote jobs, eworking, working from home, work at home jobs, and other similar terms are different terminology used for the work that can be done from the comfort of home, remotely, without going to the workplace and through an internet-connected computer or handheld device. Remote jobs, eworking, working from home, and work at home jobs are interchanging terms used to indicate the same thing.
Now you might ask, how popular is remote working, eworking, or working from home?
According to Semrush keyword research tool, the keyword “eworker” is searched 5.1K times per day globally, of which 1K searches are made in the UK and 590 searches are performed in the US. Another variation of this keyword “eworking” is searched 390 times per day worldwide. Keywords related to “eworking” (more than 1K related keywords) have global search hits of 2.2 million per day.
If you check keyword data for other Keywords and key phrases like remote working, working from home, work from jobs, etc. you will find that these are popular search terms on the internet. These are popular search terms because people are looking to work remotely, searching eworking opportunities, willing to work from home, and trying to find work at home jobs
What Exactly is eWorking?
eWorking means you log into a computer that is connected to the internet and do things like send and receive emails, data, or files; research products, develop ideas, provide digital services, etc. for a company that is placed remotely. As an eworker, you can work for a company in the US even when you are based in India.
Sometimes eworking is also referred to as telecommuting or teleworking. That’s because when you are an eworker you connect your computer to your employer’s computer placed remotely through the internet and work on various tasks. eWorking involves communicating with the clients through phone, VoIP, email, text messages, video messages, video conference, etc.
The history of telecommuting, eworking, or remote working, so to speak, goes back as far as 1960s. Information Technology is credited to have created the first eworking jobs. That was possible because programmers could stay at home and work remotely. At the beginning of the 21st century, just after 40 years of the creation of the first remote job, 30 million Americans were already eworking at least once a week. In 2021, the number of people working remotely the world over can be estimated at over a billion.
Look at these interesting figures about remote working, or eworking:
According to CNBC, 1 in 4 Americans will be working remotely in 2021.
According to oberlo dot com, 56.8 percent Americans are working remotely, at least part-time.
According to Upwork, 22 percent Americans will work remotely by 2025.
In 2020, during the Covid Pandemic, about 70 percent of people were working remotely (a survey carried by owl labs)
In another finding by Owl Labs, 59 percent people who participated in the survey said that they will choose an an employer who offered remote jobs.
According to Global Workplace Analytics, by the end of 2021, 25-30 percent workforce will be already working from home for several days a week.
Remote Working and Virtual Companies
During the Covid crisis, a lot of companies asked their staff to switch to eworking. However, long before the Covid crisis, there were already a lot of companies that existed only in the virtual world and provided eworking opportunities for people with various skills.
Virtual company is an organization that uses internet-connected computers and communication technology to perform various jobs. The virtual company might be registered with a local administration but it may not have a physical location and everyone works from home. Since these companies exist in the virtual world, they also hire eworkers.
There are also companies that are established as a platform to help businesses and individuals to hire eworkers and likewise eworkers to find remote jobs.
How to Find eWorking Opportunities, Work Remotely and Make Money
A lot of companies publish vacancy announcements looking for eworkers. For example, if you look into job page of Amazon, you will find a lot of jobs that you can do from the comfort of your home. Amazon provides eworking jobs related to sales, marketing, operation management, account management, etc. However, this kind of vacancy announcement for eworking is rare. Therefore, better alternatives are the freelance marketplaces that offer eworking opportunities.
Here are some of the popular freelance marketplaces that offer remote working jobs.
Appen: Appen.com is based in Australia, however, it provides job opportunities for people in 130 countries. Some of the common jobs available on Appen are translation, transcription, linguistics, marketing, sales, engineering, etc.
Remote Jobs: Remote.co is a virtual company where you can find jobs in accounting and finance, customer service, data entry, designing, programmer and developer, video editing, remote health care jobs, IT, Marketing, etc.
Indeed: Indeed.com offers remote jobs in customer service, virtual assistant, language instructor, data entry, photo editor, etc. Indeed provides hourly jobs, where you get paid for hourly jobs, as well as salary based job where you receive a fixed salary for a certain period, and contract based jobs
Fexi Jobs: FlexiJobs.com has been in existence since 2007. The platform is used by the companies like Apple, Pearson, Dell, etc. to provide remote jobs in various categories. On this platform, you can search for all kinds of eworking opportunities, for example, accounting, advertising, sales, event management, research, ecommerce jobs, translation and transcription, news and journalism, etc.
Some other popular companies that offer jobs for eWorkers are Upwork, Fiverr, SEO Clerks, Freelancer, Guru, etc.
The Future of Remote Working
In the early days, when the programmers worked from home, the only way they could communicate was through telephone. Until punching cards were invented, programmers wrote source code on paper and tested the program at a local data center. However, the evolution of information technology created a whole new world, people are now teleworking or eworking. Interestingly, the Covid-19 crisis took the remote working to a whole new level. When the lockdown was imposed, people and companies began asking their workers to work remotely, which helped them discover that a lot of jobs do not actually require people to go to the workplace to work. According to one estimation, in the United States, 60 million people are working on jobs that can be easily done remotely.
Let’s take some examples of remote working.
If you are a writer based in India, you can find a client in the United States through telecommuting, and get writing assignments.
If you are a programmer based in Germany, you can get assignments from Ukrainian client and make money as a eworker.
You can work as a translator or transcriptionist for companies in any part of the world.
You can provide customer service from Australia to the companies that cater to the customers in the United States.
The possibilities of remote working are limitless. However, you might still have some doubts. For example, you might ask…
Is eworking right for me?
You can find out only when you try yourself.