Last year, in the six months between quitting my day job and moving to New Zealand, I was lucky enough to be able to do whatever I liked without worrying about what money I brought in. I made and sold jewellery, designed web sites, wrote software, made and sold eco-friendly reusable tote bags, and generally kept myself busy and productive. I loved it. My working hours were at least as long as when I had been employed by a company, but my levels of job satisfaction were way higher.

Fast-forward a year, and I am in New Zealand and back to working full-time for a large company. I enjoy my work, and like my colleagues, but I still have a hankering to be my own boss.

My reading and writing skills have always been excellent, and I am already known at work as the go-to girl for any questions about spelling, grammar, layout, and editing in general. My current role is doing business analysis, but I think I could have a future as a technical writer or as an editor/proofreader.

Right now I am just putting out feelers to find out what my options are. I've signed up to elance.com, but that was only a couple of days ago and I haven't done any work through that site yet.

Does anybody here work for themselves as a freelancer or similar? I'm particularly interested to find out about other writers, but any experience would be interesting to hear about. Let me know!

- Jenny

I've worked for myself mostly for years, with a few exceptions here and there. You could freelance as a business analyst, couldn't you? I've done that. I've also done marketing and technical writing. I love working for myself. If you like writing, you could definitely do that at home if it's important to you. I think the key is building up a clientele. Good luck to you!

Thanks Twitchly! How did you get started working from home - did it just happen that way, or did you choose that route on purpose?

I could work at a business analyst on a freelance basis, I think, but it's not really where my heart is. I'm only doing it because I didn't want to write software any more, BAs are quite well paid here, and I had enough experience to make the switch without any trouble. If I'm working from home I'd like it to be something that I truly enjoy (wouldn't we all?!) as well as something that pays at least some of the bills.

I just got back into real estate in SW Florida. I work mostly from home from the internet. I have team meetings that I go to and some social events that connect me with others. I like the flexibility and not doing the 8:30 - 5:00.

I would love to work out of home. I like working on my own and be less dependent on a time clock.

I swear what I do I could do at home easily. But as most companies are now, they don't want to make the expense of paying to set up employees working out of their residences. Not cost effective unfornuately during these rather depressed economic times.

I envy you all that can and do what you want to do at your homes!

I'm a freelance writer and part-time college instructor, but I have no idea how I would go about doing what I do now if I had recently moved. Most of the jobs I get are contingent in some way upon living in Philadelphia, knowing stuff about it, and knowing other industry people who either work here now or have worked here in the past and now live somewhere similarly accessible, like New York.

I love the freedom that freelancing allows, although I have yet to make anything close to the kind of living I would like to make from it. This can be read as: I am still frequently broke. Another downside is that it seems to take as much effort to get paid for a job that is already finished as it did to do the job in the first place. But I am much happier living this way than I would be working a 9-5.

Craigslist is a great source. When I was short on work, I signed on with a guy who wanted a woman to oversee his match.com account. He let me know what he was looking for, I found them, sent them the first message, and then turned things over to him. It was weird, but he paid me $75 a week for a few hours of work, which added up when it came time to do the bills at the end of the month. He didn't really talk to many women on there. To this day, I have no idea why he hired me. For all I know, he could have been some sort of demographic marketing experiment run by someone's company. He seemed kind of fake.

Anyway, stuff is out there... you just have to be ready to work at a moment's notice and pester a lot of people for your checks.

Me does---- computer graphic art and animation.

It happened that way. I don't make as much money when I work from home (doing writing) as I do when I'm working for myself but at the customer site (business analysis, writing, high-tech anthropologist). So I usually do the latter. I only work at home when I'm between gigs.

I got my at-home work via networking. Most of it was somewhat unintentional; I found my best client through a meeting on something entirely unrelated. He happened to mention that he was head of development for a local university, and I asked him if he needed writers. He did.