Since 2004, I have worked from home and it has both its good and its bad sides. But despite that I could never go back to working for a conventional employer outside the home again.

Once you begin working from home, you can never revert back because almost immediately you are intoxicated by the freedom of being able to get up when you want to, start work when you want to, and take breaks when you want to.

I mean, I highly doubt a normal employer will let me take a one hour siesta in the afternoon, as I do right now. Or let me sit at my desk naked as I sometimes do. Or sit naked at the window waiting for the female blond postwoman to come deliver my mail as I…er….heard some people do.

Sounds good right? However, before you rush to become self-employed, there are four downsides to working from home.

1. Lack Of Human Interaction – When you work in a place outside of the home, you are working with other people. You chat with them, discuss work with them, sit with them in the canteen and discuss last night’s football game. When you start working from home, you don’t have any of that (except via email and IM but that doesn’t really count). The difference is quite overwhelming at first and it takes quite a while to adjust. I know some people who couldn’t handle the loneliness and solitude and went back to working for someone else, just to hear the “buzz” of the office again.

2. A Big Drop In Salary (At Least To Begin With) – When you start on your self-employed path, business is not going to be thriving that much as you have to start looking for clients and then build up a steady stream of work. So to begin with, your salary is going to plummet and this in itself can cause your morale to go the same way. So be prepared for a huge drop in salary to start with and make sure you have enough funds to support yourself.

3. Distractions – This is the big issue for me. For example, I know that in 30 minutes Star Trek Deep Space Nine will start on TV. The TV is right next to me. Therefore the temptation to switch it on and watch my favourite show is utterly irresistable. Bang, I’ve just lost a hour of my day. Then I decide that my Facebook profile needs checking. There’s another 15-20 minutes gone.

Then when you are finally deep in work, your family comes home. They turn the TV on, bang doors, scream their heads off, tell you about their day…..kiss goodbye to your productivity for the rest of that day! So what’s the answer? Allocate a part of your home as your office (it would be even better if you had a door you could close).

Make sure that your office space has no distractions whatsoever. No TV, no radio, no chatty partner, no screaming kids. And don’t come out of that office until the work is done, no matter what the temptation is outside!

4. Put Up With People Asking “What You Do” – I am a freelance writer and editor by profession which is a pretty OK respectable job wouldn’t you think? But anything connected to the Internet automatically gets some people to glaze over with either boredom or misunderstanding. If your job isn’t your conventional 9-5, then a lot of people will probably think that you are on one big holiday, being funded by your hard working partner “who goes out to work every day”.

It doesn’t help if they come to visit and you answer the door in your bathrobe, eating cheerios and watching “Topless Babes Do It Best” on cable TV.

Be prepared for a lot of misunderstandings about your job and a lot of insinuations.

*****

Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer of 20 years experience, and also the managing editor of MakeUseOf.com, since August 2007. You can see his personal website at markoneill.org Mark has 21 post(s) at Free Writing Center