If you are happy with the structure and procedures of your current job, and you enjoy commuting every day and your work environment, working from home might not be for you. You need to ask yourself some heartfelt questions about what it is that you most want from your life and what you are willing to sacrifice to have it. Like any other work that you do, the balance needs to be in your favor or it is simply not worth it.

You need to consider that when you first start out as a freelance writer you may not make the same kind of money that you made working for someone else - in fact that part is pretty much a given. You will need to decide if you can make the kind of financial sacrifices that come with the initial stages of freelance writing before you quit your job. If you find that you simply cannot take that kind of risk with your income, you can always start off writing on the side while you keep your current position. There is no rush and the work will certainly be there, especially with the demand for website content and online writers growing exponentially as the Internet becomes the main playground for everyone and anyone who has something to say or sell.

Getting started in this career path can be daunting and does come with its own set of risks and challenges, but if you are willing to take the chance in even a small way at first, you can turn freelancing into your sole source of income in a very short time.One of the best ways to get started working from home as a freelance writer, is to simply start. There has literally never been a better time to work from home, and as a writer, you will have no shortage of work online. Everywhere you look, people are in need of content to populate websites and blogs.

With that in mind, here are a few things to consider before quitting your day job.

Independence
Working from home as a writer is not all that different than working anywhere else, except that you won't have another person there to remind you about your deadlines. If you want to do any freelance work, you're going to need to be very good at self-motivating. After all, if you don't motivate yourself to get the work done, you won't get paid! The perks for being self-motivated though are that you also get to decide when you work, how you work, what you write, and for whom you write.

There is truly no better feeling than getting paid to write about what you love. Do yourself a major favor right from the start and do not settle for less than what you love. While it's true that you can break into this field writing about any topic, and many writers do, what is not readily apparent when you first start is the idea that you're going to be making a name for yourself in whatever field you choose. Later on, that may be where a lot of your work will come from, so make sure that you love the field you're in.

Room to Write
I think this is among my favorite things about working from home. I get to sit at my own desk, in my pajamas most mornings, looking out my window at the sun coming up, with my nice steaming hot cup of tea beside me, clicking away, perhaps music on my headphones, perhaps not (though I have found some amazing music to write to on YouTube!), and with that the knowledge that I created this for myself. I took a risk yes, but it definitely paid off big time. You don't need to have your own personal home office. All that you need is a place where you can set your computer and your cuppa, that is comfortable and where you will have minimal distractions. The minimal distractions rule is particularly important in the beginning if you are not used to motivating yourself to get things done.

Toot Your Own Horn
Get your own blog or website set up to showcase your skills and abilities.... you don't need to be a professional writer to write. The common misconception with anything new we try is that we need to have years of experience behind us before we can get paid to do it. Writing, like everything else, simply requires that you show up and be willing to learn and improve as you go. For every ten minutes you spend writing, spend twenty editing and you'll be famous. Another aspect of just doing it that most of us forget is that when you are already writing every day, you will be much more likely to network with others who are also writing every day, and some of them are getting paid to do it.

Look Under Rocks
I remember as a young girl going snake-hunting in the woods around our school with my bestie Colleen. The most important thing about snake-hunting is that you have to be lightning fast to catch them, and you absolutely must look under every rock, shingle, or piece of wood if you hope to find one. Writing professionally is a little like that, though most people will look no further than their doorstep where the newspaper sits (or on their computer) and hope that something jumps out at them. With anything you want to do professionally and independently, it's a good idea to get yourself into the mindset that you yourself will have to create the position you want. Think outside the box and look everywhere for opportunity. Remember that even the work that you do for free initially can turn into something profitable.

There are so many topics in this one piece that I find myself thinking another article might be in order. If you want to be a work from home writer, you have to write. Get started now by writing for The Market List.

Copyright © 2013 Patricia Ross. All rights reserved.