THESE days, working from home has become an attractive option for various people like software developers, engineers, doctors, writers, painters, etc.

I know a young man who is a computer software degree holder from a local university. He has set up his office in the basement of his house. He keeps bidding for international software projects through the Internet, completes the projects and sends them back to his clients online.

He’s got many clients in different parts of the world, especially in Europe and America. He receives payment in dollars for the completed projects through a local Pakistani bank.

There’s another young man who’s a matriculate and works as a home servant with an affluent family. He is computer literate and at night, carries out typing work for a local school and earns extra money for his family.

There’s a young lady in Karachi who’s on the payroll of an NGO. This lady is MA in English from a local university. She teaches English to her students in Mardan online, 1,700km away while she herself lives in Karachi. The students gather in a classroom and listen to her.

There are many engineering and consultants who work from home and are active members of various project teams. Many writers write for international magazines and are sometimes paid as high as $1 per word. They send articles online and receive payment online. If they’re not computer literate, they can undergo a basic computer course in any local computer training institute, or learn the usage of a computer and Internet by hiring the services of anyone who is computer literate.

The options are endless. By starting a home-based business, many benefits are accrued; one saves on office rent and allied charges, doesn’t have to commute and is thus less exposed to road accidents, is his own boss and controls his own working hours, can turn his hobby into a money-generating business, controls his own work environment and works wherever and whenever he wants.

If one feels that he can work from home and sell his services online in this age of technology, he must put his thoughts into practice and add to his bank account.

AIR CDRE (Rtd) AZFAR A KHAN Rawalpindi