Working at home on your schedule

By CHRISTINA REXRODE
Published January 21, 2007

Knife sets, blenders, health books: Joyce Jones knows them all backward and forward.

In between her full-time job as an executive operational assistant at a computer company and a couple of college classes, Jones squeezes in five to 10 hours a week to take calls in her Tampa home from people who want to buy various gizmos and thingama- jigs advertised on infomercials.

Jones, 45, is a part-timer for California-based LiveOps, a Palo Alto company that hires people across the country to work at home answering service calls for different companies. It's one of the players like www.arise.com, AlpineAccess.com and www.Work AtHomeAgent.com that hire and train virtual agents like Jones, typically as independent contractors.

LiveOps fits even the schedule of someone as busy as Jones. All the training is online. The only equipment required is a DSL or broadband Internet connection and a dedicated landline phone. Jones doesn't have to memorize anything about the 15 or so products she handles, because she has scripts for each one.

Each week she signs up for shifts in half-hour increments. The phone lines are open 24 hours, and Jones usually picks shifts late in the evenings, or before dawn on the weekends - "before the kids get up and start wanting your attention," she said.

The flexibility is one of the great parts about the job, she said. "If you wanted to work 15 hours in one day and then not work the rest of the week, you could."

When she's on duty, the calls pour in for vitamins, exercise equipment and whatever else, so she's never bored.

Employees bill LiveOps based on minutes of talk time. Pay starts at about $6 to $8.50 an hour, the company says, but generally increases to $9 to $11.

It would be a great job for stay-at-home moms, Jones said. "You don't have to drive," she said. "You could take calls in your pajamas if you wanted to."

[Last modified January 21, 2007, 06:39:19]