Working on the road

[Bob_Vaughn]

I repeatedly read of people working on the internet while traveling and have not been able to figure out what they could be doing to make money on the internet while traveling?

[DutchmenSport]

I am a software tester. I test internet pages which borrowers access to make their loan payments, and are able to find other resources for various needs. (I'm not saying who I work for).

Are business users identifies what needs to be changed, made new, or deleted. Some of these changes are because of Federal Government compliant reasons, some are because the consumer is having a bad internet experience with the web site, and some are enhancements to make things easier for the consumer.

After the "item" is identified, it goes to the developer who develops the code. A good Quality Assurance department will always be a separate, independent department from the development department. Most testers don't understand computer code. But we hammer away on the web site looking for bugs and errors, emulating the consumer on the street, how they would use it.

We test, document our tests, log our defects, which go back to the developer for fix, and then we retest again. We look, search, and explore trying to find the weak spots in the application.

My company (and many companies ... especially their Information Technologies departments) has provided the methods for us to work from home (or actually work from anywheere) as long as we have a secured internet connection.

My laptop is a company laptop with all the software and all the security protocals needed to ensure a secure connection to inside the "firewall". So when firing up the computer, if I am at home, or in the office, the computer is exactly the same at both locations.

Except for an occasional meeting where we need the face-to-face contact, even our business meetings are conducted over the computers. We share screens, and have communication over our computers too (voice), or the option to dial-in with our phones.

My wife works for a different company the provides the same features. Except she does not have a company laptop. She uses her own laptop to access her company's system. When she logs in, she takes over her user session, just like she is at the office. In the office, she has a dummy type terminal and keyboard and monitor, so she doesn't need her actual computer.

We both sometimes put in as much as 60 hours a week (or more), so the availability to work from home, really has it's advantages here.

Sometimes, if we have a planned trip, but we end up getting pulled into something that requires week-end coverage, we take our work with us and many times, we have worked from a campground.

More and more companies are seeing the advantage of providing such technology to their employees to work remotely. Some work from home, some work from their campsite. I'm glad and grateful I can do it too. Right now, I'm home. It's lunch time, put my work computer on "idle" for a few minutes and jumped on my personal laptop to check RV.net.

By the way, you may ask, why don't you go camping more and take your work with you. It's because I use my I-phone wifi hot-spot and I'm paying for my own plan. If I connect my company laptop through my I-phone hot-spot, it's a data and bank width hog. I couldn't afford the data plan. So I have to use that feature VERY wisely. Only only when really needed.

[allenm]

I assume by working on the road you mean from a campground. OK, so here is my pet peeve - the bandwidth at most campgrounds. The strength of the WiFi signal is a completely different issue. I carry a WiFi extender which works pretty well if I'm out a couple hundred feet from their antenna and am getting a weak signal.

But an extender does nothing for bandwidth. Most smaller campgrounds have about the same service you have at home. Works great for 1-2 users. Maybe ok for 3-4 users. But much more than 6 users it bogs it way down. Whatever bandwidth they have gets divided between users.

Larger campgrounds are probably going to have multiple WiFi hosts, but even that bogs way down with so many users these days trying to stream video and audio.

I got so frustrated I went out and got my own G4 WiFi hot spot. I haven't found many campgrounds where I couldn't get a good signal but that would probably be a different story out west.

It's costly. It's also surprising how much data one uses for normal tasks. My wife and I don't stream any music or movies. We just do email, transfer normal spreadsheets and docs and some browsing. We normally use up our 20GB plan sometimes go a little over.

[PA12DRVR]

Don't do it now but for a couple of years I worked out of the house doing contract negotiations and dispute resolution. 75% of the communication was done through exchange of documents, the other 25% through teleconference.

More than once there was a multiparty teleconference between Houston / London / Bern or Halden / Paris and either Luanda or Cairo...and good 'ol Los Anchorage.

In my case, I routinely communicated with the Corp office through e-mail, so it was very convenient to be at home on the internet all day. For doing the substantive work, access to the internet to send e-mails to the other parties would only have been needed every 2-4 days or so.

[MNGeeks61]

Easily enough.

I work in IT and support folks in the Minneapolis area. But short of fixing a printer, or deploying a computer (physically putting it in place) I can remotely fix most issues, so I *could* work from anywhere if our manager allowed it. However I use multiple monitors when I'm in the office.

My wife is a software trainer and has 25 years of experience in wholesale inventory software. She can use a voice-over-ip phone and a laptop, although working from home is easier as she has more space to use multiple monitors.

Once I finish some more training in the next couple of years I will be able to work from anywhere - although the speed of the internet could make it interesting if we're both hogging bandwidth.

edit: forgot to add, I also administer a campground website on a volunteer basis (am trying to get them to pay me, but it's a non-profit). My wife also helps a friend of ours with their website and it may be a paying job soon.

You could support websites pretty easily on the road.

[jplante4]

Yeah ditto what Fizz posted. I worked from the house as a software engineer for 10 years. The first 4, the office was local, about an hour and a half drive. I went in once a week to attend the staff meeting. It took up the entire day, so my 5 days of working on projects became a 6 day work week. The next 6 years, the office was in Silicon Valley, 3 hours time difference. I figured I'd adjust my work day to agree with west coast time, but I ended up working east and west coast time.

Having said that, I could have done the job from anywhere with a decent internet connection. The boss would have no idea if I was in my home office, on a boat or in an RV.

[Fizz]

Just about any type of office work can now be done from home.
Before you go thinking how soft that is.
Your hours can be tracked to the minute. You may be at home in your PJs but you're always on the job. Sitting having supper when you remember something, next thing you know its 11 PM and you're still at the keyboard.
Mind you sitting out on the patio enjoying a nice day while plugging away is kinda nice.

[JAXFL]

Here are a few I have heard of..

Telemarketing
Medical Billing
Incoming call center
Computer Programing
Traveling Nurse
Insurance Adjuster

Maybe someone will add to the list.

[westend]

Day trading? Sharing memos with office-bound personnel?

I haven't worked in an office for many years, at least before everyone had a PC on their desk. What I see now is that most folks are at a desk with eyes on a screen. That can be done as easily in an RV as in a building.

Maybe these folks that work on the road are all Dr's. The number one medical device in every Hospital and Clinic is a laptop computer. If I have to spend time in a Hospital again, I'm sneaking down to the Morgue and grabbing an unused wrist band. Mine was scanned for everything encountered with my care. The bill was just a series of UPC numbers.

[azrving]

I believe some are not doing "work" as we may think of it but are developing blogs and want you to click on them. They get advertisers to place adds when they see a lot of clicks. It seems there are a good number of people who want to live the rv lifestyle by developing a blogs.

[Chuck_thehammer]

Same here,

just like there are 2 Television RV shows and some of the customers buying new RV's, Coaches... are employed (work) over the internet...

What are they doing???