Freelance Typing, Transcription and Secretarial Work

Are you interested in freelance typing, transcription or secretarial work but don’t know how to get work? Are you afraid of home business scams?The Internet has facilitated working from home. Modern technology such as email and cell phones makes it easy to communicate with employers. Work is often delivered through email or mailed by Priority mail and other specialized mailing services. Anyone with a computer, internet connection and computer skills can now telecommute, work from home and provide freelance services for global entrepreneurs and business owners.You can find an abundance of at home jobs and freelance work at home on the internet. But online home work opportunities demand close scrutiny. Although many web sites provide legitimate work at home, many are scams. Be skeptical, educate yourself on how to avoid scams, and learn to distinguish work at home scams from legitimate work at home.Avoid Ads That Promise Easy MoneyAvoid enticing ads promising “easy money” and “no experience necessary” home work and vague offers that don’t explain what work you’ll be doing from home or what information you’ll be getting.Medical transcription provides legitimate work from home but you have to know medical terminology. And to make a good living from medical transcription, you have to be able to transcribe or type fast and set up shortcuts. You can avoid extensive training by providing general transcription work instead of medical.To provide secretarial services or VA services, you need to have a decent knowledge of a major word processing program like Word, have typing skills and good spelling and grammar skills.Here are some ways to find legitimate work from home

Ask your current or previous employers for at home work. Your employer already knows you and knows your experience and skills.

Consider starting your own business. Look for a home-based business that matches your skills, experience, and interests. This is the best way to create at home work.

Provide freelance services. Look at freelance job boards like Upwork (previously Elance) and Guru.

Check classified ads sites like Craigslist an others who list thousands of telecommuting and work at home jobs.
Freelance work is often associated with freelance writing but today you can provide a wide range of freelance services from home.Analyze your experience and skills when considering what freelance work or home business is right for you. What skills do you already have that you could use in a home business? What skills did you use in previous jobs? Do you have computer, accounting, graphic design, word processing or secretarial experience? Start a home business around those skills!Here are some freelance services you can provide from home if you have typing skills: home-based secretarial services, virtual assistant or VA services, medical transcription from home and general, non-medical transcription. Secretarial services often provide business transcription or legal transcription if they have worked in the legal or paralegal field.If you have basic Web design skills, you can start an internet business. Popular internet businesses include promoting affiliate programs and selling on eBay.The possibilities to provide freelance services and work from home are endless. Be creative.

12 Effective Health and Fitness Tips

Here are some really quick and handy health and fitness tips that are easy to follow and introduce into your health and fitness regime. You’ll get great results by following these tips. For your convenience I have divided these tips into Nutrition and Exercise. It is important that you realize that your health and fitness goals will require you to find the right balance of healthy eating and active exercise.Nutrition:
When deciding what to eat ask yourself ‘can I grow this or can I catch this’. If the answer is yes then you’ll know that it is a whole food that is healthy and nutritious for you.
Keep all your coffee drinking to pre-noon. This will give you the benefits of caffeine while ensuring that you still get a good sleep. Sleep is a huge part of allowing your body to repair and get rid of body fat.
Green tea is a great replacement for coffee as it helps to keep you alert while putting a lot of anti-oxidants into your body.
Rather than microwaving food to reheat try steaming it. Steamers are a cheap appliance and steaming keeps more nutrients in your food.
Never allow yourself to become thirsty. Mild dehydration stresses the body and is counter productive to your health and fitness goals.
Exercise:
Become an exercise anywhere, anytime kind of person. Bust out 10 push ups anywhere you like. 10 Squats. You’ll soon find that by adding random exercises to your routine your body will get fitter and stronger faster. Your friends might think it’s a little strange that you do exercises here and there but eventually you’ll inspire them to do the same.
Keep your body guessing with a variety of exercises and levels of intensity. Don’t always do hard and fast training and don’t always go for low intensity workouts. Variety keeps your body guessing and gets great results.
Join a club or training group as it is proven that people who train in a group are far more likely to stay consistent with their training over an extended period of time.
Don’t neglect flexibility as part of your training program. Try to stretch for at least 20 minutes a day.
Invest in a foam roller and take the time to learn about self myofascial release. Foam rolling is a great way to prevent injury and to keep your body supple and flexible.
When doing cardiovascular training such as runs/walks work for time. Try and go a little further in the same amount of time. This will help you to increase the effort you are giving on your workouts.
Always listen to your body as far as your training goes. If you are feeling some aches and pains learn to tell whether it is a good pain or a bad pain. A good pain can be related to muscles that are a little sore from your previous workout whereas bad pain is normally sharp and more than gentle walking type pain.
If you can start to incorporate some of the tips above you’ll be well on your way to developing good health and fitness habits. It is impossible to be genuinely healthy without taking care of both aspects of fitness. A healthy lifestyle is something that forms over time as you educate yourself about what to put into your body and how to move your body effectively.

Digital Photography Secrets

If you have ever wondered if there are digital photography secrets, the answer is YES!With traditional photography using an SLR camera you have to be exact with your framing, your lighting, your exposure time, in other words you really need to be an expert to produce good photography with an SLR.Digital photography is a little more lenient. While it always helps to start off with a fairly good image, with digital photography you can edit your picture to bring out the very best.Professional digital photography software, such as Photoshop, will let you do amazing things with your photos. Besides the basic fixes, you can be creative and try all different styles with your image. Photoshop is a great option if you can afford the software.But there are also many free tools for editing your photos, do a search online for “Photo Editing Tools” and you will come up with plenty of options. My favorite free editing tool is Picasa 3, not only does it provide you with the basic tools you need, it works great for organizing your images, and sharing them with friends and family too.Which ever editor you use, follow these 4 simple digital photography secrets.Straighten Your ImageAny good editor will provide you with an option to straighten your image. This is very critical as an off balance photo, unless it is intended to be that way, will have an amateur feel to it. You want your images to be as professional looking as possible, right? I have both Photoshop and Picasa 3, and I actually prefer the straightening tool in Picasa 3. It is very easy to use, and you do not lose any of the image the way you do when you use the straightening tool in Photoshop.Crop Your ImageNow that your image is straightened, if your picture is perfect, leave it alone! But if there is something you do not want in your image, crop it out! The focus of your picture should be on your subject, if there is too much activity around the subject, crop the image down so the focus is where you want it to be.Adjust Your ContrastAdjust the darkness/lightness of your digital photo. If you are using Picasa 3, open up your image, and an editing box will appear to the left. Click on “Auto Contrast” to see what kind of an effect it has on your image. If you find you do not like the effect, simply hit “Undo Auto Contrast”.Adjust Your ColorsSometimes the colors do not come out exactly as sharp and crisp as you would like them. You can do amazing things with editors to fix this problem too! Picasa 3 has a very simple “Auto Color” tool that can bring out the very best in your image.If you do choose to use Picasa 3 to edit your images, after you have gone through the 4 steps you need to save the changes you have made. To do this, click on the “Back to Library” button in the top left hand corner. Now look to the right side, and you will see a button “Save to Disk”. Click on that button, and all of your changes will be applied to your image. It is that simple!Picasa 3 has other great features for editing too. It offers a red-eye tool to remove those scary looking red-eyes from your image, and also a fill light tool for images that came out just a bit to dark.So now you know 4 digital photography secrets that will improve the quality of your digital photos. Give them a try and you will be amazed at how much better your photos will look!