Breakin AwayDan and Sheila Gendron, Contributors With the institution of Obama-care many employers are cutting employees hours or just closing their doors altogether because they cant afford the required benefits package. Even many of the work-at-home offerings on the Internet still make you reliant on a large company for your daily bread, requiring that you have a phone to make telemarketing calls to their prospective clients or sit at your computer all day answering complaints as a customer service representative. The biggest benefit in these types of schemes is to the company that doesnt have to list you as an employee per se, and so does not have to offer you benefits. Working for yourself, in your own home, having control of how much money you can make based on how much time and effort you decide to put into it is the key to personal freedom. Here are some ways you can break free. Ebay.com (or other auction sites such as ioffer.com, bitcoin.com, etc.) can be used as a viable income stream. Consider going to local yard sales, flea markets, estate sales and such and purchasing items that can be sold on auction sites. How do you know what will sell on eBay, for example? Do a search for those types of items that you generally find locally and see how they are doing. Go to the Advanced Search section, where you can see not only what is selling in that category, but you can see how much they have sold for, say in the last 30 days, as well as what items dont sell at all. If you see that porcelain tea pots are selling for about $10, you will know not to purchase one locally for $20 and expect a profit. A great opportunity for finding items to sell on auction sites are retail stores. These days many retail stores have stock that is just not moving at their retail location and would be happy to either sell you those items in bulk for a substantial discount, or simply give it to you on consignment (to be paid when it sells or returned if it doesnt). Last year we bought $120 Minnetonkas for $20 on eBay, new in the box obviously an overstock purchase that the resourceful seller had made, and made a profit on. Hardware stores, crafts stores and jewelry stores are some of the good retail locations to check out for doing this. Dont be afraid to ask. Walk through your local mall or local strip-mall shopping center and ask to see the owner or manager of each of the stores. It wont do you any good to talk with a sales clerk who cant make that kind of decision. The owners of these stores are business-people who would be glad to reduce their inventories, even at less than their marked prices. Youd be doing them a service. Theres nothing better than a win-win situation! Another way you can work for yourself is to learn a trade that has value to the public. One such trade that is actually simple enough to learn is watch repair. You can have your own watch repair business many ways: at home via mail order, as a contractor at a retail jewelry store, or in a battery-changing kiosk or flea market set-up. You can also offer watch repair services to the public on the Internet. Very few retail jewelers have a watchmaker on staff. Most watches that are brought in for service are mailed by the jeweler to a tradeshop (you), where they are repaired and mailed back to the jeweler (with appropriate insurance, of course). We know people who live in densely populated areas who leave flyers in apartment and office buildings offering watch repairs with pick-up and delivery service and were quite successful. With knowledge of watch repair you can also purchase non-working watches at very low cost, many of which need only a 25-cent battery and a little clean-up, that you can re-sell at yard sales or flea markets for less than the cost of a new watch and still make a good profit. You can place a low-cost classified ad saying that you buy non-working watches. Quartz watches are very profitable to repair and very easy to do. Most people dont know that batteries cost around 25 cents each or that most quartz watches can be repaired with a replacement movement that can cost as little as $5. This is also a great business for stay-at-home Moms. One such course that will get you on your way is available here or on Kindle. Yet another service you can offer is computer repair. If you are handy enough to take apart and/or rebuild laptop computers, replace bios batteries, swap components, you can offer this service at lower prices than factory service centers. Auctions sites are replete with non-working laptops that can be bought at very low cost that will supply you with working parts that you can use. Many office supply stores and electronics stores charge $50 just to tell the customer what is wrong with the computer. Again, flyers, low-cost classified ads and word-of-mouth can get you as much business as you can handle. These are just some of the self-employment opportunities that are out there waiting for you. And you can begin any of these as a part-time ventures while you still hold onto your job until you dont need it anymore. Once you get going in your own home business, you will have the freedom to live where you choose, and to make as much money as you are willing to put in the time and effort for in offering your service. Being your own boss is much more rewarding than working for someone else. We wish you all love and freedom. Read other articles by Dan and Sheila HERE. RELATED ACTIVIST POST ARTICLE: Dan Sheila are the authors of Surviving Survivalism How to Avoid Survivalism Culture Shock, and hosts of the free podcast, Still Surviving with Dan Sheila. linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 