Since 2009, I have been making a living working from home writing market research reports. Ask me anything you like! Where possible, I'll try and edit this post later on to reflect my answers to good/popular questions. A few Q&A type questions to get the ball rolling.

WTF do you actually do?!
There are broadly two types of jobs that form the bulk of my work which depends on the types of client I get:
(i) Research agencies want high level reports, e.g. "Retailing in Malaysia 2018" or "Oil and Gas Malaysia 2018". This involves looking for a lot of information from the press, databases, etc. and compiling them into a report. The idea is that the reader will be able to get a high level view of what Retailing in Malaysia looked like in 2018 after a quick read through of the report.

(ii) End clients have more specific requirements. For instance, a client might have a business idea, e.g. "I want to set up a cafe on the 1st floor in Cheras" and then I would might do some of the ground work to help the client decide if they want to take the idea further or not. I also get foreign clients who want to bring a product into Malaysia and want to know what the market is like, e.g. "What is the market for Korean strawberries like in the Klang Valley?" Again, it is about presenting the information to them to help them decide whether to take it further.

Are the hours flexible?
Absolutely. This is one of the pros of this line of work and exactly why I got into this gig in the first place. My clients generally do not care if I put x number of hours into their project per day, or that I must be at the desk from 9-5. What they would like to see is updates every 1-2 weeks and progress towards the end deliverable.

Do I need to learn any special software to do this work?
In some cases, software helps to speed the work up but it is not necessary. For a freelancer, speed is everything (obviously the quality must be there). Faster writing means more revenue per hour. Excel skills are a must because you will end up doing quite a bit of number crunching. I have used SPSS in the past to do a lot of bulk statistical calculations but I can count the number of projects where I have needed to use SPSS on the fingers of one hand.

Most important /k question: can make 20k?
It is possible but you have to be able to work fast and work a lot. When I started this line of work, I couldn't even come close. But as I became familiar with the tools of the trade, and with what readers and editors are looking for, earnings went up. I could probably have hit the 20k per month mark but this has always been a side gig for me so I've not put in enough hours to regularly make a 20k/month income. For someone who wants to do this more diligently, it is completely possible.

More great questions.

I have never advertised directly on any website so I can't tell you. However, I think non-specific freelance job boards like freelancer.com don't tend to be very good for finding lucrative jobs. I've had a look just to see what's out there and there are a lot of people out there - typically SME start-up owners - searching for freelancers to do some due diligence work for them for $10-15/hour. That's not the market I am looking for, to be honest. Where possible, I try to work with repeat clients or research companies who I'm happy working with and who have a good track record for payment. Last year, I tried doing a lot more pitching to see what else is out there and it ended up being a lot of hours spent with no results to show for it.