I use to contract with Liveops. I have also contracted with West before they were made into employees. West is different from West at Home I think. I worked with Liveops for the longest, so here is my take on it.
With Liveops you are an independent contractor. You receive calls through their router for various companies that advertise on TV. It could be anything, and you don't know who until you answer the phone. When you answer a script pops up, and you read word for word. On some calls there are magazine offers at the end, and on others there are club offers, and sometimes you get both offers. If you sell magazines they are $ each up to three per sale, and clubs are usually $ each and can be two per call. These are called affinities. You can make extra per call. Now the regular pay for the calls is $ per minute. If you are on a call for 20 minutes that is $, and if you sell all of your affinities then that comes to $ for 20 minutes which is good. You have a good chance to make good money. The problem is that you don't always sell your affinities, the phone doesn't always ring, and you have to keep your stats up by selling the affinities and not being a flake. This is called Direct Response sales.
Now if you are real good you might be invited to Sales Pro which is very high commission. I worked sales pro for a time, and made about $35 an hour. It is very difficult, and very high pressure. It is like direct response but more intense. I loved the money, but I didn't like the pressure.
There is also Pizza Hut which is low pressure, and not as good pay per hour. I didn't ever work that.
There are also other groups like insurance if you are licensed, or various other things like AAA that you can take calls for.
When you first sign up with Liveops you are usually offered Direct Response. It takes awhile to build your stats, so calls may not come in fast at first. When you first start you will get a burst of calls to get in your training, and then they slack off unless you are selling the affinities on every call. Stay with it though, because once you build your stats calls can be frequent. Take all of the quizzes that you can, because you will get more calls that way. The pay is $ per talk minute. As mentioned above affinities are extra. During holidays there is usually a bonus per minute. So if the calls are back to back there is potential to make great money.
I loved being able to schedule myself. There are five precise schedule roll outs over two days, and sometimes more that are unannounced. During your roll out you click on spots that you want to work. You have to be fast as they go quick. Each spot is 30 minutes, and called commits. You can take 15 commits during each roll out. By the end of the roll outs you can have a full schedule. You don't have to take any commits, or you can take as many as you want up to the limit. You can add more after you work some of your commits as the week goes on, so that you could work as many hours as you wanted. If something happens and you can't work your commits, you put them back on the schedule for someone else to take. As long as they are taken 30 minutes before they are to be worked you are not penalized for it, so it doesn't count against your stats. Usually they are taken, but on Sat. or Sun. or after midnight it can be iffy. You get penalized 2 points if they are not taken. It's always best to at least try to put them on the schedule rather than sleep through them and not post them. If you lose 12 points you will see a decline in call volume, but after working a while you can gain your points back. You just won't get as many calls until you regain your points.
The very best times to work are Sat. and Sun. and anytime after midnight until about 4 AM. The reason is that direct response TV shows are more plentiful at that time. Also the best season starts about mid Oct. and runs through Feb. Some of my better sales were New Year's Day and in Jan.
With Direct Response clients can change over time. I have sold Jack LaLane's Power Juicer, Ronco Knives, all of the Beach Body products including P90X (my favorite), all of Guthie Renker which includes many products, Bare Essentials, Scooters....The list goes on and on. I took calls for the Red Cross during disasters. I raised money for St. Jude. I took calls during the fund raisers for Haiti.
Why did I stop Liveops? I can't stand the phones any longer. I have phone burn out. Changes are taking place there. The administration is changing the way things work. I don't know if that will hurt or not. I haven't taken calls in two years, but kept my contract until the first of this year.
They have an awesome forum there. I loved the community. It was worth it just for the forum.
I liked that I could work 30 minutes per month or full time. I could make a little or a whole lot of money. It just depended on how much I wanted to put into it. Some people (not many) made as much as 70,000 per year. One of my friends there consistently made over 3,000 per pay period--two times per month. She worked all of the time though. Her hours were at least 10 PM until 6 AM weekdays, and at least 12 hours each Sat. and Sun. She had been there since the beginning, and knew all of the tricks to selling.
There is outbound calling at Liveops, but I never did that. Basically outbound would call customers back if they refused the upsells, and gave them a better deal. I only did inbound calls.
Another company that is good to look into is Arise. You have to be incorporated to work with them, or you can work under someone eles's corporation. They have clients like Carnival Cruise, Interval International, and several others. You just work for one client at a time.
VIP Desk is also good. They have Eddie Bauer.
Liveops is the most flexible of all of the call taking companies.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/2012 05:34PM by Reporter.