In the new market for distance working, the main immediate opportunities are for contract or "freelance" work rather than for conventional employer-employee relationships. There are significant practical and organisational barriers inhibiting both employers and individuals from agreeing normal contracts of employment when geographically distant from each other. When the separation also includes national boundaries there are additional legal, fiscal and regulatory complications – or fears about these, which have the same effect.
Even accepting that freelance contract working is the most accessible bridge between skill shortages and distant under-utilised skills, there are still barriers to be addressed. How can the enterprise be assured that a person too far away to meet and interview really can deploy the requisite skills and can be trusted to undertake and deliver on a project in a satisfactory way? How can the skilled individual be assured that an unknown distant company will pay for work that has been satisfactorily completed? How will the two of them resolve the differences or misunderstandings that inevitably can arise? These are the kinds of problems that inhibit distance working and cause most companies to still insist that even contract staff must work "on site". This severely restricts opportunities for people who live at a distance from centres of commercial growth, as well as the pool of talent accessible by enterprises.
It is still difficult to find web sites that have a coherent approach to any form of distance working, whether for conventional jobs or freelance project work. The general assumption is that employer and worker will be able to meet, assess each other and negotiate in the usual way. On the few sites that show any interest in "home based working", a majority of the so-called "work offers" are really business propositions, often those promoted by multi-level marketing or "get rich quick" schemes; and often asking the would-be home worker to "send money". This is not the kind of "work" most people are looking for.