Working at home verses working in a B&M job

For 5 years I worked in home health which is as close to working from home I've done. My hubby is a truck driver and in August 2007 he went over the road. Last Oct. I dropped to parttime, so I was available to our youngest daughter. At the time she wasn't driving. For the first 4-5 months it wasn't too bad. I was still getting a fair amount of work, but was off everyday at 2pm. Then around April my boss decided she didn't need me anymore and took me off the schedule. That's when I began looking for work at home jobs fulltime.
The first job I found was preforming insurance exams. I do most of the work at home, but have to go to applicants home or business to do the exam. This is only parttime and I usually work 2-3 days a week. I am looking into getting my phlebotomy certificate.
I have also worked with West at home. I wasn't completely satisfied with them. I didn't like the upsells and APO's you have to try to sell. Then my phone died, I'm not sure what happened. We are going to work on it hopefully while we are off a few days.
I'm looking for non-phone jobs. As any of you know those are few and difficult to get. Since I'm new to this I'm going to test for Odesk, and try to get started there. The pay isn't very good, but like any position when you don't have experience you start where you can.
I'm also trying to get into medical transcription. I've looked at several schools. The best ones are too expensive for me, and we don't get loans for anything, anymore. I will be spending some time reviewing forums for ideas on getting trained. If you have any ideas please let me know.