When it comes to legitimate work from home jobs, many people are understandably very apprehensive about the concept. If you are like me, you have either been scammed before or are constantly being inundated with sales pitches that promise loads of money with little work. The fact remains, especially with online job offers, that if the pitch for the program sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You shouldn’t keep your guard up completely though, as there are legitimate home based business opportunities for earning a substantial income from home .
Freelance Writing
Legitimate home based business work at home jobs come in all shapes and sizes, but one that is gathering a quick following is freelance writing. Because this task can be performed by anyone with a computer who has basic typing skills, people are able to earn a lot of money (often times six figure incomes) simply by writing for companies from the comfort of their own home. For this type of work, you should have a strong grasp of the English language and references or sample writing work will get your foot in the door. There are quite a few high paying jobs available to writers that are willing to put in the work required and to meet the deadlines that companies have. There are several other niche writing markets that can be a very lucrative way to earn a lot of money in your living room, such as writing reports that summarize books you read (then you can sell in eBook form on the Internet), writing content articles for bloggers and writing SEO content for websites.
Online Survey
Another of the free work from home jobs that is popular today is taking online surveys. These types of jobs do pay, and if you get good enough, pay very well. They do require you to keep up with your organization, though. If you enter into one of these ventures, you are going to want to make sure you practice the necessary tracking to ensure that you have documentation of what you have done. If the program that you sign up for requires you to enter any credit card information, make sure you are working with a legitimate company. As with any job, do a basic search on the Internet for the working from home jobs, and you will find many sites offering reviews and recommendations.
Data Entry is Real
Don’t forget that there are also legitimate work from home jobs in the data entry field. If you have a computer, there are ample work from home data entry jobs in the health, customer support and other business fields. Businesses much prefer having at-home independent contractors working for them in these entry-level jobs than full-time employees as they save on expensive benefits such as employer social security payments, health insurance and retirement. Work from home data entry jobs don’t pay much to start, but I personally know of someone who started out with data entry and now has several people working for her in her data entry business.
Red Flags
The best work from home jobs are going to seem legitimate, without throwing any flags up for you. When someone has to develop an entire sales pitch to get you to buy into their product, they are probably not offering the most legitimate work from home jobs, but instead are going to be using you to advance their network. These types of schemes are called multi-level marketing, or pyramid building, wherein you receive more money for the more people that you refer than by selling products. In some cases, there aren’t any solid products that you are providing through the MLM business, but rather, simply gathering more people that will become your affiliate “down line” marketers, making more profits for the person at the very top of the ladder. However, there are some very good MLM companies with great products, such as Juice Plus.
Do You Feel Uncomfortable?
In order to avoid being scammed, simply avoid any types of projects that throw up red flags as you are looking through them. If you feel uncomfortable about the business or the presentation offers earning lots of money with almost no work, chances are that you are better served by moving on. The real work from home jobs opportunities will have a legitimate following and proof that real people are earning money, not just people that they have paid to give a testimonial to include on their site.
Of course, don’t forget the real opportunities available to use automated forex investing and stock trading software to earn money at home. While many people have begun a great career with this, it does have more risk than many work at home job careers.