Thursday, 1 January 2009

Work at home jobs can be genuine!!

Finding genuine work from home opportunities isn't difficult once you know what to look for. I have been working from home for the past 2 years and have enjoyed having the flexibility of spending time with my family and earning a substantial income at the same time. I also worked from home and had a ‘real’ job meaning that, whilst my salary covered living costs and the odd treat my self-employment income was put into savings to allow us to build a nest egg.

There are, however, an increasing number of scams as well as unscrupulous people who prey upon housewives and those who are interested in earning a living from their home. Knowing what to look for in a legitimate home job can help ensure that you won't be taken advantage of.

The first step that you should take to prevent yourself from being tricked into a scam is to check the references of the company with either the Better Business Bureau, the Rip off Report, or even by using the Who Is feature to find accurate data relating to the company's website. By using Who Is, you can see how long the website has been in operation and who owns the site. If a company claims that they have a long successful business history, yet their website shows that they have been in operation for a few weeks, you may want to proceed cautiously.

The first rule of thumb to remember is that you should never have to pay for a legitimate job opportunity. This is the number one ploy used by scam artists to take consumers money. If you are going to be working from home, then a company will hire you based upon your skills, your attitude, and your resume. You will not need to pay a company to be employed; neither will you need to pay for a list of "legitimate work from home jobs."

Every job that you can work for is available to find online, and for free.

Have you ever heard the saying, "If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is? Well, this simple piece of advice can go a long way in your legitimate work from home job search.

Many job search boards will post legitimate work from home jobs, but they are also often targeted with numerous scams. Unfortunately, many people mistakenly believe that if the job posting was listed on sites such as Monster.com, Career Builder, or Hot Jobs, that it is a legitimate position. This couldn't be further from the truth. You must do your diligent research before choosing a business or company to work for.

Something that I found to be very helpful when I first began working from home was to network with other work at home moms. I found that this was easily accomplished by joining message groups or forums. There are two forums that are wonderful resources for those who are seeking legitimate work from home jobs. They are: WAHM.com and Work Place Like Home. Not only do these forums and message boards list legitimate work from home opportunities, but you can also ask questions regarding companies that you may have discovered in your job search. Boards like these are also hotspots for finding timely job leads as well. By taking the time to research, network, and ask questions you can rest assured that you will find legitimate work from home jobs in no time at all.

Freelance Jobs

Freelance Writers Wanted
One of the companies I currently write for when I have the time is currently recruiting for a number of freelance workers.  The jobs available are mainly for writers but they do have other types of work available for people who can proof-read or conduct web based research. For the majority of the work you get paid weekly although there are some jobs where the client has to give the go-ahead so it takes about two weeks to become eligible. If you think you have what it takes then click here to take the aptitude tests.
-->

Resources

Over the next few months we will be collating all of the useful resources we have in one place, here. These should help you get started in home based business, answer many of your questions and drive you to further information outside of this site which can help you succeed and, most of all, create a good living from working from home.


Opportunities

As we've just picked up where we left off a couple of years ago, it's going to take some time to populate this page with opportunities.  We do have a few up our sleeve to get you started. Here are a few sites I use to gap fill in freelance writing when I'm having a slow week or need a break from hard writing slog.

Vivatic
Vivatic are amazing and I earn a considerable extra salary from them when work is available. I predominantly write for them but in order to qualify as a writer, you need to take the writing test. Sadly the writing test in only available periodically and the standards are high, however, whilst you're waiting for the test you can also join up and complete regular surveys. Many forumites I know make a fair amount form Vivatic doing the surveys alone, so there are two opportunities in one place! If you do manage to pass the writing test it is a fantastic way to flex those writing muscles and give you a good grounding in whar internet copywriting is all about. Join Vivatic

Clickworker
I have been working for Clickworker for a short time now but I can honestly say I'm probably going to stay. The pay is low per job, but the better you are, the faster you can complete the jobs and the more money you can make. The majority of the work I undertake on Clickworker is text creation. This is pretty much product pages for well know UK and international companies. Other jobs are proffreading, translation, data checking and others that I haven't yet discovered. These are great jobs to add onto your portfolio if, like me, you generate income from a large range of streams, from passive and residual to active working.  I can fit these in between my main writing projects and on an evening when I'm too tired to write reams of pages for my regular business clients.  This is fantastic formulaic work from which you can generate a nice stream of extra monthly income.
Join Clickworker

Freebies!

We know that money can be tight when starting out in business, so we're putting together an ongoing list of quick and free ways to make a bit of money whilst you get you rhome business established. I used quite a few of these when I was setting up my business and some of them are still quite lucrative so I still use them when I have some spare time, just to top up my business earnings.

Swagbucks - Swagbucks is a 'paid-to' site where you earn swagbucks for completing a variety of tasks, from taking part in competitions to shopping and searching on the web. It's a hugely popular site and fantastic for saving up for Xmas or just adding to your monthly income. It's not too difficult to make up to £25 per month if you are dedicated to swagbucks. See this moneysavingexpert.com forum thread on the Swagbucks challenge. Join Swagbucks

Search & Win

Twitter Updates

    Follow me on Twitter