A July 10th, 2008 Wall Street Journal article examines the concept of working at home, during these tough economic times with high gas prices, job losses and credit crunches. The article cautions those looking for cushy jobs where they can earn a regular salary from home, saying that many of the work-at-home opportunities are for mundane, difficult tasks that other people would find tough. An example is telemarketing, transcribing inaudible MP3 files from meetings, or hours of tedious data entry.
Another caution is that you often receive spam emails or see sites advertising simple data entry for thousands of dollars salary a week. Be warned that these need to be treaded cautiously and can be scams. The WSJ article provides some great resources on freelance type jobs such as virtual assistant or travel agents. The three sites listed below will help you identify if a job you've found online for working from home is legit or not.
3 Sites to Use to Find Legitimate Work-at-Home Jobs:
bbonline.org - Click on "For Consumers"
WomenForHire.com - offers resources/ideas on working from home.
FTC.gov - In the search box enter "work at home scam".
Websites for Legitimate Work-at-Home Jobs: The following websites were all profiled in the WSJ article. As always read the details and find print on any opportunity you get involved with. These all appear to be legitimate companies which hire freelancers for clients, post job listings, and provide work at home opportunities.
Arise.com - 8,000 home business owners as agents, with plans to add another 4,000 by year's end.
AlpineAccess.com - 7,500 home agents, hiring at least 2,500 more by December 08'.
Elance.com and oDesk.com - Link clients with freelancers from around the world. Freelancers can take skills tests on the site and have results posted. The sites also work on commission, taking 4 to 10% of the freelancer's fees. A college student dropped out of school realizing he could make up to $60,000 doing computer programming on a freelance basis through oDesk.com.
LiveOps.com - Has 20,000 home agents who work on at least a part time basis each week.
Sologig.com - A work at home posting site with screened free-lance opportunities.
TeamDoubleClick.com - Offers $10 to $20 an hour for "Virtual Assistants", who perform the tasks of Administrative Assistants, but from home.
VirtualAssistants.com - For $14.95 a month get screened job postings for at home work.
WestCorp (west.com) - Has 15,000 at home agents and is currently expanding.
(Info source: Wall Street Journal "Nice Work If You Can Get It: We Sites for At-Home Jobs" - WSJ 07/10/08)
Note: Another great site to check out is WAHM.com which provides info on work-at-home job opportunities, points out scams and much more!
Keep this work out home sites in mind and you just might be working from the comfort of your aeron chair in your own home office...That's the American dream right?
