Unfortunately, legitimate work at home positions, while certainly available are often buried under piles of scams. One of the very first things you can do, is to research any opportunity before you sign up. All too often, work-at-home companies are in reality only trying to sell you a list, much of which turns out to be information you could have obtained free, or worse yet scams themselves.
The Common Sense Approach
A good rule of thumb, is that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is! In fact, make no mistake about it-working at home is no cakewalk and it certainly is no get rich quick scheme. If you have somebody approach you and tell you how they made $1,000 a day, think again!Stop and consider the rate you would have to be making in order to make $1000 for an eight hour day. The reality, for many freelancers is set at the bottom of the scale, you'll make about $50 a day and at the top of the scale perhaps upwards of four times that. I'm not saying, that there are not people who are making substantially more than that.
However, any "legitimate" work-at-home position that's offering you $1,000 a day to "do nothing" can only be a scam! Sadly, thousands of people each week are taken in by this type of promotion. The promises are endless, turn your Twitter account into an ATM, do data entry for upwards of $50 an hour, make thousands of dollars a day with AdSense-you get the picture.
I'm not saying, that these tools don't work at all, but you cannot make a living doing these things. What I am telling you, is that success will not come overnight, and it most certainly will not come from you doing nothing! If you do decide that working at home is what you prefer, they are many legitimate opportunities out there for you. If you elect to use Twitter, you must use it in conjunction with something!
Watch out: Pay to Tweet
While there are companies like Magpie, and others who will "pay you to tweet" the fact remains that they come with some serious restrictions. Consider this-Magpie will in fact provide you with an opportunity to earn small amounts of money for "targeted" tweets. There's a catch, only 15% of all the tweets that you send can be automated. Let's assume that you want to send 100 tweets over the course of a day-that means that only 15 could be automated. It takes a substantial amount of time to send out 85 tweets. Do you really want to spend that much time promoting your blog, articles, etc. on Twitter? Since the earnings on Twitter are literally pennies, based entirely on page views you certainly are not going to want to spend hours a day manually sending items to Twitter.Affiliate Marketing
Then of course you have the opportunity to get involved with affiliate marketing. Understand, that AdSense, Amazon Associates, and other similar programs are affiliates. However, for every one like this, there are thousands more that are promoting literally getting involved in selling only their product. The bottom line with most affiliate programs, is you are not so much selling a product as you are selling a program. This works much like multilevel marketing-you sell someone who sells to someone else. At some point, there is a saturation level although admittedly that saturation level must be very high, but the fact remains that in order to do this requires long, hard hours. This is probably not how you want to invest your time when you decide to work at home.There are hundreds of legitimate work at home websites, that offer you legitimate opportunities. I'm not suggesting to you that every job you find on the legitimate website is going to be legitimate. In fact, you will from time to time run into an unscrupulous buyer. Please understand they are the exception!
Although some freelance sites do charge fees, it is very simple to find out if those fees are worth paying. On the flip side of that, there are also several who do not charge fees. For those who are just getting started, I strongly recommend working with the no fee sites first. This will help establish you, and if you feel the need to branch out later, then you can investigate some of the paid sites.
Not every work at home opportunity that requires payment is a scam. However, avoid the programs that promise you the world, promise you unlimited income, and promise you that for only $9.95 you to can start your own business and make $1000 a day. While I cannot vouch for the validity, this blog "Work at Home No Scams" does seem to have a significant list of opportunities that do work.
The Work-at-Home Success Bible: A Complete Guide for Women:
Undress for Success: The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home
