Work at Home Online

Can You Really Work at Home Online?

Kitchen-table crafts is a classic scam. You pay a small "application processing" fee, perhaps two dollars, just to prove that you're serious about working from home. Actually, it's a gullibility test; if you will part with two bucks then you will part with serious money. Sure enough, you're gradually paying $50 for training; $200 for a "starter kit," and postage to mail your Lil Darlin' Angel Pins to the company that is supposed to pay you for them. You can make $500 a week assembling Angel Pins at home, they say.

Only you never make them well enough; your pins are rejected by "quality control" and you don't get paid. You never see the "deficient" pins again; they end up on people's lapels and baseball caps.

"Big demand for medical billing specialists to work at home online," say other ads in the work-at-home magazines, online forums, and Craigslist. Some people have spent $5,000 or more on training, only to find that their "medical billing specialist" certificates are not worth printing and stapling to their resume's.

Surprise charges to your credit card may await you if you sign up for a "free trial" of a work at home online scam. Buried deeply in the online agreement with such firms, there is often a clause authorizing a charge of $50 or more to your credit card after a trial period expires, unless you remember to cancel before the deadline. The link to the Web page where you can cancel is often obscured, and the cancellation process is discouragingly complicated. You may even have to call the company and sit on "terminal hold" to cancel - on your dime, of course.

An Instant Online Business?

There are plenty of companies that offer to set you up with your own online business, with the promise of making big money. Some of them are just online recruiting tools for multi-level marketing companies such as Amway or HerbaLife. Others, such as Internet Speedway, will help you create your own online mall, where you can earn commissions for the sales that you refer. These work-at-home businesses are not necessarily scams, but the likelihood that you will make any significant money with them is slim -- unless you are very outgoing, determined, and you have a knack for creative marketing.

Selling Google Ads and marketing other people's products or services via social media tools like Twitter and Facebook are increasingly popular scams these days. The fact is, you won't make more than a McDonald's Happy Meal's worth of money per month with these schemes, unless you stick with them and slowly grow your business over several years. It is much more likely that you will lose all of your online friends and your social media accounts, as people will report and block you for spamming them.

To work at home online successfully takes genuine, long, hard work. It's not done in a week with just one hour a day. Make something useful or beautiful, and sell it on eBay, Etsy, or your own Web store. Do freelance artwork, computer programming or writing. Create digital products that help people earn or save money, or cheer them up with the gift of laughter; these are examples of the types of online articles for which people will pay these days. Sites such as Clickbank, eLance, Rent-A-Coder, and Guru.com can help you sell digital downloads, or connect with others who are looking for freelance workers.

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