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WORK FROM HOME ONLINE
Working from home doesn’t have to be a dream. It’s a dream you can turn into a reality. It can be really hard to separate the real work from home opportunities from the scams, so here is the work done for you. Whether you want to work for one company, become a freelancer, or start your own business. Here are some of the legitimate job opportunities.
1. Translator
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most translators do their work at home, and often under tight deadlines. Although some need a bachelor’s degree, the most important requirement for translators is, of course, fluency in at least two languages.
2. Freelance Writer
More than ever, writers are needed to formulate news articles, create content, and come up with the creative ideas that fill the pages of nearly every site on the Internet. And although many bigger sites have in-house writers, a growing number of sites outsource their content and hire freelance writers and content creators.
3. Call center representative
When you phone to order something from a catalog or infomercial, a big office with rows of cubicles may come to mind. But the person on the other end of the line is likely to be sitting in a home office. It’s a huge and growing industry, Durst says of companies that hire independent contractors to take calls from home. She says the home-shore movement, started in response to complaints about the many companies that looked offshore for workers.
4. Content Writer
Companies often don’t have the staff to create content for their websites, so they outsource the job to freelancers. With new sites springing up every day, writers are in huge demand.
5. Travel agent
Scams abound in the travel industry, particularly organizations that charge for information on how to break into the field. But operating a home-based travel agency can be an excellent business, says Tom Ogg, founder of Home Based Travel Agent website. Real home-based travel agents have experienced robust growth over the last decade, and there are probably 40,000-plus of them and growing.
6. Online Reseller
You can earn large sums of money selling items online by reaching out to people who want to get rid of their stuff but are too busy to do it themselves.
7. Affliliate Blogger
If you have a blog that attracts numerous visitors, many companies will pay you or give you merchandise to run advertisements that link to their websites.
8. Data Entry
A wide range of businesses need workers to enter various data into their systems, whether that data are used to track inventory or shipments, create business plans, or measure performance or output. And since a computer and typing skills are the most important requirements for this job, many data entry workers are able to work at home, and on a schedule that fits their lives.
Healthcare Transcriptionist
Although many medical transcriptionists work for hospitals or physician’s offices, most are able to work at home, and at a time or place of their choosing. Since their tasks involve transcribing recorded medical dictation, a computer, desk, and earpiece are generally the only requirements after completing a postsecondary healthcare transcriptionist program.
It’s hard to distinguish legitimate work-at-home programs from people who are just out to get your money, says Sheila Atkins, associate director of public affairs for the Council of Better Business Bureaus in Arlington, Virginia. With that caveat in mind, use the following tips to steer around the hazards of finding work-at-home employment.
Top Scam-Ridden Occupations
Other lines of at-home employment deserve a higher level of skepticism. It pays to examine the economics of the work you’re being asked to do. Here are four of the top scam-ridden occupations –
1. Envelope Stuffing: This is a classic example of a business that may not be for real. If you were the employer, why would you pay someone 1 dollars or more to stuff an envelope when you could job out the task to a mailing house for pennies apiece.
2. At-Home Assembly Work: This is also highly suspicious. If these companies were legit, why wouldn’t they be using offshore labor at a fraction of the cost?
3. Medical Billing or Claims Processing: Very few medical professionals will let just anyone handle private healthcare info, says Atkins, especially with new healthcare privacy rules in effect. Most doctors will not outsource billing services to individuals, but rather to large, established companies whose workers are trained and employed on site.
4. Refund-Recovery Business: In this work-at-home scheme, the scammers offer to sell you software to track late and lost UPS and FedEx packages and assist the shippers’ customers in obtaining refunds. The shippers say these refund-recovery schemes are bogus.
In general, beware of work-at-home employers who ask for your money up front. Legitimate employers pay you, not the other way around. Working from home is fabulous, it gives you the ability to be flexible, climb a mountain before lunch, sleep in, live in a cabin, work at 2 am in your pjs, or take holidays when you want if –
a. you are the kind of person who is highly driven and task oriented, did you ever fail to finish a distance ed course, then this isn’t for you!
b. you don’t mind not being face to face with the people you work with or for
c. you are good at finding lots of stimulation for yourself to keep your creativity flowing. In fact, working from home can be so good that you may well rather be your own boss than beg for employment from someone else, but that leads to another if only if you know how to find contracts to keep you working and paid at the level you want.
