If you are thinking about jumping back into the workforce and making money from home instead of going into an office; then there are some things you should know before you decide.
A survey by the Flex+Strategy Group reports that almost one third of U.S. employees now have access to working from home programs. Either part-time or full-time “telecommuting” positions such as: Human Resource Manager, Computer Systems Analyst, Civil Engineer, Actuary or Risk Analyst, Systems Administrator, Data Scientist, Management Consultant, Software Support Engineer, Computer Programmer or Statistician. Obviously you must have the skills and experience to qualify for one of these opportunities.
There are other creditable work from home opportunities such as the ones reported by MSN News: www.alpineacces.com, www.arise.com, www.liveops.com and www.westathome.com. However, there is a catch; you are required to have a personal room that you can make like an office setting, a computer with Internet connect (NOT WIFI), a home landline phone separate from you home line or if you use your home line you cannot have call waiting. You may not have any background noise like children, pets, TV etc. or they will terminate your agreement.
There are a lot of work-at-home offers that are not very desirable or are just outright scams!
I’ll quote a report by Wikipedia on examples of types of work that I thought about, laughed about and promptly forgot about!
“Types of work. (Wikipedia ) Common types of work found in work-at-home schemes include:
Stuffing envelopes => Assembly of items of some type, such as crafts, jewelry or medical equipment. The worker is required to pay up front for materials and construction kits, and when they attempt to sell the finished products back to the scheme’s organizer, they are told that the products “don’t meet our specifications”, leaving the worker with assembled products and no buyer.
Data entry => Processing medical claims. The worker pays several hundred dollars for medical billing software, but will later discover that most medical clinics process their own bills, outsource their billing to established firms rather than individuals, or have stricter requirements than the purchased software can provide.
Forum spamming => Usually advertised as some variant of “email processing”, the worker is simply given instructions on spamming online forums, and told they can make money by selling these same instructions online.
Making phone calls => Phone sex; Fortune telling; Online surveys.
Sales of a product or service that is difficult or impossible to sell. => This is often done in the form of a pyramid scheme.
Some ads claim to offer a device that makes passive sales calls, and the “employee” will be paid a commission of the sales.
Operating an online website on behalf of the scammer => (who in turn is paid to set it up), reselling various generic “merchandise” provided by the scammer who then ships to the customer. No mention is made as to why the scammer doesn’t simply run the website themselves.
Some ads offer legitimate forms of work that really do exist, but exaggerate the salary and understate the effort that will have to be put into the job, or the exaggerate amount of work that will be available. Many such ads do not even specify the type of work that will be performed.
Some similar schemes do not advertise work that would be performed at home, but may instead offer occasional, sporadic work away from home for large payments, paired with a lot of free time. Some common offers fitting this description are:
Acting – Seeking extras to perform in movies and television commercials.
Mystery shopping, which offers “Getting paid to shop and dine”. While mystery shopping actually does exist, it requires hard work, is paid close to minimum wage, and most importantly, does not require an up-front fee to join.”
Not every thing is negative in the online business but you must be careful. I finally decided to follow the successful people in the business and “go back to school” and Wealthy Affiliate was my choice.
That’s some of the Good, Bad and Ugly in the work-at-home business I personalty discovered. Tell us about your impressions or experiences to help others by leaving a comment below.
Thanks for stopping by 🙂
I decided to follow the successful people in the “Work from Home” business and “went back to school” to copy their success and make money at the same time! Wealthy Affiliate was my choice. It’s the only program I recommend. My Dream is now a Money Making Machine. Click Here toTake the Test Drive now for free!
Hi William. Interesting post you’ve written here making us aware of some of the hard facts about working from home.
You suggested home business opportunity through the Wealthy Affiliate platform sure sounds like a much more enticing idea than the others you mention. Spamming forums, stuffing envelopes etc.
How long have you been with Wealthy Affiliate and how has it all been going for you?
Thank you Darren, I have been Learning to work from home with Wealthy Affiliate Hosting and Training for over a year now. The Fresh training classes and inexpensive web site hosting is the best value I’ve ever found. I now have 10 sites hosted there and they are doing amazing! 🙂
William
The hardest fact that was hidden from me as a newbie was the sheer workload I was going to face – people think working from home successfully is all coffee and slippers…it ain’t!
I run 5 websites for a living and some nights I don’t get to bed before 2 in the a.m/ – it’s not the life people think it is…. in most cases it is harder than a nine to five! 🙂
Hi William
Great post here. So many people want to work from home, unfortunately most of what they find online is scams and time wasters.
I think it really is essential to know what to look out for when it comes to scams.
Finding a real and legit way to learn about having an online business is really not easy. I know I’ve tried!
I just have to second you, Wealthy Affiliate is the best that I have come across.
Thanks Lynne, I’ve tried a lot of stuff but until I studied the course at Wealthy Affiliate, I didn’t know how it worked. I’m so happy I found it. William 🙂
It’s sad to say but I’ve almost fallen into one of these traps before in my early days of trying to make money online. Luckily I didn’t spend too much before realizing what was going on. Then I found Wealthy Affiliate! It’s an awesome site for someone new to affiliate marketing and is a more legitimate way of making money online than most things will tell you online!
Hello
l like the way you have opened the facts of working at home business, many people decide to go online to make money, but they do not realize it is a hard work and soon give up.
Lol,l did not know forum spamming is considered a work from home to earn money.
There are many legitimate ways to make passive income from home but as said above, people lack patience, coaching and guidance then soon give up.
Thanks for a very honest informative post
Thank you very much for you comment!
In order to work from home successfully, it is just like everything else, “you get out what you put in”. That’s why I invite anyone who wants to set up or improve their online business to get the facts and learn how to do it. I am inviting anyone to begin their education for free at http://www.wealthyaffiliate.com/a_aid/b90cd92f
William 🙂
So many people are desperate for money or to leave a horrid, low paying job or for a thousand other reasons. The key word here is “desperate.”
The truth is, there are many, many legitimate ways to make money from home, but if someone is desperate they will probably fall for some scam before they learn what it really takes to work from home.
Before someone can honestly work from home and make money at it, they have to commit to building a business and not just chase after some so-called “opportunity.”
A real business is based on integrity and proven business principles like creating value for the customer. Just like is taught in Mr. Burton’s Free Online Training Center.
I couldn’t agree with you more Mr Horton! Knowledge is KING. I read so many comments from successful online marketers at Wealthy Affiliate about how the learning process insured their income. Thanks for your thoughtful comment. William 🙂
wow there are actually aw lot of quality ideas there, I know acting for extra and etc. can really add up with cashh pretty quick! Ithink even an out of bound sales job could do the trick too, more respectable as well then phone sex LOL! Also, does forum spamming even work anymore?
Thank you for your comment. I’m pretty sure forum spamming is not very useful. That being said, if you are providing useful information on your niche in the forum then its not spamming. William :0
Hey, William!
I just wanted to pop by and check out your site.
I’ve tried several other affiliate programs in the past (mainly MLM) and am very happy that I found Wealthy Affiliate. The amount of training available is staggering, the community is awesome and I love that it has no upsells.
Anyway, I look forwards to your success!