# Legitimate Work at Home online Jobs?



## gibor365

Lately i noticed a lot of ads offering Work at Home online (data entry, surveys etc). Most likely majority of those jobs are scam.... anybody knows any legitimate Work at Home online websites?


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## brad

As someone who has worked at home since 1994 (with a one-year break around 1999 when I rented an office because I felt too isolated), I think your best approach is to think about the types of jobs that could be done mostly or entirely at home and apply for those, rather than looking for sites that advertise jobs specifically because they can be done from home. In my experience, as you point out, most "work from home" sites and advertisements are likely to be scams of one sort or another.

A better approach is to think about what kind of work can be done at home. I started working at home when I was a journalist, and my current work involves writing, editing, website development and management, and project management. All of those can be done at home provided the employer is open to the idea and the specifics of the tasks allow it. I had to pass up one dream job because the employer really felt that I would need to be on site, and as I discussed the job with him I came to the same conclusion.

Another approach (which is actually what I did) is to start by working in the office, and then after you've been there for a couple of years and proved your worth, ask your boss if you can work at home -- even for part of the week. In my case, I would drive 35-70 minutes (depending on how bad the traffic was) to my company's headquarters, walk to a cubicle, and spend all day there working with minimal interaction with my colleagues. After a while I wondered what's the point, and I asked my boss if I could work at home. She said yes, and then I said, "can home be anywhere?" She said "anywhere within reason," meaning that she wanted me to be close enough to be able to attend monthly staff meetings, but that was it.


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## Liquid Independence

There are many legitimate jobs you can do online. Some of them pay you through paypal, others send you cheques or gift cards. I heard Amazon's mechanical turk is a good option. Unfortunately I find that a lot of US based online jobs are not permitted for Canadians. 

Reviewopedia has a list of reputable online jobs sites, from micro jobs to paid surveys. 
http://reviewopedia.com/workathome/7-ways-to-make-money-online/

Although it's possible to make a living from online income it won't be easy. Don't be discouraged if you only manage to make a couple dollars a day in the beginning.

_______________
My Journey to Freedom


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## cdnpennystocks

I work from home working on websites, I "make money online" and will be the first to tell you there are A LOT of scams out there, but it is possible

The easiest way to work from home is to start your own business, or buy one that someone is selling and is a work from home business. 

If you are handy with computers you could try starting your own website, this is what I did about 5 years ago, and it took about 4 years before I could quit my job and work from home. (the best time to start is yesterday  )

There are a lot of resources and blogs out there about making money with websites, but like I said before, try not to get suckered into buying all kinds of e-books as most of the good information has been written about on blogs for free. 

It took me 3 years of casually building sites, and 1 year of REALLY trying to make money online before I quit my job. I learned everything for free by printing off articles from blogs and websites that talked about how to do it. 

Here are the top ways to make money online, from home

Sell your own products
Sell an informational product (how to e-books, guides, etc)
Sell someone elses products (you make money as an affiliate and get about 2-20% commission depending on the site / program)
Advertising on your website - the most popular is google adsense


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## freshsavings

Stuff like online surveys pay out very little. And if you're starting from scratch and looking to launch a brand new website in hopes of cashing in big on online ads, just know it'll take months if not years to get anything worthwhile coming in.

Simple things you can start with include doing some freelance writing. Sites like About.com pay new contributers $500 month for a minimum of 12 articles a month. After a year or 2, they'll review your status and you can negotiate a higher fee.

You can also submit articles to a number of other sites such as Suite 101, but their payment structure is a bit different. You earn a cut of the ad dollars.

You can't live off this amount of money, but you can use it to supplement your current salary.


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## marina628

Affiliates sites are the most profitable online ,checkout commission junction to see what sort of money programs will pay for each niche .Then hopefully you will find something that is interesting you ,then set up a website and start blogging


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## Homerhomer

gibor said:


> Lately i noticed a lot of ads offering Work at Home online (data entry, surveys etc). Most likely majority of those jobs are scam.... anybody knows any legitimate Work at Home online websites?


My question to you would be what are your skills? or even what are your hobbies.

Sometimes you can turn them into a good profit (depending on your skills and talents).

For example if you are a photographer, graphic designer, videographer you can sign up with online stock agencies who will sell your products on your behalf. Mind you it requires alot of effort to make decent money, and it probably is best for anyone from a country where a cost of living is much cheaper than here, but it can be done. I know few poeple who bring in over 100K a year from that, but you have to be very good. I did that myself but since my talents are limited I stopped doing it few years ago, yet the money still continue to trickle in from the sales I get.

You can also make money on youtube, not sure how exactly it works but I am guessing it depends on how many hits your upload gets, a family member (he is 19 or so) makes about $300 per month from it, not sure how much effort he puts into it though.


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## m3s

I recently found an interesting business ran out of a home. He basically responds to products people want in certain forums and machines simple titanium tools. He posts on a blog when they are ready and sells first come first serve. People will pay the outrageous price I'm not sure because nobody else makes this stuff or the uniquness. He sells out a batch almost instantly for thousands

I find most businesses today are out of tune with customers. The ones on the forums are quickly improving their products. This guy takes it a step further

http://atwoodknives.blogspot.com/


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## freshjiive

It really depends on what you're interested in. I know several call centres that have work at home opportunities 
Rogers, and Transcom North America being 2 of them. 
They are both inbound call centres
I used to work for Transcom so I know it;s legit and I know a few people who have done the same for rogers 

Also, if you have any certain skills (writing, translation, web development underwriting research etc etc etc
There are websites like eLance and oDesk that connect work at home people with employers.
I currently do some work on the side for oDesk for a bit of extra money. 

Hope this helps and if you have any questions please let me know


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## jamesbe

Whoa oDesk looks good! Wife is been looking for work for 3 years, looks like she could do this.


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## freshjiive

Hi James
Yes it can be a great way to earn some extra money. Please let her know if she is interested and signs up that it can be a little challenging to get your first job but once she gets a few under her belt and gets a good rating from the employers offers will come in quite often. I had 2 alone today 
If she does end up signing up and has any questions send me a PM and I will try my best to help her


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## jamesbe

Thanks, it looks like there are a lot of low paying grunt work data entry things tat pay very little but would be a good starting point to get references


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## freshjiive

Yes there are thousands
Best bet generally is to find a job looking to hire someone in North America and that's when you can get a good wage. Also let her know if she does sign up to take the tests as the results are shown on her personal page and employers like to see fluent english speakers and people good with customer service.


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## andrewf

freshjiive said:


> Hi James
> Yes it can be a great way to earn some extra money. Please let her know if she is interested and signs up that it can be a little challenging to get your first job but once she gets a few under her belt and gets a good rating from the employers offers will come in quite often. I had 2 alone today
> If she does end up signing up and has any questions send me a PM and I will try my best to help her


I was looking at odesk a little while ago. What areas of that site offer the best opportunities?


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## freshjiive

There are several.
Customer service is a big one, outbound dialing for leads.
There are is a lot of technical jobs (web development, joomla, wordpress)
Mobile phone app development
Then there are random jobs that the employers just don't want to do themselves . I did one over the summer where I looked for mobile homes for sale within a 100m radius of Washington DC so the employer could buy them and flip them. Was paid a good bit for that. I like it because there are so many different job opportunities and it's flexible. You can find 1 job and work it for 40 or 50 hours a week or find a few that add up to the hours you want to work.


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## marina628

I know many guys working at fiverr.com making an average of $20 per hour doing small writing assignments.This is great for people with extra time and definitely a legit site and some very big corporations use this service.If you are looking for something like this ,that would be my first place to look.4 posts @ $5.00 each add up.


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## Beaver101

^ Thanks marina628, didn't know that ... beats blogging for free.


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## robertsmith

I am a homemaker and also doing work at home through setupandgrow website.Its simple to earn income at home through online jobs.I opt for this website as i want to become selfdependent.So You also Click here[url] and work according to your choice. There are so many options available in the website.

Thanks

Robert


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## reviloelyk

*Here is a job that you actually make money from, online, with no fees down!*

FOLLOW THIS LINK -----> http://www.earnparttimejobs.com/index.php?id=5331259 <-----------


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## basheerksk

Hello James...

There are many jobs that you can do on internet in order to get money as a reward. Most of them are easy to do while few are tough, you need to be skilled in. Some such as surveys, ad clicking can be done easily but are not good in money making. That's why start a job for long journey which may take some long time to get start earning money but the money will be huge if you done it in their right way. For more details and ideas that how to start and what to start, read this blog (www.collegestudentsjobs.com). I've read this blog and found it helpful. Hope it help you too...

Thanks


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## indexxx

Take a course in technical writing, lots of good paying work.

I do part-time voiceover work from home.


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## joncnca

i'm about to be judgmental for a moment, but i hope no one takes any personal offense to it, i'm just floating a thought around for the amusement of all.

crowd-sourced work is causing me growing concern, including services like uber, airBnB and other unregulated businesses (i know there are arguments that support their legitimacy, let's not get into it), where there is poor oversight and lack of necessary control over health and safety, quality, fair competition, and protection from abuse. these kinds of systems also hurt the overall economy, starve communities of tax revenues that support public services, and reduce the the standard of employment for everyone so that a handful of individual corporations make ungodly amounts of money without making any proportional contribution to society. yeah there are arguments that favour these systems, but i think the cons will outweigh the pros in the long run.

specifically in relation to fivrr and odesk (and i just scanned this thread and browsed those websites quickly), i really hope that anyone who wants to pursue "freelance" writing tries to get good at it and to take pride in his/her own work. i'm all for people using their skills, even working odd projects to make some extra money cause i know it's not easy these days for this whole generation. but have you read some of the crap that gets posted online? it makes me feel like this trend toward crowd-sourcing and freelance work is contributing to a huge decline in technical literacy standards and content quality as people simply regurgitate trivia without investigating or synthesizing any original ideas.

and that some companies are turning to these types of services is even more appalling from a societal perspective, because it sounds to me like they're trying to avoid paying people a stable wage, benefits, CPP, EI, etc. while keeping profit and executive bonuses high. companies can do a lot of good, and they serve a useful purpose in society, but let's not kid ourselves; their primary goal is to make profits, and not to provide good work, contribute to literacy, address social problems, or undertake any other enterprises for the "public good" no matter what they claim.

i hope everyone who seeks it, finds good legitimate work-at-home online jobs. but there are deeper issues that i find troubling and i'm sure i'm not alone.


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## james4beach

gibor said:


> Lately i noticed a lot of ads offering Work at Home online (data entry, surveys etc). Most likely majority of those jobs are scam.... anybody knows any legitimate Work at Home online websites?


gibor, you are not the only person who noticed. I work in the digital security field and we deal with various things including spams and fraud. Yes there is definitely a LOT of "make lots of money from home" advertising being posted. Almost all of it has the characteristics of spam... it does not look legitimate.

There certainly are legitimate jobs you can do online. But ads you see posted in Craigslist, Kijiji, message forums on web sites are probably scams. I ran my own online business in the past. But I certainly didn't recruit people by posting spam in message forums.

I believe many of them are scams. *At least some of them relate to tax refund fraud* and other kinds of money mule / laundering activities. In the case of the tax refund scam, regular people like university students are recruited to do some simple steps which are ultimately used in identity theft and fraudulent tax/financial transactions. The true nature of the activities can be concealed from the workers well enough that a (non-critical) person may not realize they are assisting a scam.

The person (the mule) then receives payments as part of their online "job" and pays a portion back to the boss (the scammer). Thus they are money laundering and covering up tracks from law enforcement. Lots of money is being stolen from the IRS like this and apparently fake tax filings / refund fraud is an epidimic in the US.

Here's one example, link to article. Look at the section titled Money Muling. Excerpt:



> For starters, the woman who owned the bank account that received his phony refund — a student at a local Pennsylvania university — said she got the transfer after responding to a Craigslist ad for a moneymaking opportunity.
> ...
> Kasper said the detective learned that money was deposited into her account, and that she sent the money out to locations in Nigeria via Western Union wire transfer, keeping some as a profit, and apparently never suspecting that she might be doing something illegal.


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## PerfectElement

If you have a skill that doesn't require your physical presence in an office, then it's relatively easy to work from home. I'm a software developer and I've been working from home for many years, making between $50 to $100 per hour. It's becoming more common to have companies that don't even have a physical office (at least in the tech world). 

I would stay away from anything that sounds too good to be true or doesn't require a special skill that takes years to build. These will either be scams or markets that are extremely saturated, forcing you to fight for scraps.


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## AirPro

m3s said:


> I recently found an interesting business ran out of a home. He basically responds to products people want in certain forums and machines simple titanium tools. He posts on a blog when they are ready and sells first come first serve. People will pay the outrageous price I'm not sure because nobody else makes this stuff or the uniquness. He sells out a batch almost instantly for thousands
> 
> I find most businesses today are out of tune with customers. The ones on the forums are quickly improving their products. This guy takes it a step further
> 
> http://atwoodknives.blogspot.com/


I think you're talking about the hobby and leisure market here. Yes, people are prepared to spend surprising amounts of money on their pastimes. Having the skills, tools and know how to tap into these markets can be financially very rewarding. Of course, it also helps if you are involved in these pastimes yourself as it helps you understand the requirements better. The problem is such products and services can be very faddy and rapidly become "old" so you need to recognize this and know when to move on.


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