How To Identify Home Job Scams

March 8th, 2010

Finding a good home based job that would suit your personality is not all that simple Added to that is the increase in fake home job offers.  Many of the home based jobs offered on the Internet are actually scams.  This articles aims at providing you with guidelines for identifying home job scams.  Following are some warning signs which would help you to identify home job scams.

You need to pay a fee to join

The online businesses which ask you for money are almost always scams.  There is no company which is genuine  that will need you to pay them with a weekly, a monthly, a yearly  or even a one time fee.

Also there will be some companies that will ask you to buy products or manuals before working.  If that’s the case, research well about the company before paying even a penny to them.

They claim to make you rich in hardly any  time

If you are being paid hundreds of dollars per day or for that matter even a week for working just a couple of hours a day, then it will almost always be a scam.  Understand that only very few highly specialized people make that kind of money.

Vague job description

If the Internet job promises to give you loads of money without telling you what your job requires you to do, it’s in all probability a scam made to lure a large number of people.  So, even if there are lots of quotes of satisfied employees, just avoid it.

They need only your email address

Many online job sites may have vague descriptions like “required part time receptionist” and only your email address is needed.  Although some of these sites may actually be valid, most of them are just requiring your address to send you spam.

Direct Deposit is the only way they pay

If the company refuses to compensate  you in any other way except direct deposit then it might be a scam to get information to remove your savings.  Be aware that in most states its compulsory by law for the employer to provide with an option of payment by business check unless it is a government organization.

Unsolicited emails from company wanting to hire without experience

If you get emails from companies wanting to hire you and offering money, even when you don’t have any experience or skills, just trash it.  They will be many such emails which might even sound legitimate and be personalized as well.

The advertisement sound like a sales pitch

Read the advertisement carefully, it is easy to tell from the way that they are written whether the company is authentic or not.  Work at home advertisements that are legitimate do not sound like sales pitches.  They are forth right and give you exact and relevant information about the nature of your work.  You should not need to endlessly click for information and ending up with none that is relevant.

Double check the testimonials given as personal reference.

A sure sign to know that a company  is scamming  is that there is no way to contact the people giving personal testimonials.  Remember that you have all the rights to double check the company as you do not want to join them and realize it was all a scam.

Save yourself the trouble of getting stuck with home based job scams by following the above guidelines. Remember, if it seems too good to be true then it probably is!

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Make money as a blogger

February 16th, 2010

Bloggers are not just hobbyists but entrepreneurs in the true sense of the term- they seek work at home job opportunities in areas that don’t have a lot of competition and gain a significant number of readers they can engage with meaningful content.  There are a million topics to blog about.  Everything under the sun can be blogged about – the trick lies in monetizing the blog so that the readers (eventually) pay you for your services.

Some of the ways bloggers earn money by are:

Affiliate Marketing –  Most blogs revolve around certain topics and there are a lot of products out there that do a great job at what you talk about.  So if you put these two things together –you will get paid if you include a pitch to the product and send customers to the products manufacturer.  You will not have to manage payments or shipping of the product to the customer – that will be taken care of by the manufacturer – you have to send people to buy that product and wait for your payment to show up.  Affiliate commissions can range anywhere from 4% to 50% of the value of the product.

Advertisements – Most brands will realize the potential of targeting readers of your blog and will pay you handsomely to display either banner advertisements or text ads which appear inconspicuous to the reader.  You can earn anywhere from $500 to several thousands of American dollars by showing advertisements.  You will have to build a considerable base of subscribers before you approach advertisers though.

Adsense and link advertisements – Google and Yahoo will pay you to put contextual ads on you blog.  More correctly you will be a paid a fraction of the revenue that the search engines make if people click on the links in these ads.  The amount turns out to be pennies per click but it adds up considerably like drops in the ocean.

Collect Donations – If you feel that your audience will feel alienated when you put up advertisements or try to sell products through the blog you may ask for people to donate money to you thorough the blog.

Market your abilities – When you have a website full of articles that show off your knowledge over a topic people tend to believe what you say.  You can use this for your benefit by simply informing clients that you are available to work for them.
Bloggers have a lot of resources to take it to the next level and turn your blog into a home based business making money.

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Stay at Home jobs for skilled moms

February 15th, 2010

Many lucrative work at home jobs available for educated and skilled moms and other people on the internet.  If you are one of those mothers who have high skills in technical fields then you should know that you don’t need to work in an office environment to earn money from your skills.  There are many home based jobs you can take up such as graphic designing and web development which can be done at home.  Following are some lucrative option that you should consider.

1.   Graphic Designing

If you are adept at Photoshop you could specialize in graphic designing.  In case you don’t much of programming you can choose to make money by simply submitting your layered .psd file.  This would be coded by some one else later.  It is even better if you are sdept at using  Macromedia Flash along with Photoshop.

You can find  many web designing  jobs at sites like Project4Hire.com, GoFreelance.com, and iFreelance.com.  You can place your portfolio on the sites for any of the jobs listed.  The job  poster or in other words  the service provider bids whichever he finds best for his job.

2.    Web Designing

There are so many businesses starting up which need to make their websites.  Also, there are many already established websites that need to expand or do a makeover of their existing sites.  If you have a sound knowledge of CSS and HTML, and some basic knowledge of Java and Java Script, you can choose to go into freelance web designing.  It requires you to have an eye for design and mixing of colors.  You can also choose to code of an already envisioned layout.

A web design job requires you to have your work portfolio available.  This will be required for clients to examine. In case you are not having any, you can enter some design contests on sites like design.com.  The prize money in online web design business is quite lucrative and you can also use the design in  your portfolio.  Jobs can be found at the above mentioned sites.

3.    Programming

Do not confuse programming with web designing.  Web designers use HTML and CSS to make their pages look as they want them to whereas a Programmer can make interactive programs on the web pages.

For those who do  know programming languages, programming jobs can be found in websites like Project4Hire.com, GoFreelance.com and iFreelance.com.

The above mentioned three are the most popular home based jobs for workers  who are skilled and can be done completely online.  If you have a degree in any technical field, you can put it up and use your expertise to freelance and make good money in these work at home jobs.

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Home Based Translation Jobs

February 14th, 2010

International companies which have no physical boundaries usually encounter language and cultural barriers.  If you know more than one language this is where you come in.  You can help companies reach customers, clients and prospects who are more comfortable using a foreign language.  There are thousands of genuine translation jobs available online.  Translation services may be given broadly in two different ways as a translator or an interpreter.

Translators have to work with written material.  Documents that need to be translated could be sales copies, news, technical manuals, legal agreements or contracts or memos, letters, catalogs.  The translation work might also be website related like content to display on a website or for keyword optimization.  The clients will give you a material to be translated. Once it has been translated it will be returned to the client who in turn will finally give it to the customer or end user.   Since only written material is used companies which provide translating services have a lot of telecommuting employees.  These employees enjoy the benefits of working from home and steady stream of income.

Usually documents are given to a translators with a set fee per x words and a set deadline.  This enables you to set your own working hours within a day as long as you deliver within the stipulated time.  Revenue is also directly linked to amount to work done which means that you alone are responsible for setting your potential income.

Interpreters have to work with the spoken word.  This could involve sitting in on conference calls between two people who are not able to speak the same language.  The conversation will be translated on the fly by the interpreter.  There are many virtual call centers where the employees work from the comforts of their own home and perform this job.

Some companies also employ cultural consultants to help them engage their customers better.  These cultural consultants help their clients overcome cultural differences when they are dealing with different cultural backgrounds as well as translate material that their clients to use.

Using a second language that you already know you can earn a good living working from home and help people rise above cross cultural barriers. Work at home translation jobs are ideal for moms who are profieicient in foreign languages.

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Online Business – Web Developer

February 10th, 2010

Everyone is starting to see the potential of being on the Internet.  The ease with which brand positioning can be done on the internet can’t be surpassed by traditional media.  Everyone wants to be on the Internet but most don’t want to spend the time and resources needed to setup their website.  That’s where a web developer steps in. There are many opportunities for work at home jobs in the web design field.

A web developer’s job primarily consists of bringing the clients vision of his website on to the internet.  This requires not just technical skills for website creation but a little bit of interpersonal skill as well.  Most of the clients are not familiar with what is possible and not possible on the internet so a web developer needs to be able to educate a client as well.

The best part of the Internet is the free available of information.  Most of the technical skills required to be a web developer can be learnt right on the Internet.  A web developer’s job can be bifurcated into two sub types – Front end development and Back end development.

Front end development includes all that can be seen by a visitor on the website.  This includes converting a photoshop design of the website to HTML/CSS which a web browser can understand.  It also includes client side scripting for ‘effects’ that can be seen on the website using AJAX or javascript.  Most of the tools required for developing simple websites are freely available on the internet.  A lot of code that has been used by other web developers is put up online on numerous websites.  These can be reused by you to minimize the amount of effort that goes into making a fabulous website.

Back end development involves web server management, server side scripting technologies like PHP, ASP.NET and database development technologies like SQL.  This involves some programming skill that once again can be gotten right off the internet.  A lot of material is available to learn these technologies for free on tutorial and community websites.

There are a lot of benefits for being able to manage development of websites.

  1. Being your own boss means that you have the flexibility of deciding whether you want to work on a certain project or not.
  2. You get to set your own income depending on what you think your own potential is.
  3. The internet is international – this opens up the whole world for getting customers and business.
  4. You could operate this business from home – all that is needed is a sufficiently fast internet connection, a computer and the skill to grab and deliver projects. Most of these are considered essentials in any home – so the investment needed for this business is very low.
  5. You can work for multiple employers at the same time doubling or tripling your income. There are a lot of online job portals providing contract work.
  6. There is a certain benefit in being able to set your own working hours – and it also means that you can go on vacations when you want.
  7. You could work from wherever you want.

There is a huge demand for web developers and it can be a great career with lucrative benefits for those who have the skills and experience.  This is a good home business opportunity for skilled moms.

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