Working From Home
It’s the dream -
work from home. Wake up in
the morning, work a few hours from your laptop in the kitchen,
then call it a day. However, you’ve all heard the horror
stories; scams where people were stuffing envelopes for $.01 per
letter. Make
millions of dollars with vending machines or ATMs.
You've all seen them, get rich schemes that promise to
make millions in real estate. Buy the house for $100K and
flip it for $200K, right? While some people do make a decent
living doing these jobs, the majority do not. If making
millions of dollars was as easy as you see in a 2am infomercial, everyone would do it. So what are
the viable options
when it comes to working
from home?
First,
we
recommend not quitting your day job. Start by
doing a few work at home options to test an opportunity. Once you are
making a decent income on the side, you then have the option to
devote more time to your part-time work and make it a full time
gig. That said, before moving to full time a work-at-home
job; also
consider things like health benefits, large fluctuations in your
monthly income and
self employment taxes - to name a few. These items will cost additional out-of-pocket expenses and time. If these opportunity costs are
outweighed by the potential income, it's time to take the
leap.
When thinking
about what you could do from home, first focus on your skill set.
By leveraging the skills you already possess, you can find great
opportunities that will allow you to continue doing what you
enjoy (assuming you like what you do). As an example, if you enjoy writing, consider becoming a
freelance writer or copy editor. A mechanic, work on
cultivating your own client base. Lawyer, consult on the
side for a fee for legal issues.
When considering a work-at-home job, do not forget to take your hobbies
and interests into consideration. You
may hate your day job; however enjoy taking photographs on the
weekends. This skill could be leveraged into part-time wedding
photography. How, you ask? Start by working with
friends and family. Offer to be the main or secondary
photographer at a family or friends wedding. This is a great option to get your foot in
the door, and will help you create a portfolio of work to use as examples. In
addition, this will give you job references to use for future
work. As another example for an interest in photography, you can sell the photos you
take - of any medium. Interested, visit
get paid to submit your photos.
The easiest part time job we’ve
found is online surveys and focus groups These are
companies, such as IBM, needing insight into a product or TV
commercial before making it main stream. Though market
research, they insure an advertisement or product is ready to
take to the general public before investing the money. If
you live in a larger city, you may have already participated in
such a study. Before the internet, it was hard to do these
jobs given
travel costs and additional time it took to get to and from the
location of the focus groups. However, now companies are
now doing online surveys and focus groups. Also,
with the internet, the door
has been opened for jobs such as
selling
items on eBay. eBay? You’d be surprised how many
people now do this as a full time job. It could be selling
items you make yourself, reselling items you find at garage
sales, or drop shipping items directly from the
product manufacturer.
The point of the above is, you don't have to
stuff envelopes, and the number of legit work-at-home jobs are
endless. As a personal example, my work-at-home/part time
job/hobby is stock trading / day trading. You may consider the
stock market and
trading
stocks online from home on your laptop (a great link for
people considering this). That said, being a
day trader can be stressful, please factor this in when
considering the job as an option - it takes guts and a fair
amount or company research to make money.
Just for fun, this next one may sound crazy... Need a
car; how about agreeing to put advertising on your vehicle and get paid?
You've seen marketing on the side of taxi cabs (in New York,
Chicago, San Francisco, etc). If you want, you can
also get paid
to put similar ads on your car, and drive
a car with advertising to promote a product. While
it's not going to make you enough money to quit your day job, it can
subsidize the high cost of gas and help with your monthly car
payment. Also consider, they put a GPS in the car to
insure you've driven the proper miles to "promote their
product". If you're OK with this, why not?
In ending, pick something you're
passionate about when pursuing at-home-work.
Working from home brings freedom, however you must choose
something you enjoy. Do not get caught up in scams. To protect yourself, review
the scams at the
Federal
Trade Commission and the
Better
Business Bureau. If you're looking into an opportunity
promising millions per month, take the opportunity for what its
worth. Stuffing envelopes for $.01 per piece is
not worth the time, but attending an online focus group during
your lunch hour for $100 is time well spent. If the job
promises an outrageous income or a free car, then it’s probably
a scam. If you do fall victim to a work at home scam, you
should report it
to the FTC.
Thanks for stopping by, and please view our article on:
Is Working
From Home Right For Me?
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