Online Jobs - Are They All Scams?

[schplurg]

A friend of mine would like to work from home. She has found countless online data entry jobs, among others, only to find out they all want you to pay up front. Scams, I'm sure.

When she finds such a job, I will Google the company name with the term "scam" included and find a myriad of pissed off people that have been suckered out of their $50 registration fee.

I often work from home as a graphics / web contractor, but that's not what I'm asking for. My friend doesn't have technical skills like I do, she just wants to make some money - possibly with her PC - while she's stuck at home.

So my question - are there any legitimate online jobs out there one can do at home? Has anyone here had any luck with this?

[drkitten]

A friend of mine would like to work from home. She has found countless online data entry jobs, among others, only to find out they all want you to pay up front. Scams, I'm sure.

So my question - are there any legitimate online jobs out there one can do at home? Has anyone here had any luck with this?

Yes, there are, but they're the sort of thing you have to hunt for. Heck, I've offered such jobs myself to people.

Rule of thumb : If it ever costs you money, it's not a job, but a scam.

[schplurg]

How about elance.com, contractedwork.com, etc? People are bidding on jobs. Is this the real deal? I'm researching it now and it looks good.

[drkitten]

How about elance.com, contractedwork.com, etc? People are bidding on jobs. Is this the real deal? I'm researching it now and it looks good.

I'm not directly familiar with either of those sites, but I've done some work through similar sites that I can't remember, and it seemed to work.

I've also seen some on-line tutoring sites that pay reasonably well for work-from-home (basically, sit there and IM some junior high student who doesn't remember how to do algebra or something).

[JoeEllison]

There is only one I know of for sure, and it is only open to people who live close enough to pick up and drop off work.

[danielk]

I'm a student with a part-time online job. The company is located in Munich and I'm in Berlin. A friend of mine works full-time for Canonical Ltd., the company behind the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/). In fact, most of their employees work remotely -- scattered all over the world. Apart from being qualified for the job, you need a broadband internet connection and should preferably live close to a European timezone. My friend is traveling around a lot though, but it sure is great that he can basically choose to live wherever he likes.

So, no, online jobs are definitely not all scams. I think online jobs are the future in many industries, even though they do pose some difficulties for discipline-challenged persons like me. But think of the huge benefits for families, for instance. Partnership is much easier if just one partner is not fixed in her or his workplace location.

Of course, the IT industry is perfectly suited to this model, but I believe there are a lot of non-physical jobs outside of IT as well.

[Leftus]

I've done some freelance writing gigs for essentially beer money. freelancewriting.com usually has some good leads and as others have mentioned, if you have to pay to do the work then it is a scam. All the fees for listing are paid for by the buyer. It's not going to make her rich but if she can string a sentence or two together, mind her grammar and run a spellcheck she can make a buck or two.

[Tamarillicent]

A while back, I was looking for an at home job. The only legit one I could seem to find was Medical Transcription. Depending on your background, you may need training either in medical terminology, or transcription to do the job but there are job out there. The problem then becomes finding a good program.
Otherwise, I've yet to find a job you can do from home from an ad online. I've found lots of websites that offer info on at home jobs if you'll just pay a few hundred dollars you can learn all about it! Yeah right.

[Solitaire]

If you want to really rake in piles of money try: Amazon Mechanical Turk. (http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome)

[BPSCG]

Saw this in the Washington Post magazine last weekend (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/magazine/making-it/120207.html). Start-up costs about $2,700, but she's working from home, apparently mostly on her computer.


The longtime administrative professional thought hard about leaving her pleasant bosses and secure but somewhat routine position at Potomac Hospital in Prince William County to become a virtual assistant -- someone who does administrative work, often for a number of clients, from home. She researched the field for five years, talking with Stacy Brice, who in 1997 opened Assist U, a pioneering program that trains virtual assistants.

(...snip...)

In 2002 ... Kim, now 49, was accepted to the 20-week Assist U training program (current cost $2,695). The lectures and coaching sessions are held via telephone conference and help students learn how to set up home offices, attract work and deal with clients who can be next door or halfway around the world. The program also offers a job registry for graduates, and the fellow VAs are a huge support network that, Kim says, is "worth the whole price of tuition. You're in business for yourself, but not by yourself."

Kim launched her business at the beginning of 2003. She works on a retainer of at least 10 hours a month per client and charges from $40 to $70 an hour. She currently has three clients -- a local writer, a career and executive coach in the District and a business consultant in Boston. Attracting clients is the toughest part of the job, says Kim, who finds them by networking or through the Prince William chamber of commerce and the Assist U employer registry.

The career and executive coach, Marshall Brown, says Kim has been working with him for about a year (they've met in person once). Kim makes his appointments, edits his articles and keeps his contact lists, among other things, he says. "She runs the business when I'm out doing what people pay me to do."

Kim's practice -- named Harmony Virtual Assistance, in reference to the smooth functioning she wants for her clients -- now brings in about $25,000 a year, compared with the $58,000 Kim made at the hospital. But her start-up costs were minimal, as are her expenses, she says, and she plans to add more clients. She hopes to eventually earn at least $60,000 a year.

In the meantime, there are benefits: She's doing the work she wants to do, when she wants to do it, with people she wants to work with. She's able to get to the gym and, most important to her, she's around to monitor her kids, drive them places and occasionally see one of their sporting events.
Virtual assistant. Never heard of it, but it makes sense.

[Plantfoam]

I have a friend that is a medical transcriptionist, and she does all of her data entry online. However, I guess it does not qualify as a purely online job, since she had to apply in person. At any rate, she does not have to leave the house for anything work-related.

[sophia8]

She could earn a little bit doing online consumer and opinion surveys. I am registered with about half a dozen such companies and spend around a hour a day filling out surveys on anything from my TV viewing to my breakfast-cereal buying habits. Only some of them pay cash - usually 0.75p to 1.50p per completed survey (I recently did one that paid out £20, but that was an exception); the others pay out in Amazon vouchers or enter you for prize draws. Registering for such surveys costs nothing, of course.
And although it isn't really work, she could also do online prize competitions - there are hundreds out there and cost nothing to enter. All most of them need is your name and an email address (which will get spammed 16 ways to Sunday, so create a Hotmail or Gmail address for them), they require little of your time and you get the chance of winning stuff.

[666]

<snip>0.75p to 1.50p per completed survey</snip>
Was that a slip of the decimal point or is that really all they pay? It would hardly pay for the electricity to run your PC.

[Rasmus]

I used to work from home in two separate jobs - they do exist. One was purely online, the other was based in my then home-town and I had to apply in person. (and later made use of the offer to work in their office a few hours per week.)

It takes a lot of discipline to work from home, and both jobs I had were very tedious and repetitive. The benefits are worth it though: I could pick my own times whereas now I work a mostly regular office job where I spend two hours commuting each day.

If you have to pay money to (potentially) get a job: Forget it!

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

How about elance.com, contractedwork.com, etc? People are bidding on jobs. Is this the real deal? I'm researching it now and it looks good.

I've used Elance.com. It is the real deal, although like anything, you just need to figure out if it is going to work for you from an economic perspective. Elance costs a quarterly fee (although they just changed their membership system), so if you make more through the writing than you pay for your membership, obviously you come out ahead. The membership isn't an outrageous amount of money (it was like $25 a quarter or something) and I personally made it back in the very first job I took, and now have a regular job writing for an online site that I got through Elance (not talking huge amounts of money here, but it's enough to make it worthwhile ;) ).

[sophia8]

Was that a slip of the decimal point or is that really all they pay? It would hardly pay for the electricity to run your PC.It's 75p to £1.50p per survey. I left out the £ sign.