As gasoline prices soar and joblessness mounts, the nonstop stream of email I get from readers wanting to work from home is rising, too. Also multiplying are the online scam artists who seek to profit on that desire.
So like the ancient philosopher Diogenes searching for an honest man, I set out looking for a few honest Web sites that actually help people find real, paying home-based work. I selected only sites with a track record and users I could interview.
A word of caution: Although at-home opportunities are increasing, most are only for part-time, low-paid work without benefits; some people who use these Web sites make as little as $5,000 a year. Many work very hard at tasks most people would find difficult, such as telemarketing. Competition for at-home work is keen; prepare to wait months to get a client, project or assignment. That said, here are some options:
If you have professional skills and experience, and are prepared to slug it out for clients in the global marketplace, a free-lance site may be for you. Elance.com and oDesk.com each link clients with about 90,000 skilled free-lancers apiece, roughly half of whom are in the U.S.
The sites post client feedback and publish results of optional professional-skills tests free-lancers can choose to take through the site. The sites also serve as secure intermediaries for clients’ payments, in return for commissions of about 4% to 10% of free-lancers’ fees.
Information-technology workers, such as programmers and Web developers, are the sites’ biggest market, but they’re fast expanding into graphic design, writing, engineering, translation, marketing, accounting, administrative and legal services.
Photo by wagg66.
Curt on September 11th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Great article. Thanks for the information, I will have to check these out.
cassy on September 11th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
I know oDesk.com and they really hired only skilled and professional people to do a certain work and when your working in this site, they will surely pay you.
Jaclyn on November 2nd, 2008 at 4:39 pm
It is true that the number of people looking to work from home is rising quite a bit. I myself after recently having my first child decided i would rather work from home, and i found an enormous amount of scam work from home jobs! it was unreal how many work from home jobs were advertised and almost none of them were legit. then i was watching nbc news one night and they actually did a story on the work from home scams and listed a link on their site of one’s that they found to be actual work from home jobs, and that is how i found odesk.com! it was amazing and has been a great working environment ever since i joined almost two months ago!
rantapallo on November 3rd, 2008 at 6:26 am
I’ve noticed that too often business owners tend to be quite sceptical about reliability issues on services like elance.com. Eventhou you can monitor expert’s reputation very effectively in these services, which is great.