Is There Really Such a Thing as a "Work at Home Job?"

Like a number of stay-at-home parents I am now in the position where the kids have gone back to school and I'd like to make a little extra money working a part-time job during school hours. My thinking was that the ideal way to do that would be to find something I could do online. So with that in mind I Googled "work at home jobs" and was greeted by hundreds of thousands of "job opportunities", one more ridiculous than the next.

They all had outlandish earnings statements like; "make $3,000 per day in your pajamas", "make thousands doing absolutely nothing", and "go from broke to $25,000 in a week." The websites for these companies generally always features a stunningly good-looking couple standing outside a mansion or sitting on the hood of a high performance vehicle or speedboat. It's also painfully obvious that these people have been photoshopped into the picture yet thousands and thousands of people buy into this stuff every day. Let's take a look at what is required for these online positions and compare it to the real working world.

The most common theme in all these sites is that you have to pay some money up front to get started, usually passed off as some sort of maintenance or clerical fee. When have you ever gone for a real job and had to pay for the privilege of working there? I can see it now, you get hired at McDonalds and the shift manager turns to you and says, "congratulations, you can start as soon as we receive a one time payment of $39.95 from you to cover the costs of your ball cap and golden arches t-shirt". It just wouldn't happen and if it did I would run, not walk, as fast as I could away from the place.

Another very common practice in these schemes is that you have to invite friends and family to work in your downline and you will get a percentage of what they sell. This is apparently how you make the really big money. Let's go with the McDonalds analogy again. They hire you and start you at $3 per hour but that can go up to $125 per hour if your buddies sell a certain amount of fries. Again, it just doesn't compute to me. What anyone really wants is a decent job where you are paid a salary for the work you do, not a position where you rely on the productivity of others to get you ahead.

There seems to be a whole team of "internet gurus" out there that have made an absolute fortune online and are willing to sell you their methods. I've never heard of any of them and if they are so rich then why do they have to bother selling their ideas? Why not just give them away? The whole thing stinks and has more red flags than a beach during hurricane season. My advice would be to steer clear of all of these "opportunities" and just go out and find a part-time job at the mall or, better yet, put your computer to good use and write for Associated Content. You may not make enough money to go out and buy a sailboat but it'll be a nice little income for doing something intellectually rewarding.