Work-at-Home: Finding the Perfect Match for Your Skills and Interests

A lot of people love the idea of working at home, but with all the hype about scams it can be very confusing and scary to a newbie. There are so many opportunities to sift through- that your head starts spinning. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you determine what kind of home business or telecommuting job will work for you.

Financial Stability
Do I need a steady income starting now? Will I depend on this income to sustain my current quality of living? If you answered yes then you should be looking at telecommuting (work at home) jobs only.

Investment
Am I willing and able to invest in my home business? MLM's (multi-level marketing) generally have a membership fee to pay for a business kit, the intelligence provided by the business and the ability to be a distributor or seller of the products. In addition, some MLM's have purchase requirements or auto shipments of the companies product. DO NOT pay any fee to stuff envelopes, simple assembly at home or to any site that is not very specific about what they are offering. All information on REAL telecommuting jobs will be free.

Direct Sales
Do I actually like to sell products and/or services? Am I good at influencing people? Will I be able to sell online through my own website? Do I want to be a party consultant that sells primarily through weekend and evening parties? Do I want to invest in and hold inventory at my home? You should definitely be familiar with the product or service you are thinking about selling. That means starting out as a customer and truly believing in the products. Does the business have both customers and business builders or am I going to have to spend all my time recruiting new reps. Do I know enough people who I know would like these products or benefit from these services? Are the prices reasonable? If it is overpriced you will have to work harder to find an appropriate market for the items.

Extra Income
Do I just want a little extra money to help contribute to my family's income? If so, there are a lot of fun sites to earn prizes and cash rewards. These sites are called GPT, which means "Get Paid to..." There are a variety of these sites where you can get paid to...complete sponsored product and/or services trial offers, click on and read sponsor advertisements, submit your information, mystery shop, post on a forum or blog, refer others to the site, take surveys and more. These can be time consuming but serious earners have been known to make $200 to $400 a month on these.

Home Office Management
What hours will I be working at home? What will I be spending the majority of my time doing? Home businesses will only succeed if you promote them to others. This means talking to people online or in person about your business or placing ads. When you are telecommuting, you are working a REAL job from home. This may mean that you will be on the telephone with customers or have deadlines. Do you have a quiet office with no distractions?

Telecommuting jobs
Everyone wants to work at home so the competition is fierce. What skills do I have or will need to acquire for the job? You will need a resume, references and/or a complete portfolio of your work to prove yourself. Usually these jobs fall in the range of those which you have specific training or schooling for. Some possibly available work from home jobs are; medical transcription, web design, computer programming, graphic arts, telemarketing, sales, taking incoming customer phone calls, job recruiters, job schedulers, answering service, and copy editors. You can be hired as a direct employee or paid for the job as an independent contractor. Independent contractors have to pay their own employment taxes.

Writing for Pay
Do I like to write? There are online article databases that will pay you to write articles on a variety of subjects and will pay you anywhere from $3 and $20 each. Associated content is one of them. It may also be possible to find forums that need moderators. Some greeting card companies pay for accepted poetry. Many people have been successful at getting paid for their blogs as well.

For more information on work at home jobs and/or businesses visit http://www.incmoms.com for articles and job listings, http://www.wahm-2-wahm.com/ for a business opportunity matching system and http://www.powermallworks.com for my home business information and other opportunities that have been described above.