The internet is teeming with work at home job opportunities. A simple search for the term "work at home job" will bring up thousands of pages offering the opportunity to "fire the boss" and "work when you want" while spending only a " few hours a day" to "earn while you sleep," I'm sure you're getting my point here. With all these work at home opportunities it can be tough trying to figure out which ones are legitimate and which ones are bogus.

I'm gonna be blunt here for a moment. If you're here just to see my list of legitimate work at home jobs, you'll be sorely disappointed. You might want to stop reading now because there is no list. Instead, I will attempt to help you spot the possible scams and the opportunities that are more than likely too good to be true. I'm going to give you some helpful advice about the work at home opportunities you will come across on the internet. I will also tell you about one of the greatest work at home jobs I have ever come across.

The first sign that any work at home job opportunity is a scam is promises of a large amount of money for doing next to nothing. An example of this would be the Nigerian Advanced Fee Fraud. These scams usually arrive in you inbox promising a ton of money for doing very little. Usually claiming somebody rich and from your country died and had a large sum of money in some bank in Nigeria, without leaving a next of kin. They would like you to stand in as next of kin and claim the funds. Unfortunately, there was never any money to begin with. Many times these scams end with disastrous results for the victims. Though it isn't what most people consider a work at home job, I felt that this scam is widespread enough that it is worth mentioning. If i've saved even one person from this scam then this paragraph will have more than served it's purpose.

As a general rule of thumb, no legitimate work at home job opportunity should ask you for money to get started. I have yet to see any job in the real world that requires you to pay to work, usually it's the other way around. The same should apply to the internet as well. If you're being asked to spend money in order to start working, the probability that you are being scammed is quite high. It has been my experience that most of the jobs that require you to pay any type of fees to get started will either have you selling bogus over priced products or they will have you bringing in new blood in order for you to make money.

If you're getting bombarded by work at home jobs in your email, then you'll probably want to stay away from each and everyone of them. Especially, if you never signed up for them in the first place. These advertisements usually end up in your spam folder but every now and then some of them might show up in your inbox. Aside from having a huge chance that the link may land your browser onto some infected website, they'll probably be looking to charge you some sort of start up fee.

A surefire way to detect a scam is if you can't find any business address, phone number, or other information that connects the opportunity to the real world. No legitimate company offering anytime of job opportunity would have any reason to hide this information. As a matter of fact most legitimate companies will make this information easy to access and in plain view. If a company is not providing this information as public knowledge then it's a sure bet they have something to hide.

So now that you're armed with the ability to spot a scam, you probably want to know now how to spot a legitimate work at home job opportunity. Unfortunately this is not so easy to do. The best way to spot a real work at home opportunity is by checking it for sighs of being a scam. Remember that most online work at home job opportunities are scams, or just plain don't live up to their claims. Never fear though, because I'm going to share with you probably the best opportunity you will find on the internet to work from home, you will choose you own hours, and even set your own pay scale. It's called "Freelancing" and it will cost you nothing to start and has the potential to become quite profitable.

As a freelancer you will be working for yourself. There are numerous places online where a freelancer can pick up work. If you can write, build websites, create music, edit, program, or have any other creative skills you will probably have no problem finding freelance jobs. There are many ways for a freelancer to find and get jobs on the internet. Some popular sites allow you to bid on jobs, the lowest bidder with the proper credentials usually wins the right to work on the project. A freelancer can post ads on certain forums and receive service requests. A freelance writer may write a story, article, or other content and place it up for sale or submit to a site for revenue sharing. There is a lot of freedom that comes with being a freelancer. You, and you alone are responsible for your own success and your own failures. When you work at home there is a strong possibility of getting distracted and being side-tracked. If you're looking for a legitimate work at home job, it doesn't get much more legitimate than this.

Hopefully this article has helped you learn to avoid any scams that may be waiting to drain you bank account. The internet is full of scams and it's hard to predict which opportunities are scams and which are legitimate. Nevertheless, by paying attention for the signs I have taught you, and playing it safe, you should easily be able to avoid 99% of work at home scams.

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