Being the editor of an online woman's magazine, I have done a good amount of research regarding the work at home topic.  I have joined forums and talked to many ladies who have a home business or work for a company at home.  Too many of them are busy networking and trying to find others to join them so they can make money from the referral.  There are honest women who are working hard to make their way in the internet to find others to join them, and there are even more dishonest people who are considered scammers.

Here are my findings:

You either 1. start a home business or 2. find a company that will hire you and allow you to work at home.  Unfortunately, both are tough strategies unless you do a good amount of research.  The thing I have found is that you must be serious in your investigation. 

This article is for people who want to choose 2. find a company that will hire you.  If you choose the second strategy of finding a company to hire you at home, you must have a talent that is marketable.  If you do not, you will end up with the countless ladies working to help their multi-level marketing company prosper. 

Marketable talents for popular work at home jobs include:

• Data Entry
• Medical Transcription
• Web design
• Tutors / Teachers
• Writers
• Bookkeepers / CPAs
• Editors / Proofreaders
• Closed Captioner (typing speed of 225 wpm or more!)

There are many other talents that are not listed, but this gives you an idea of what is out there and available.  If you don't have a specific talent, many times you may have to start with customer service, telemarketing, and sales.  These are very serious and rewarding jobs if you take pride in your work.  Unfortunately, you have to hear "no" and rude voices many hours of your day.

When you are ready to look for that work at home job, go to a popular search engine and search for words such as "telecommute" and "virtual office."  You might want to get fancy with your search and click on the search engine's "advanced search" option and type in a string such as "title salary position april location-home "home based " -uk -canada"  This specific search will look for pages with the words "title, salary, and position" on them, but also "april" which indicates the month, because you want to return current listings rather than ones that may have been posted last year.  "Home based" is in quotations in this search because if you search for just "home" and "based" separate, all kinds of strange results will appear, such as home office based jobs... and you don't want to work at their home office!  I used -uk and -canada because I am from the US, so I didn't want jobs from those countries returned to me in the results.

When you find the website that looks interesting, stop and think!  You don't know these people and they want your social security or drivers license number?  I think not.  My suggestion to you is to really research the company in full before you give out your personal information.  Go to your favorite "whois" database on the web and make sure the site has been around for a good amount of time.  See who registered the site.  Call the phone number on the site directly and make sure you can talk to a real person rather than a recording.  Call the Better Business Bureau.  Make sure that the site has "https" in its URL.  This means when you are entering your data in a form, it is secure.  Use your common sense above all.  Remember, if it feels too good to be true - then it probably is.

I wish you all much luck!

--Lj
womansgarden.com editor
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZbears.merchandise to advertise your business