I bet there's a zillion blog and website talking about working from home and freelance work, so why make another blog? well unlike most of the search results you'll get when you write "work from home" or "form filling job" or ...etc, I don't offer a work from home job, I'm only sharing my experience looking for one, so if you're looking for a working from home job or a freelance work, I hope I can save you some time, some effort and even may be some money, by helping you not to become a victim to one of the enormous scam bag sites that are waiting for a non experienced person to empty his bank account or may be just have a bite of it.
Many people nowadays are looking to work at home for many and various reasons, people who lost their jobs in the economic crisis that dominated most of the world, mums who need to provide income for their families, without leaving their children grow up like orphans, people who want to increase their income in order to get a better life style.. you name it, people like you and me. At the same time when I think about it now, after spending months staring at my laptop screen, surfing the net, well.. should I say digging and scratching? Anyways, when I look back, it reminds me with those small newborn sea turtles that just saw the light, crawling to reach the ocean, while all kinds of predators waiting to get their prey, I had my own fight, I lost some money on the way, and I hate to think about how many people are falling for those useless scumbags, who are waiting to steal money from those who need it most, and the most frightening thing, is that once they get their hands on your money, their is no way to have you're money back. Money transfer sites do not guarantee your money back if you pay for intangible goods. I used a money transfer account in order to pay for a premium member ship for one of those scum sites, and they delivered nothing, they said that a special software will be provided to download if I pay for a premium member ship, and that it will take 24 hours to validate my account, send me a username and password and a link to download a software that will make a form filling job as easy as clicking a button, I tried to get my money back by contacting the money transfer company's support, they apologized, since a username, password, and a link are intangible goods, and there's no way to know if the seller did or did not deliver, I know many people reading this are laughing right now, it looks ridiculous to me too right now, how obvious it was, but it wasn't that obvious by then, when you're new to something and enthusiast, you make all kinds of mistakes, remember these things:
- Form filling work, watching ads,DO NOT NEED PAID MEMBERSHIP.
- There's nothing such as get rich fast, or make huge amounts of money every month if you follow a Magical step or download a super software. Whenever you see a link or an add about getting rich fast, don't waste your time on it.
- Skills matter, that doesn't mean that there isn't any work at home websites that offer real work for people who doesn't have skills, there are many, but don't expect to get rich, or even pay your bills or home rent depending on them, specially if you live in Europe, North America, or any place with similar life cost , I live in a European state, I tried some of the watch ads sites and form filling jobs, it really doesn't worth it for me, I mean most of the sites offer 0.001 American Cent for each ad, you need to spend at least 5 seconds watching each ad in order to get paid, and I couldn't find a site that offers enough ads or form filling jobs for me in order to spend real work time on them, most of the sites will offer 10 ads or so, and then they tell you to come back later to find more ads, later could mean hours, days and some times never. Why do they start a website in the first place if they don't have real customers? well for a start they hope they get some real customers, you're helping them by visiting their websites, raising their visit rates, so they are simply using your time in their favor, and paying almost nothing for it. There are some respected sites that might have enough customers for you to fill their forms, review their websites or goods and other services, yet they usually demand that you live in a specific place geographically, or that you have certain profession or skills, so it's not for everyone, and you really need to search hard and deep in order to find such sites, concerning myself, I didn't find any that I can fit in, I'm not a physician in order to review pharmaceutical companies.
- You need to know better their way of work, their structure and what's their best offers for you, for example, you can work with freelancer.com in many ways, you can bid on jobs posted by their customers, it doesn't cost you anything to bid, yet, again, if you live in a country that has a high life cost, bids might not be your best choice, you'll be competing with people from all over the world, in some countries, 30 dollars might be a good prize for a 2 days work, if this is the case for you, great, else, the competitions are your best choice, since the prize money is fixed, the client decides who's the winner among the participants according to the work they offer, not the lowest price, which is usually the case with bids, I won't get too deep writing about technicalities, I only mentioned these cases in order to explain that any decent website you find, that offers freelance opportunities is a unique environment that has it's own rules, ups and downs, you need to get to know these things first in order to find out if it's good enough for you before you get involved and spend your time and effort.
So how do this things work? Generally you start a website or a blog about a certain issue ( don't panic, nowadays it's really easy for anyone to make a website with zero knowledge in coding and programming, I'll include links to websites where you can do that, some of them are free, others demand payments) within this website or blog you can set links to other websites that has affiliate offers, let's say you are interested in flowers, you can make a website about flowers, and you can put inside ads and links to other websites that sell flower related goods, of course those websites need to have affiliate offers, so they pay you for each purchase that a user makes, when he visits their website through your link, as long as he does that within a period of 3 months since his first visit through your link. Referrals works almost the same way, but referrals work for memberships instead of purchasing items, memberships are free in many cases, the people you refer don't have to pay in order to sign up, so you need for them to upgrade, as for PPC (pay per click) you will be paid each time a visitor to your page, blog or website, click one of the ads or banners or links, without waiting for him to buy something or to register. The bottom line is this, you need to start a website or a blog, if you don't have any already, I assure you it's not that hard, you can use one of the many available website building sites, you can use Google blogger.com, which I'm using in this blog, or Word press, the options are huge, and from them write about anything you're good at, or you know quite well about, promote it buy suggesting it to your friends on Facebook or +Google or any other social network, publish it using bloggers.com or other services, once you start getting the traffic, you'll start making money while you're asleep, in time you can subscribe to Google Adsense, which is Google's affiliate marketing program, it's not easy to get approved, they have their rules, but if you're website or blog is more than 6 months old, and your making enough traffic "people are visiting your site in considerable rate", and your site doesn't violate their terms of service, then your site will be approved.
If you like to know more about affiliate marketing and how it works, this link is very useful http://thenoisefarminc.com/admin/images/pdf/Howtostartasanaffiliate.pdf
Also this is a very useful website, it covers most of the aspects that you need, to understand making money online: http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/makemoney.shtml
A website that offers website building service:
webstarts.com
- Form filling work, watching ads,DO NOT NEED PAID MEMBERSHIP.
- There's nothing such as get rich fast, or make huge amounts of money every month if you follow a Magical step or download a super software. Whenever you see a link or an add about getting rich fast, don't waste your time on it.
- Skills matter, that doesn't mean that there isn't any work at home websites that offer real work for people who doesn't have skills, there are many, but don't expect to get rich, or even pay your bills or home rent depending on them, specially if you live in Europe, North America, or any place with similar life cost , I live in a European state, I tried some of the watch ads sites and form filling jobs, it really doesn't worth it for me, I mean most of the sites offer 0.001 American Cent for each ad, you need to spend at least 5 seconds watching each ad in order to get paid, and I couldn't find a site that offers enough ads or form filling jobs for me in order to spend real work time on them, most of the sites will offer 10 ads or so, and then they tell you to come back later to find more ads, later could mean hours, days and some times never. Why do they start a website in the first place if they don't have real customers? well for a start they hope they get some real customers, you're helping them by visiting their websites, raising their visit rates, so they are simply using your time in their favor, and paying almost nothing for it. There are some respected sites that might have enough customers for you to fill their forms, review their websites or goods and other services, yet they usually demand that you live in a specific place geographically, or that you have certain profession or skills, so it's not for everyone, and you really need to search hard and deep in order to find such sites, concerning myself, I didn't find any that I can fit in, I'm not a physician in order to review pharmaceutical companies.
Skilled freelance work
Having a skill that you can exploit online will definitely make your life easier, whether you are a graphic designer, copy writer, fast typist, programmer, blogger, marketer .. etc. there are many respected sites that offer real opportunities for you, still you need to be very careful to what sites you sign up to, and you need to read very well their terms of use and to get to know better about them and how they work before you start spending time working for them or for their clients, one of the websites I tried myself and can say that I really found a respected website that offers real opportunities is, freelancer.com, first of all, it doesn't ask you to pay for membership, yet they have paid membership programs, but it's optional, you don't have to pay in order to use the website, they also have real traffic, real customers and the most important thing, real support team, I had my own experience with these guys and they really do their job in a respected way, I made some mistakes using the site, specially in the first week, I contacted their support and they always deliver, I needed to refund some money that I spent by mistake in order to do one of their paid exams, and they did refund, but still there are few things you need to know about this site, and probably about any other similar website you'll find good enough for you, but since I have made enough experience with this one, I'll write about it:- You need to know better their way of work, their structure and what's their best offers for you, for example, you can work with freelancer.com in many ways, you can bid on jobs posted by their customers, it doesn't cost you anything to bid, yet, again, if you live in a country that has a high life cost, bids might not be your best choice, you'll be competing with people from all over the world, in some countries, 30 dollars might be a good prize for a 2 days work, if this is the case for you, great, else, the competitions are your best choice, since the prize money is fixed, the client decides who's the winner among the participants according to the work they offer, not the lowest price, which is usually the case with bids, I won't get too deep writing about technicalities, I only mentioned these cases in order to explain that any decent website you find, that offers freelance opportunities is a unique environment that has it's own rules, ups and downs, you need to get to know these things first in order to find out if it's good enough for you before you get involved and spend your time and effort.
Affiliate marketing, referrals and PPC (Pay Per Click)
These methods in my opinion are the best way, if, and only if, you're considering a long term work at home business (which is not the same as work at home job), it needs you to spend time and effort in order to start getting an income out of it, in this kind of business you are the boss of you, you can make your own website, start your own blog or social network page, their are many networks that has affiliate marketing offers, referrals and PPCs, also you can find many websites that you can promote for them directly without a mediator network, you still need to read carefully the terms and conditions for each website, and you definitely need to take care not to fall for any scam website, but in general it's much safer than "work at home jobs" (like form filling jobs and watching ads), the affiliate marketing business is getting bigger and bigger everyday, the people working in it are growing in numbers, and it's the best choice if you don't have specific high skills in certain services that you can offer online, like programming, digital graphic arts and copy writing.So how do this things work? Generally you start a website or a blog about a certain issue ( don't panic, nowadays it's really easy for anyone to make a website with zero knowledge in coding and programming, I'll include links to websites where you can do that, some of them are free, others demand payments) within this website or blog you can set links to other websites that has affiliate offers, let's say you are interested in flowers, you can make a website about flowers, and you can put inside ads and links to other websites that sell flower related goods, of course those websites need to have affiliate offers, so they pay you for each purchase that a user makes, when he visits their website through your link, as long as he does that within a period of 3 months since his first visit through your link. Referrals works almost the same way, but referrals work for memberships instead of purchasing items, memberships are free in many cases, the people you refer don't have to pay in order to sign up, so you need for them to upgrade, as for PPC (pay per click) you will be paid each time a visitor to your page, blog or website, click one of the ads or banners or links, without waiting for him to buy something or to register. The bottom line is this, you need to start a website or a blog, if you don't have any already, I assure you it's not that hard, you can use one of the many available website building sites, you can use Google blogger.com, which I'm using in this blog, or Word press, the options are huge, and from them write about anything you're good at, or you know quite well about, promote it buy suggesting it to your friends on Facebook or +Google or any other social network, publish it using bloggers.com or other services, once you start getting the traffic, you'll start making money while you're asleep, in time you can subscribe to Google Adsense, which is Google's affiliate marketing program, it's not easy to get approved, they have their rules, but if you're website or blog is more than 6 months old, and your making enough traffic "people are visiting your site in considerable rate", and your site doesn't violate their terms of service, then your site will be approved.
If you like to know more about affiliate marketing and how it works, this link is very useful http://thenoisefarminc.com/admin/images/pdf/Howtostartasanaffiliate.pdf
Also this is a very useful website, it covers most of the aspects that you need, to understand making money online: http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/makemoney.shtml
A website that offers website building service:
wix.com
UA-37267765-1
Thank you, I hope it's helpful, I'll try to keep it up to date, by adding any new research results, whenever I find any.
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