You have no doubt seen the ads for work at home sites promising endless riches while you sit in your pajamas at home. Seemingly impossible amounts of money are, apparently, possible with very little effort. Before choosing to sign up, however, you want to do some research and find out whether work at home sites are legitimate.
The answer is, on some conditions, yes. There are some work at home sites that are legitimate, but this doesn’t mean they all are! With proper research, you can find the sites that are legitimate and avoid wasting time and money on a scammer’s enterprise.
Generally, the larger and better-known a site is, the more likely the work-at-home jobs it lists are to be legitimate, if they screen jobs. If they don’t screen jobs, be careful, as many scammers capitalize on the popularity of sites like Craigslist to gather personal information. Doing a search for “legitimate work at home sites list” will turn up information from authority sites like About.com and niche employment sites (for writers, graphic designers, etc).
The actual mechanism for looking up jobs varies depending on the site. Some will allow you to search the site directly for listings that match a particular keyword. For regional, yet connected, sites like Craiglist, the process is a little different. You can search individual sites or use a site like Crazedlist to search all of them at once. Since work at home jobs don’t always depend on you being in the same state (or even country) as the employer, this can be a great way to find positions you would have overlooked otherwise.
Warning signs to look out for include, most obviously, exaggeration and promises of money for very little work. These ads are almost always written by scammers looking to capitalize on people’s greed. Also, if a website is badly-designed and hard to navigate, it may be a quickly thrown-together illegitimate site. If you are asked to pay some kind of fee to “gain access to job listings” or “verify your identity”, be wary. Most legitimate companies will not ask you to pay money — you’re supposed to be getting a job, not paying them! If there are unclear payment rules or schedules, find out more information.
Before signing up with any work at home sites, do a Google search for the site name and the words “review”, “scam”, or “payment”. People who find real jobs will often post about them, and those who have been scammed are even more likely to tell others to stop them from being scammed. If you find complaints or glowing reviews, be sure to evaluate them fairly in light of other information you can find — companies will sometimes post falsehoods about each other to reduce competition, or pay people to post false good reviews.
In conclusion, some work at home sites are legitimate, but others are scams. You can find a great job online, but it’s up to you to do research so you can ensure you are not scammed.