August 2008 Where to: Find Online Jobs

Make money without going to work!

Love making money? What if it is within the comfort of your own home with time also to finish off your household duties? SUMAIYA ALI has tested out some of the options available from the web and gives us the lowdown. Welcome to the era of ‘Work at Home Mums’ and ‘Work at Home Jobs’ where you choose when, where and how much you want to work. Work at Home Jobs are mostly targeted at women staying home to look after their kids but it is also a good source of income for anyone looking at making some extra money. You could choose to tutor online, provide customer support for a company or do some of the data entry work, set up your own business or just buy and sell online. All that is needed is a computer with Internet access and for customer support jobs a telephone is also is required. Several companies in the United States provide employees with an option of working from home. This not only helps them to cut down on office space but also saves the employee travel time and gas costs. If you are in the US there are oceans of opportunities at your fingertips. Google them out with catchwords like telecommute, legitimate work at home jobs and you get pages of results. But work at home jobs that can be done from Bahrain and other parts of the world are limited. Yet there are certain jobs that are available to people across the globe and not just for women; anybody with a creative mind, anxious to make some quick money online can try these out. In my quest to find a successful work at home job for Bahrain I’ve come across several websites that either take in your email ID or begin spamming you or ask you to pay to know how to make millions a month. Point to note: if any of the websites/work at home job asks you to pay for you to be eligible to work for them, then STOP! It could be a scam! With lots of trial and error I have finally come up with a handful of legitimate ‘Work At Home Jobs’ that you could try at home. But again a word of caution, making money isn’t that easy, you need to be patient at times. Mystery Shopping: Don’t we all love to shop! What if we are paid just to shop? Yes that’s what Mystery Shopping is all about. There are several mystery shopping websites online. After registering they will assign you a shop to conduct an audit. In Mystery Shopping you visit the target shop, just as any other customer — that’s why it’s called Mystery Shopping. You check both the behaviour of the staff towards you (greetings, service) and the cleanliness of the shop and return back home to fill in the questionnaire sent to you by the mystery shopping service and email it back to them. Some assignments require you to buy any item from the store as a proof of your visit while others just ask you to browse through the shop as any customer would, while keeping the questionnaire in your mind. On completing your assigned shop you can be paid around US$15-20 and sometimes more depending on the brand for whom you’re conducting the research. I carried out two checks in Bahrain, of course as a mystery shopper, by registering in internationalservicecheck.com. The first time I wasn’t too sure; I was just trying out if it was legitimate and not a scam. I had nothing to lose except a few minutes of my time. I went back home, sent in my completed questionnaire and a month later the money was credited to my account! Another trusted site is baiservices.com but I would recommend the former over the latter as the chances of being allocated shops are greater. Write Online: Love to write? Then this is the one for you. Get paid to write and also be read. Helium.com and associatedcontent.com are websites where magazines, newspapers and websites post topics that they need articles for but are too short of time to write themselves. This is where you come in. You choose a topic you like or you think you could write about, covering all the aspects requested and submit your work within the deadline stated, which is usually around a week. Once your article is published on the site you start to earn money every time it is read! Moreover if the organisation (employer) decides to buy your article you could be paid from anything between US$15- 100. From my personal experience I’ve seen that articles based on gaming and other technology trends are paid much more. Designing: Put on your creative hats for this one. You don’t have to be an expert in Photoshop to design and sell online. Anything creative like catchy or smart quotes or designs you have created could be sold on cards, mugs, T-shirts, bags and other accessories through cafepress.com. This website lets you have your own online shop within it and you can choose which products you want your designs to be showcased on and for much you choose to sell them. There are people who make their living just by designing and selling at this website! Affliate Advertising Do you have a website or a blog? Perhaps you have a social networking account that supports HTML Then start promoting businesses on your page! You’ll be called an affiliate. Websites like cj.com have sponsors who want their businesses to be promoted. You chose the product/business you want to promote and put up the HTML provided on your site. You are paid every time someone clicks, leads, registers or purchases the product. I would suggest promoting products that are paid based on clicks or free registrations as not everyone may be interested in buying the product but will be curious enough to click and find out more. Another method to advertise on your site or blog is through Google Adsense. These are a group of tiny adverts that are seen placed horizontally or vertically on certain websites. Upon signing up for Adsense, you chose what size of banners you want to be put up on your site. You are then provided with some HTML code which you paste in your page and whenever someone clicks on any of those ads you are paid. Domain Names When you buy and sell land or houses in real life its called real estate. Buy what if you do the same thing but with domain names online? Yes, this is the generation of ‘Virtual Estate’ where you buy a domain name just by paying a maximum of US$10 through websites like godaddy.com and register.com and mint money by selling the same for lots of cash. Domain name marketing is profitable. Celebrities these days reserve the domain names of their babies even before they are born, in case it’s reserved by someone else they may have to buy it back for a larger sum. Sell your idea and products Do you have an idea that you think could improve a product’s quality and also increase the sales for its manufacturer at preferably no extra cost? If yes, contact the company saying you have an idea from which you think they will benefit and to ask them to get back to you if they are interested. You should make a point of submitting the idea in writing and stipulate that they will not divulge the secrets behind your idea before you are paid or if they decide not to accept it. The traditional way of making money online which works is by selling your stuff on Ebay. Some of these sites send you cheques every month but a majority of sites pay you through Paypal, which is a secure payment system where your credit card number is not exposed online. If you do not have a credit card you can choose to apply for an internet prepaid credit card through Credimax, where you can buy only if you have money in your card balance. Once you get your card go online and sign up for a Paypal account. Registering for a prepaid card is very easy and I did it online sitting at home just as I did trying out the jobs mentioned above, and again you don’t have to pay! So get working, from home. You might just surprise yourself!