Unfortunately, it is common for people to either overestimate what they should be paid for working online, or they sell themselves short and expect extremely low pay for work done at home. The fact is, it is important to view work at home much like you would any job outside of the home. While working at home allows for some added benefits, the pay is not going to be unbelievably great unless you have certain professional skills and qualifications.
When To Pay For Work At Home Opportunities
There is a lot of confusion about working at home. So many ads attempting to lure people in promise unrealistic amounts of money, as long as you cough up a fee in exchange for a miraculous “how-to” system. This is not the reality of legitimate work at home opportunities and as a home jobs seeker, you must realize that any legitimate opportunity is going to be realistic. In addition, you should never expect to be required to pay in exchange for a job- online or elsewhere.
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This is not how things work. Would you pay for a job at a restaurant, doctors office, or any job outside of the home? I think not. The only time you can expect to pay any expenses which will lead to income at home is if you are investing in a home business and in this case, I strongly advise doing your homework to ensure the business opportunity is reputable and make sure there are others earning a living with the same opportunity.
You can sometimes expect to pay a fee for a background search when hired on with some call center and customer service companies like Alpine Access or West. Also, with companies such as these, do your research with the Better Business Bureau. While it is disappointing to see scams and misleading promises, you must use some common sense and avoid falling victim to such offers.
Expecting A Miracle
Much like employment outside of the home, you can expect the pay for working at home to be determined by the nature of the work, your background experience, your skills and level of education. While there are entry level work at home positions, such as customer service, telemarketing and writing online, obviously you cannot expect to be paid the same as a person who has professional experience and education in medical transcription, medical coding and billing, accounting or those with a higher education. The truth is, you have to start at the bottom in any field and work your way up.
With this made clear, if you are looking for a career and want to earn a great living, you may want to consider enrolling in online courses. Many companies favor those who are in school and working on a degree. However, this does not mean at all that you lack some fundamental skills that could land you a great position. It is also a matter of how you present yourself in your resume and how well you highlight skills you possess.
Do Not Sell Yourself Short
While you must avoid expecting to be paid more than you are worth for work at home, you must also keep in mind that your time is valuable. You should never accept pay which is unreasonably low. Often people make this mistake by thinking that they are fortunate enough to find work online and they “settle” out of fear that they will not find anything better. If you sell yourself short, you are doing yourself an injustice and it is highly likely that you will burn out and possibly be left with a bad taste in
your mouth about working at home.
Based on my own experience as a home worker, there are many factors to consider when deciding what amount of pay is acceptable. You must consider the time invested, difficulty of the work and whether or not your financial expectations are met. If the work you are doing is dependent on speed and accuracy, you might have to keep in mind that for the job, it could take you a couple of weeks to get up to speed with the work you are doing and it may be a matter of getting the job down.
This is often the case for transcription work, data entry and writing. On the other hand, if the research required for the job is ridiculous and they are expecting more work and time that they are not willing to compensate you fairly for, you may want to consider completing the job and no longer accepting additional work. This is the case sometimes with certain freelancing work.
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In time you will learn what is fair and what is not in the work at home arena. If you are serious about earning a living at home, use your best judgment, give it your best no matter what the work entails and you will eventually find your way.
Guest Post By Traci Bell, a home worker and owner of http://allstayathome.com (All Stay At Home Job Bank), http://allstayathome.com/blog/ (All Stay At Home Blog) and http://allstayathome.biz (All Stay At Home Business Opportunities). She is an MSPA Gold Certified Mystery Shopper, Internet Assessor, and Writer.