The Reality of Working at Home

I have spent the last five years trying to work at home and have had some success. The following are a few facts I have to share with people who are either trying to or have given up trying to work at home. Q. What about places that put up "pay money to get a job" postings? Are they worth the money? Will I get a job if I spend the money? A. If a job asks for money, then it is not really a job. Think of it this way, would you pay to fill out an application for a job outside the home? No, of course you would not, so why you would pay someone for a work-at-home job? Let's say that a listing says "Buy our software and you can work at home." This probably means that you buy the software up-front and they give you a list of places that might hire you. The software is usually something similar to what you already have in your computer, like a word processor program or something you could buy in a local office supplies store's discount section. The list of jobs they give you is usually a list of companies they found in the phone book and you can find the same companies yourself just by using the Internet Yellow Pages. And if companies were really hiring work-at-home people, then why would they give the software to another company to sell? They wouldn't! They would list the software requirements in their help wanted classified advertisement. Fact to remember: If they ask for money, then it is probably not a real job. Q. What about these places that advertise "Pay to join our group and we will help you find a job" or "We have hundreds or thousands of jobs listed" sites? A. I spent over $500.00 on those during my second year of job searching and never did get a job. I'm not saying they are all bad or tried to rip me off. Some were an all-and-all-out scam. Others honestly tried to provide a good job list for me to send my resume, but if you don't have the requisite skills, it doesn't matter how many honest job listings are provided. Still others provided job listings that were so old, they were no longer hiring or no longer in business! These sites used old job listings so they could say they had "thousands of jobs" listed. There were also some that listed jobs found listed by "monsters" and headhunters. My best advice is if you want to join one of these places, then you should go to a "work at home"-type message board and ask for other experiences with the company. Ask questions like: Did you really get the material they promised to send to you? What kind of jobs do the sites offer? Did you find a job? Remember that the people who run these companies often go to these message boards and reply to the questions posted by people like you , so be sure and wait till you get several replies so you can get to the truth. Fact to remember: Do your homework before spending the money