Should I Work From Home, and are Online Jobs Right for Me?

Should I Work From Home, and are Online Jobs Right for Me?
Author: Adam Hefner


Should I work from home? Should I find an online job? What a question! Thousands of individuals ask this question every day; just do a Yahoo or Google search to see what a large market exists to satisfy this curiosity. What is an online job? How will it help me?

Every day, thousands of curious and even, perhaps, desperate adults look for work and money-making opportunities on the internet. A simple Yahoo or Google search turns up such solutions as “File Rebate Forms HERE!” and “Take Part in our New Focus Groups TODAY!” Are the opportunities real? They certainly are, but not all opportunities are created equal; much searching is required to find the best answer.

The best avenue of approach to online jobs is to look for tasks which require some skill or talent you already have, such as using your foreign language to translate and interpret for a call center or providing your lay advice to court attorneys after the successful (or unsuccessful!) resolution of a case. Regardless of the job, perhaps the greatest benefit is that these jobs can frequently be performed at any hour of the day; hoot owls need not rise early, and spring chickens need not stay out late!

The most obvious downside to online jobs is that the labor demand or the available supply of tasks can sometimes suddenly dry up, or vanish, or even take a long time to materialize. Some workers find themselves waiting weeks for an appropriate job to appear, and yet others work studiously at a task only to suddenly find that the job has already been accomplished... by another worker.

The jobs can be unpredictable, unreliable, and underpaid, but the rewards are typically steady and the schedule is normally never in conflict with the worker's own personal life. This frees up plenty of time for workers to focus on family, hobbies, or the community, but will the worker find sufficient time to complete enough work to pay the bills and satisfy his or her personal needs?

Online work can be slow, but it can also be a terrific source of extra income. It may not replace your day job, but it may certainly replace the empty space in your wallet. When an adult chooses to work from home, he or she must carefully weight the pros and cons of each position or task offered against the time needed for completion and the compensation offered to find the best solution to the puzzle of question of, “whether or not online jobs are right for me.”