by Doreen Martel

Created on: May 28, 2011   Last Updated: December 16, 2011

The unemployment rate during 2011 has remained stubbornly close to 9%. Many who were previously employed have found their unemployment benefits exhausted in spite of numerous extensions to benefits by Congress. This set of unfortunate circumstances has helped contribute to the number of people who are turning to the Internet as a means of earning additional money. Sadly, the Internet has contributed to the number of unscrupulous people who take advantage of them. This leads many people to wonder if there are any real online jobs out there. The fact is, there are online jobs that are legitimate and in some cases can turn into full time careers provided that the employee has the required skills.  The challenge is finding these jobs.

Freelance sites

Although finding an online job through a freelance site can be challenging, there is far less chance to be taken in by an online job scam.  Most online freelance sites like oDesk or eLance protect those who register by having checks in place that help them weed out fraudulent job offers. This may include flagging capabilities by community members as well as quality teams who verify job offers.

Writing sites

There are several writing sites where those who have the right skills can earn substantial amounts of money writing. Each writing site has specific rules that apply to article submission and payment. Some sites offer guaranteed incentive payments such as Demand Media Studios or Helium Content Source for accepted work. Others offer steady revenue share payments based on specific page views (Helium, Suite 101, Squidoo, etc.) or may offer up front incentive payments when an article is accepted over other submissions.

Craigslist

While the potential for being defrauded on Craigslist may be high, there are also legitimate jobs available. In most cases, it is prudent to search only local areas and set up face-to-face meetings with potential clients. Make sure these meetings are in public locations for safety purposes.

Micro-tasks

Those who are interested in doing a wide variety of tasks online can try working through sites that offer micro-tasks. While these are typically low-paid tasks, user can often do a number of them in a short period of time resulting in a fairly good income. Examples of these types of sites include Amazon Mechanical Turk and Crowd Cloud which is available through Facebook.

There are several opportunities for those who are interested to find real online jobs. One of the biggest challenges for many who are searching for online jobs is to determine which offers are legitimate and which ones are being offered as a means of separating someone from their money. 

Before following up on any online job offer it is helpful to check out blogs and forums where people have posted information regarding job sites. In addition, checking sites like the Better Business Bureau or Flakelist can help those who are looking for legitimate opportunities avoid fraudulent posters.

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