5 Ideas For Starting a Legitimate Work From Home Business

It can be hard to find a legitimate work from home business,  especially with all of the scams out there. Yet, more and more people are turning to working for themselves as unemployment continues to rise to record levels across the nation.

In my research into the work from home arena I have discovered some great work at home ideas that are not scams. Here are a few:

1: Incentive-based marketing/freebie trading

Incentivized Freebie Websites (IFWs) are internet marketing websites that contain many advertisements (offers) for different products and services. The IFW is paid a commission each time an individual signs up to receive these products and services through that site.

People make money with this because in order to entice people to sign up for the offers,  the IFW provides incentives for those who do so and then,  send other people there (referrals) who also complete offers. These incentives can take the form of a cash prize or a tangible item, like a laptop or a big screen TV.

Because it doesn't cost much to start, incentive-based marketing is a great entry level home business.  It is also very easy to learn and unlike other home businesses, you can begin earning money almost right away.

2: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing involves companies farming out the advertising of their products to others, known as affiliates,  in exchange for paying a commission for each sale the affiliate makes. The commission is typically a percentage of the sales price of the product.

It works on the basis of a referral ID that is integrated into a special link that you can place on your website, your email signature, your blog, etc. Whenever someone clicks on your affiliate link and purchases the product, the sale is tracked to you, via your affiliate link, and you're paid for that sale.

Most affiliates find products to sell through the major affiliate clearing houses like Clickbank.com, Paydotcom.com, and Commission Junction. However,  a lot of companies run their own affiliate programs which you can sign up for through the companies directly.

3: Create An eBay Webstore

eBay has come a long way from a place where you can sell your used baseball cards or that hideous gift your grandma gave you last Christmas.

Today, eBay offers the ability for users to create their own virtual webstore from which just about anything can be sold. The most common way people start up a webstore is to contract with a drop shipping company that will allow you to sell their merchandise and only charge you for the merchandise you sell. The drop shipper will also send out the merchandise for you to your buyer.

You don't have to use drop shipping to start a webstore but it is an easy way to get merchandise to sell without a huge outlay of cash and without having to worry about keeping an inventory or postage expenses.

4: Paid Surveys

Paid surveys have taken a bad rap recently, but if done right and the earnings claimed are not over-hyped, they can produce a nice income stream. Not enough to make you rich, but enough to supplement anything else you're doing.

5: Using Google Adsense on a Website or Blog

Google's Adsense program allows you, upon the installation of a special script tied to your Adsense account, to run Google ads on your website or blog. These ads will be related to whatever your website or blog is about. So,  if you have a website or a blog about dogs, Google will run dog-related ads on your site. The idea here is that a person who is reading a site about dogs will be more likely to click on an ad about dogs or things for dogs.

Each time a person clicks on an Adsense ad on your site, you get paid a small fee. The fee can run from as little as 4 cents a click to 5 dollars or more per click, depending how competitive the keywords for that ad are.

These are just a few ideas for starting a legitimate work from home business. There are many more, and with a little creative thinking, the sky's the limit!