Make money working from home with my guide to the

Best Online JOBS

The 14 Best Online Jobs

They do exist! While some online job prospects are SCAMS, there are legitimate, well-paid opportunities available. The key is to think creatively about how you can adapt your skills for them.

All they require is a computer with a high-speed Internet connection, a telephone and your skills.

Follow this guide to discover the best online jobs to pursue, what you can expect to earn, and

how to land an online job that's right for you.

The payoff is a flexible workday that fits your schedule—and a job that might just afford you a better lifestyle.

Virtual Assistant

Someone who juggles her family calendar without breaking a sweat might have what it takes to become a virtual assistant. Clients could include a business owner looking for someone to handle e-mail, scheduling and travel arrangements or a busy executive who wants you to schedule her children's doctors appointments.

What you bring to the table:Administrative experience; excellent organizational and time-management skills so you can juggle a multitude of tasks and a pleasant phone manner. It also helps if you know Microsoft Office.

What you can expect to earn: About $10 per hour at a staffing agency; up to $30 per hour if you work directly with clients. Top VAs earn $60 an hour.

How to get started: Contact businesses in your area or advertise on Craigslist. Or register with an agency such as eaHelp.com or Zirtual.com, which assign clients to you.

Online Reseller

You can earn large sums of money selling items online by reaching out to people who want to get rid of their stuff but are too busy to do it themselves.

What you bring to the table:Experience selling goods through auctions on eBay and the business savvy required to promote your services.

Expect to earn: Sellers determine the price by the market and the value of items they sell. Some charge a flat per-item fee (often $5 to $25), or take a percentage (20 percent to 40 percent) of total sales. Depending on the volume of your business, reselling on eBay and other sites could become a lucrative full-time job.

How to get started: Active eBay sellers with high ratings and sales can register to be listed on the website’s directory of trading assistants at ebaytradingassistant.com. You need to be a self-starter who knows how to spread the word—to friends, family members, acquaintances and strangers.

Call-Center Employee

Customers used to call a company to complain or order a product, and they’d reach the main office. Now virtual call centers route incoming calls to a home agent’s phone; agents receive a script on how to answer possible questions so they can respond to routine customer-service inquires or sell products.

What you bring to the table:Professional, pleasant phone presence, the ability to read a script and make it sound natural, a quiet area in which to work and perhaps a headset attached to your phone.

Expect to earn: $7 to $15 per hour, with some jobs offering incentives for high sales.

How to get started: Enroll to become an agent at a call-center company website—such asworkingsolutions.com, liveops.com or alpineaccess.com—that offers extensive training.

Document Translator

As businesses expand globally, they need to communicate in more languages. That's great news for bilingual people who are interested in entering this flexible, fast-growing profession. From a virtual office (using Skype to join conference calls, say), people in this field participate in live conversations and translate documents and recordings. Spanish is the most in-demand tongue, followed by Japanese, Korean, Chinese and French. Deadlines are tight at times, but you are free to turn down anything. Gengo and similar agencies have a global client base—which means you can work in the middle of the night if that suits you.

What you bring to the table: The ability to read, write and fluently speak more than one language. You can find plenty of work in Spanish, French and Chinese, but the more obscure the language, the higher the demand.

Expect to earn: About $12 an hour. Translators working with technical or scientific content can earn up to $40.

How to get started: The website Translatorscafe.com contains a free online directory of translators and translation jobs. Just upload your resumé and list your rates and services. Jobs, which are posted daily, might include translating a tourism brochure or subtitling a movie. You apply directly to the hiring company. Or enlist an online agency such as the ones atgengo.com and verbalizeit.com. You select projects that fit your calendar and abilities.

Data-Entry Worker

Companies are always on the lookout for people to help them “go digital” by typing paper documents into a computer. Many outsource the task of inputting data to update their records on a regular basis.

What you bring to the table: A computer, typing accuracy and speed.

Expect to earn: $6 to $20 per hour.

How to get started: While jobs exist, demand is high and scams plentiful. The Work at Home Jobs page at homewiththekids.com lists companies that hire regularly. Also search Craigslist and Google (type in “online data input jobs”), and cold-call companies’ human resources departments to apply.

Answering-Service Employee

When you call your doctor’s office at 3 a.m., the person who answers might be someone just like you, at home in her pajamas.

What you bring to the table: After-hours availability, a cheerful and calm demeanor, a phone and a computer.

Expect to earn: $8 to $14 per hour.

How to get started: Look for listings on these job boards: indeed.com,simplyhired.com andcareerbuilder.com.

Interview Transcriber

Journalists and nonfiction writers conduct thousands of hours of interviews, and some have no time to transcribe them. But thanks to the Internet, it’s simple to e-mail a digital file of an audio interview. You just need to listen well, type it up and send it back.

What you bring to the table: Typing accuracy and speed, a good pair of headphones (which makes interviews easier to understand).

Expect to earn: From $5 to $40 per hour.

How to get started: Look for regular work with a transcription service such as the ones at verbalink.com andscribie.com, or branch out on your own by contacting local newspapers, magazines and TV news stations. One enterprising way to find nonfiction writers is to check book publishers’ author websites (there are hundreds at harpercollins.com/author/websites.aspx). On the author’s site, look for an e-mail link or mailing address.

Content Writer

Companies often don’t have the staff to create content for their websites, so they outsource the job to freelancers. With new sites springing up every day, writers are in huge demand.

What you bring to the table: A talent for expressing yourself concisely, putting an idea into words and meeting deadlines reliably. Companies often want content pertaining to a specific field of expertise, so it helps to sell yourself in your areas of strength.

Expect to earn: There is a vast range of pay for writing Web content, from nothing up to hundreds of dollars per assignment. The median pay for a full-time content writer is $35,200. You can earn as much as $66,000.

How to get started: Check listings at indeed.com. If you think you're a fit for a specific company, e-mail a sample post and offer your services.

Expert

Many websites offer how-to advice on just about everything. After registering as a guru on a specific topic, you answer questions from the public.

What you bring to the table:Documented professional expertise (or you can take a test to prove your knowledge).

Expect to earn: You won’t work full-time answering questions, but you can get more inquiries over time. At sites such as justanswer.com, more experience and positive feedback earn you more money per question, within a range of $2.50 to $25. Other sites, including ether.com, take a commission on the rate you set.

How to get started: Go to justanswer.com and ether.com to find out whether you are qualified to be an expert at their sites.

Affliliate Blogger

If you have a blog that attracts numerous visitors, many companies will pay you (or give you merchandise) to run advertisements that link to their websites.

What you bring to the table: An audience that has a connection with the potential affiliate. If your blog centers on parenting issues, it's a perfect match for companies selling children’s clothing or toys, for example.

Expect to earn: The pay scale depends on the number of hits the ads on your site generate, often between $10 and $50 per 1,000 hits.

How to get started: Two excellent websites, earnersblog.com andbloggingtips.com, offer many ideas and resources for the aspiring affiliate blogger.

Social Media Market Consultant

Not only has social media changed how friends engage, it also has transformed the way businesses reach customers and build brand loyalty. Companies need people for whom Facebook, Google Plus, Instagram and Twitter are second nature. Sound like you?

What you’ll need: Experience in communications, journalism, public relations or marketing gives you a leg up. What’s most important is a facility with social media so that you can communicate with consumers to build brand awareness and drive traffic to a company’s website, tweet about special deals and keep a company’s Facebook page current. For $25 per month, you can access courses in social media marketing at lynda.com.

How to get started: Show potential bosses your Web skills by including links to your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts on your resumé. Maintain active, creative social accounts. If there is a cause you support, highlight it on your Facebook page and Twitter feed. Show how you created links to relevant stories and gained followers. Submit your resumé to sites such as jobsinsocialmedia.com and elance.com.

Expect to earn: $10 to $25 per hour. But some pros get as much as $75.

Online Tutor or Teacher

Tutoring centers have been around for years, but many busy families prefer the convenience of online coaching. That makes this field a great work-from-home option, especially if you love a particular subject—math, say, or reading—and have a gift for imparting that knowledge.

What You’ll need: Most tutoring firms want you to have a college degree or at least two years of completed study in the subject you wish to teach. But you typically don’t need to have experience as an instructor. '

How to get started: Create an ad or flier with your credentials and contact information and put it up in libraries and grocery stores and on community bulletin boards. Ask the administrative assistants at schools in your area if they will place your flier in teachers’ mailboxes. You also can register with a company such as Tutor.com, which assigns students to you based on your schedule. Keep in mind that most of the work will occur in the afternoon or evening, when pupils are out of school.

Expect to earn: $9 to $40 per hour. Certified teachers and those with expertise in advanced math or science might command more.

Tech Support Representative

Do your friends often turn to you for assistance with their cell phones, computers and video game systems? Then you are clearly a whiz at navigating—and explaining—technology. Tech support reps help customers find and use the right product for their needs (laptop or desktop?) via phone, e-mail and online chats. Most support pros log 20 hours or more each week, much of the time on weekends.

What you’ll need: Patience to deal with frustrated consumers who want to toss their new devices out the window is important, as is the ability to explain solutions to customers’ problems. Hiring firms often provide training. Apple’s at-home advisers, for instance, take a four- to six-week online class.

Find work: Scan the websites of computer manufacturers such as Apple and Dell. Consider signing on with a customer management company, like Cloud 10 or Convergys. Such companies help businesses handle their customer-support issues.

Expect to earn: $11 to $21 per hour

Beauty Product Seller

Do you love makeup? Consider joining Alcone at Home to earn extra money by selling their products. This program has a great reputation in the beauty industry and provides those who join with tools that can help them become successful.

What you bring to the table: A love of beauty products and a social network that's interested in purchasing them.

How to get started: Create your own personalized website to sell products or buy a starter kit, which is essentially a "business in a box" and includes marketing materials, makeup samples and more.

Expect to earn: As a seller for Alcone at Home, you receive 10-30% sales commission, making this a potentially lucrative way to earn additional income.