Have you dreamed of working from home, but thought it was a pipe dream that was only for people with another independent stream of income? Actually, working from home, and having that work generate a full time income, is more and more common. I see everybody from high priced to consultants to franchise owners operating out of a spare room in their house.

But in keeping with the theme of this website, Simple Work, let us examine some actual simple work at home business ideas that ordinary people can start without a lot of money or special training.

• Accounting and Bookkeeping - Sure it takes years to become a CPA, but most high school graduates (or college graduates) can learn to use common bookkeeping software or take a 12 week online bookkeeping class. This is one of those industries that is fairly recession proof as other businesses need people to account for money in good times and bad times.
• Online Auction Sellers - If numbers are not your thing, join tens of thousands of online auction sellers. Many have started by selling things they had cluttering up their homes, but quickly moved on to learning about outsourcing products and running a full time business.
• Tutor Or Teach - Do you know how to solve algebra equations, grow a juicy tomato, or fix a full course Chinese dinner? Home based teaching is in full bloom today. You can develop a class around your particular passion. Many teachers make extra money selling products, like their favorite garden fertilizer or spice mix. To promote yourself, you may use community resources like a local learning company, your neighborhood newspaper, or word of mouth. If you can help students with a class, there are also online tutor match classes you can get your name in.
• Virtual Assistant - The jobs are for real today. You can do anything from help website owners promote their business to answer the phones (sent to your home phone) for local or national businesses. They type of work you want will, of course, vary in how you promote your services. To assist website owners, you may want to find webmaster forums and offer services. You can look on job boards or company websites for phone customer service jobs.
• Pet Care - I have met people who managed to leverage a simple dog walking service into a full time business with several employees. Other services you could offer are pet sitting while owners go on vacation. If you like animals, you can bet there is a demand for your help. If you are interested in learning how to groom pets, you can certainly perform that task from a room in your home.

Do you have other ideas for simple and real work at home businesses you can start today?

Know that you are not alone, and that while many scams and shady opportunities exist, there are real simple home businesses you can do today! Also know that the question of if these businesses can really work really depends upon your ability and determination!

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One of the new and growing businesses is that of a Search Engine Optimizer or Search Marketer. Many businesses are crying out for this field because they want to know how to get more visitors (traffic) to their business sites. Of course, the SEO field is one of those that takes a lifetime to master, but that’s why we like it! If you have ever run and promoted a website, yourself, you probably have the skills to help others get more traffic to their websites too.

How to Get Started In Local SEO

One of the hottest mini-fields within the main field of SEO is that of a Local SEO. This profesional concentrates on helping local professionals and small business owners. Many feel this is an easier way to get started in the business because you can actually meet with potential clients.

Pick a Niche and Get Started With Your SEO Business

One of the best ways to get started is to build your own “hub” website around the business area you’d like to concentrae on. For example, if you want to do local search marketing in Houston, you may start a Houston Website Directory. This gives you the opportuity to fine tune your own game plan on your own website.

You may want to allow different local businesses to get a free basic listing. This is a good way to get attention and capture contact information. Once you have traffic to your hub site, you can certainly start soft selling (or upselling) other services you can provide.

This is just one example. You may want to start with a specific type of business rather than a geographic area, or even a certain type of business within an area.

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While we will never argue with the job and convenience of running a home business, we know there are some disadvantages that can hurt your growth. Your competitor, with a more professional image, may grab those clients because he or she can present a more professional image.

Your Home Business Office

While you are meeting clients in cafes or in your kitchen, your competitor is greeting them in a luxury office suite. You can, of course, solve that problem without spending a lot of money. These inexpensive, full service North Houston Virtual Offices, provide the amenities of a great office without the high rent.

You can get a commercial address, phone number, shared receptionist, access to conference rooms, and much more for less than $100 a month. Compare that to spending hundreds, or thousands, of dollars every month for an actual office in the same buiding. This works out very well for many people who usally work from home, in client offices, or while they travel, but only need office benefits once in awhile.

You do not even need to live and work in the same city as the virtual office is located in. If you only need a local address and phone number, and you only travel sometimes to the city the office is located in for business meetings, this can be a business budget friendly solution!

Your Home Business Insurance

Is your business properly covered with home business insurance? If you never researched this question, you could be taking a huge risk! However, you may be able to solve the problem with a simple and affordable rider to your personal policy or a business owners policy. 

Look into your need for business insurance. The solution may be simpler than you think. A good insurance agent can help you too!

Why Lose Money?

There is no reason to let some small issues prevent your business from growing and thriving. It is great to run a home business but you need to treat it like a business! We know that lots of small business owners must be very careful with budgets, but sometimes it pays to spend a little money in order to provide security and make more money!

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We get a lot of searches for something called Fun Simple Work. Let me start off by saing we are not associated with this at all, and we believe it borders on scammy. See, they advertise you can have a fun and easy job maling out letters to others. In return you can get money. Of course, you need to pay a registration fee in order to find out what you need to mail.

Guess what? We have seen these a million times in magazines, classified ads, and the web. You will pay your fee and be told to make the same offer to others in return for a registration fee. Do you see how this works. You pay your registration fee to get this business opportunity. The whole opportunity is sending the same offer on to other people.

Is this legal? Well, we see it all of the time, so we guess it must skirt some grey area. But in our opinion it is deceptive and a scam.

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Another new resource, from the same website, is a review of Constant Content. In the words of the website owners, it is like a large online consignment store for your work! You can also register for free, and then post your original articles, photography or drawings to sell them to companies who need fresh content for their business or website.

Do you have some other ideas to help our readers get content sold? We’d love to hear from you. Registration is free here at Simple Work too!

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What is the difference? Well, this article – Freelance Writing Competition - lays out some great strategies. Instead of promoting a plain, vanilla strategy, it is important to figure out what value added services you can promote that will make your service more attractive.

There may be some simple, but fairly tedious tasks, that are associated with the type of work you do. If you can offer to perform some of these tasks, to set yourself apart from the pack, you can stand out from the crowd. Of course, the types of extra services you can offer will depend upon the type of work you do.

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There really are home office jobs, some with hourly pay, salaries, and benefits! There are a lot more business opportunity ads though, and while many people do run a home business, these very slick ads are meant to help the person posting them more than anybody who responds.

Does the advertisement for a work at home job look too good to be true? If you see a listing with no required skills, experience, or equipment, that is a red flag. Any job will have job requirements. No employer just wants to hire anybody they can find to work at home. Real employers want self-starters who can commit to working a certain amount of hours, and they are probably looking for certain skills.

Again, a real work at home job may have hourly pay, a salary, and even benefits. But if the promised money looks unrealistic for the suggested skills, (i.e. $7k to post links on Google!), you can bet that this is not an actual job listing.

Does the post ask for an application or resume? If so, that is a good sign. But if the post simply asks for an application fee, be very wary. That is probably not a real job offer, but instead a slick ad for information on how to work from home or how to start a home business. These types of offer vary by quality, and the fact that it attempts to be deceptive is not a good sign!

Learn More About Work A Home Scams

Find more signs of Work At Home Job Scams at the Home Workers Forum. We strive to be a community for peope who work at home, either with home business or home office employees.

You can also find real work at home jobs here.

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How would you like a home business that:

• Markets tested natural weight loss supplements that people are raving about!
• Practically sells itself as your friends, coworkers and neighbors see how you can are getting slimmer without starving yourself or feeling tired and washed out.
• Is free to join so you can order at wholesale. The only real cost would be to order your own supply of the weight loss supplements at wholesale.
• Does not require you to stock any inventory because you will simply direct potential customers to your own custom webpage (that is also provided for free).
• Allows you to profit on any customers you refer, and the customers they refer, even though you can offer them the same wholesale deal you got!

This is still in pre-launch mode, but very active and smart marketers are quietly recruiting, selling, and making money before everybody gets in on it. So here’s how you can get started!

CNI Weight Loss Business Opportunity

Learn More About the CNI Core4 Weight Loss Products - This link includes the contact form to the FatCleanse team so you can support from our active group of offline and online marketers when you join with us!

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We wrote another article about the demaind for freelance writers who work from home. Yahoo even posted the profession of freelance writing from home as a top online business. I know a lot of people who would do great at a business like this, but they just don’t know how to get started. If you know that you can write, and would love to make money by working at home writing simple articles for businesses, maybe this is the nudge you need.

Get Started as a Freelance Writer

Freelance web writing is a real opportunity that I have taken, and that I have helped some friends and neighbors work at. I found lots of people who had always wanted to write for a living, and now they do! Learn More at this link:
Freelance Home Writers

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Here is What The FreeSamples Website has to say about it:

Clear Voice Surveys is different than other survey sites, we value your time. Other survey sites only pay you for surveys you qualify for and complete. We pay you for each survey you participate in.

Plus, we offer the best rewards anywhere. You can take your earnings as cash and our partner Payoneer will mail you a prepaid debit card or use them to buy gift certificates at Amazon or even exchange them for gift certificates to your favorite restaurants and have a night out on us!

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