You may be a successful executive who earns couple of thousand dollars a month, but has no time to spend with his family. You may be a stay at home, a house wife with a burning ambition to earn money or a retired individual who is mentally alert and wants to occupy his free time. You could just be a student wanting to earn some extra pocket money during your vacation. For all those with a few hours a day, an Internet connection and a desire to earn an independent income, there are plenty of works at home business opportunities on the Internet.

To work at home you need to devote two to three hours daily to your work. During this time, work as you would in your office. Dedicate a small part of your room or a room if you have the luxury of space as your work area. This work area lets you work in peace with some discipline so that you can think creatively about the work. You must have an entrepreneurial spirit to drive yourself and achieve your work targets for the week or the month. The advantage is that the time schedule and the pace of work are totally in your hands. Working from home on the Internet gives you a good source income, creative satisfaction and saves your guilt trip if you are mother.

There are umpteen avenues for work at home on the Internet.

If you start at the low end, there are scores of jobs for data entry operators. These are low paying and monotonous jobs. You need good typing skills and must stick to your daily quota of work.

At the next level are jobs of an office assistant to a busy executive or an entrepreneur. In this, you must handle all his calls and answer all incoming mail. You need to schedule his work life and handle all the paperwork offshore. You need basic Internet and mail operating skills for this interesting job. You will get a monthly payment based on the terms and conditions of the hours of work you put in on a daily basis.

If you have a good mastery over written English, you can write essays for high school students. You can write their statement of purpose for admission in to colleges. You can conduct Internet research and create project reports for students. There is a huge demand for this service as students grapple with tons of assignments.

You can help students complete their homework online. This opportunity exists for students in classes five to high school for subjects like science, math, and English. To become a tutor you need at least a college education so that you can tackle the students difficulties. You also need access to a good broadband connection. The pay for this work is on an hourly basis and works out to a neat thousand dollars a week for three to four hours of work.

Medical transcription is another good avenue of work. For this you need a basic knowledge of human anatomy, physiology and the names of diseases and their associated medications. As a medical transcriber, you transcribe the medical records of doctors that you receive as a voice assignment. You need to recognize the accents of different regions correctly. You can enroll in a medical transcribers course if necessary. You need a good typing speed to process large amounts of data on a daily basis. You can earn good money of a few hundred dollars per week depending on the volume of work.

You can be a freelance writer and contribute articles on any topic to several e-zines and blogs. You need to have a clear and simple writing style, free of technical jargon. The language must be grammatically correct and you must stick to the prescribed word limit. You receive payment per word and it works out to a few hundred dollars a month. You must seek out the higher paying websites that pay more per article, rather than on a per word basis.

You can even become a home-based content provider and employ a few writers under you. You will then bid for projects for various websites and can expand your business. The most important aspect of this business is to avoid plagiarism in the content as it can lead to copyright issues and a loss of credibility for you.

If you are a trained instructional designer or have a good knowledge of graphics, you can make a career out of website designing. This is a creatively satisfying and wholesome work. You must produce high quality websites that can bring in the traffic for your client and appeal to his target audience.

Marketing is a billion dollar industry and companies are forever seeking out what their clients like or dislike in products. You can participate in surveys and focus groups as a consumer and receive money for your valuable opinion. You can review products online and try product samples. Many sites will give you free information about ongoing surveys and focus groups that you can take part in. Once you register with such sites, you can earn a minimum of a thousand dollars a week for your efforts.

Safeguards to follow when working from home.

Ensure the credibility of the company that you will be working for. Get all payment terms in writing and request for their phone number and address. If possible talk to the company about the terms and conditions of work and ask for a written and agreement.

Survey the Internet resources to see that the company is not blacklisted for any fraud, or the website of the Better Business Bureau. This is necessary as the Internet is teeming with fraudulent network marketing companies out to make a fast buck.

Accept payment using a secure payment system like Pay pal so that nobody can cheat you of your hard earned money.

Thus, the Internet as opened a world of opportunity at your doorstep. You need not step out of your home and yet earn a good monthly income. You can work for somebody or as an entrepreneur. An Internet business requires less start up costs and gives you a worldwide customer base at a fraction of the cost of other traditional media. Therefore, you can pursue countless work at home opportunities on the Internet from the comfort of your home.