Stay home, make money
Bangladeshi parents aren't very willing to let their children work at a young age. Many a parent will ask, "tumi etto taka diye ki korba?" “amra tomake ja chao kine dina?” and the such. A solution to those cooped at home but willing to work to earn some money are online work-at-home jobs. While this might sound like a scam-filled google advertisement, there really is plenty of legitimate jobs available out there. You don't have to look very far to see that there are tons of fields you can choose from, but common ones include:
Writing: this includes only about a million options. Whether you want to write guide articles for about.com or ehow.com; write news articles for allvoices.com; be a contributor for yahoo; edit, proofread, review, rewrite or translate other people's work; do transcription jobs based on spoken records; or write just about whatever your heart desires for a plethora of websites that pay based on your reader base, the list is literally endless. And then there is Cracked.
Website, IT and software: these include everything from programming to creating apps to website designing jobs. Although these are harder to get and do well in, they are still there for you talented (clears throat) individuals out there.
Design and media: these include anything from website designing mentioned above to photoediting, photography, animation, banner design, book cover designing and all kinds of illustration jobs.
Home based agents/ Virtual assistants: these are where you are an employee of a company who works from a home office, providing customer service to client companies or providing administrative, secretarial, and clerical support, as well as creative and/or technical services for clients. It might seem strange that secretarial jobs like these are available online, but hey, the world is moving forward.
Online tutors: this is pretty self-explanatory. Sounds easy, but you usually need a degree to prove that you are a capable and literate individual.
To begin with, it's not all that easy finding these jobs because of the large volume of scammers out there. Start by going through a few work-at-home job listing sites. Sites like www.about.com and www.linkup.com are almost always dependable. When searching for job listing sites, always avoid the 'sponsored links' area to the right of your Google search page and stick to the main search results. After you've found a job you'd like to go ahead with, thoroughly research into the company that is offering it. When searching them up, include the keyword “scam” in the search box along with the name of the company to find out if they have past scamming records. Check out the lists of companies that are known to be "telecommuting friendly". These employers typically hire employees that work from home and are legitimate.
Remember that these jobs are not meant to make you rich fast. So you need to stay away from listings that offer you high income for part-time hours, or promise you “$1000 A Day From Home”. If they look too good to be true, they definitely are. But you must also never ever pay for being able to do any sort of work. Real employers pay you, not the other way around.
And finally, use some common sense and figure for yourself that ridiculous jobs like 'envelope stuffing', 'email processing' or 'assembling craft kits' are scams and no one would pay you any money for them. The payment systems differ between various jobs, but the normal method of payment is usually through an international bank account, which you can get with the help of your father. But be careful to never give out personal or bank account information that could get you robbed - this is not a joke, there are millions of companies out there who exist just to rob you.
By Neshmeen Faatimah
