As the coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic, businesses across the globe shut down their offices and transitioned their employees to remote work. TIME magazine has even dubbed this the “the world’s largest work from home experiment.” While employees hunker down in their newly-thrown-together home offices, one thing we might see from COVID-19 is how remote work can be successful on a large scale.
Just a few decades ago, the vast majority of work-at-home job opportunities were far from profitable. And before the dawning of the Internet, it was much harder to sort through the scams and the real opportunities.
Some of the “gotcha” job offers from the past include check-cashing schemes, mystery shopping, medical billing “jobs” that require you to purchase expensive computer software, and craft-making jobs that ask you to pony up the cash for materials before you get started. And let’s not forget about the famous envelope-stuffing scam that was nothing more than a pyramid scheme designed to siphon money from as many people as possible.
As the old adage goes: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” But, is it?
In 2020 and beyond, the questionable work-at-home jobs are still out there. But improvements in technology and the birth of social media have ushered in a new wave of such jobs that are actually legitimate.
A 2017 study from Upwork and Freelancers Union even predicted that more than half of the workforce will do freelance work in the next decade, citing the fact that nearly 50% of millennials are freelancing already.
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