Doing part-time jobs is a common way to earn extra income on top of your main income. There are a variety of reasons why people look for part-time jobs. These include not having enough time to hold a full-time job, not having a full-time job available, or income from a full-time job not enough to cover expenses and pay bills. Part-time jobs are a great way to make ends meet. But working two jobs can take its toll on you due to the stress associated with working overtime and not having enough time to rest and play.

An alternative to this stressful routine is to work online part time. A lot of part time jobs are available on the internet. But beware, a lot of these online job opportunities are scams. However, there are also quite a few legitimate ones among them. You just have to do a little research before signing up, and with persistence and a little luck, you’ll likely find a legitimate part-time job online. Many part-time jobs online are easy jobs, such as data entry, transcription, proof reading, article writing, just to name a few. These jobs typically require only a few hours of your time in a day, and you get paid when you’re done. Some online part-time jobs are so lucrative that they can be accepted as full-time jobs. And the best thing is that you can work from home. Hell, you can even work in your pajamas!

Ok, before you rush off and sign up for the first work-at-home website you find on Google, offering you $1,000-a-day part-time jobs, consider the following. I’ve had some unpleasant experiences with scam work from home websites that promise you heaven, but deliver nothing, I mean nothing, in the end. Often, you will be asked to pay a registration fee, often a bit high. Once you do that on a fraudulent website, in most cases you never hear from them again. It’s a frustrating experience believe me. Anonymity is the name of the game on the Internet. And scammers use this to the fullest. So consider these few tips to stay safe when looking for part-time jobs online:

• Look for work from home websites that don’t require you to pay a registration fee before you can start working there. However, these are few, and there are some legitimate websites that require you to pay to register. So discretion is the key.
• If you must pay a fee, look up the company profile. Look up a physical address and phone number. Call them and talk to them. Pay them a visit if you can. Some scammers are really good and can fake them. Beware of websites that do not have a ‘contact us’ and ‘about’ link. Research as much as you can and then go with your gut.
• Cross-reference the website in a good search engine. On more than a few occasions I have come across genuine looking work from home websites that promise you the world when you sign up with them for a fee. But only to find scam alerts for these same websites in the search results when I typed their URL or company name into the search engine. If you experience this, I have a word for you: run away.
• Beware of work from home websites that bring you huge profits in a very short time like $2000 a day! You know what I mean.
• Look for work from home websites that use the websites of reputable merchants to advertise their work online, or to pay for, or have affiliations with, these merchants. Often these merchants list their affiliates or partners on their own website. Go check this out and see if the work-at-home website you want to sign up with is listed. If not raise an eyebrow.

Even with all the advice in the world, there are no hard and fast rules for learning about legitimate online job websites. The Internet is an open playing field with little rules. There are precious gems here and there. You just have to know where to dig. Good luck in your search for part time jobs online.