Earn At Home Without Setting Up A Business

- Can It Really Be Done?

To work and earn at home has great benefits. They include:

• freedom
• picking your own projects and hours
• being your own boss
• not having to deal with office politics, or someone you may not get along with
• no-one can sabotage you at work
• being in the comfort of your own space - with coffee, cigarettes, tv or music - or whatever environment you prefer
• working in your pajamas!!!

These are the types of benefits often touted by companies advertising systems where you can set up your own business. However, to earn at home with those systems requires a bit of study, some capital outlay (though it can be very small - maybe $100 or less if you want to set up a website and host your domain for a year).

But more than the cost consideration, there is a degree of study and effort involved, and many people would rather have a scenario where they are still effectively employed, but from the comforts of their own home. Perhaps they need money coming in now. Or they don't have the confidence to get things off the ground themselves. Or perhaps they'd rather study things a bit more before they wet their feet in earning an income through adsense or affiliate marketing.

So, what are the options for people to earn at home without setting up their own online business?

Firstly, unless you are actually paying for a service (such as products or webhosting or similar), you should avoid the companies that advertise work at home offers but want you to pay a membership fee. They should be paying you, not the other way around! If they rely on getting money from people to even have the chance of earning money from them, chances are that they don't have a legitimate product or service themselves. It's more like that you, the person interested in earning an income from home, is their 'product', or way of generating income. Would you pay to go to a job interview? Hardly!

One thing advertised as a way to earn at home, is being paid to fill out surveys. You should of course not pay to have the chance of doing this. But something else to consider is how many surveys you need to fill out to get a certain amount of income. And how long does that take. Compare it to your current hourly rate - it could well be lower than the minimum wage. Don't devalue your time just for the opportunity to earn money from home.

You might also see people advertising the 'opportunity' to earn an income by clicking on ads. This usually pays peanuts, to put it bluntly. And I don't even think it pays enough peanuts to keep a monkey happy. The gist of it is that you are paid to click on an ad, and you must stay on that page for at least 30 seconds. You get 1 cent for each click. Or 2 cents per minute. So, that's 60 cents per hour. I don't know of anyone who even pays their children that as pocket money.

So, what are the viable alternatives? Freelance writing is not a bad option to consider. There are a lot of people wanting individuals to write articles that are used as web content, across a whole range of subjects. Places like www.elance.com exist so that people who need to hire writers (and others - including graphic designers, and a whole host of other skills) can post their projects that describe what they want, and invite prospective writers to bid on how much they are willing to do the project for. Elance takes care of the payment system, and it's a company that's been around for years. I've used it to hire writers and it's very reputable.

It's not as difficult to write as it may seem. Browse around the internet and see some of the articles on websites. And you could probably write a couple of articles per hour, certainly with a bit of practice. If you get paid $5 per article (if you're very good though, you can charge more. I've paid up to $20 for very good quality writing), that's $10 per hour. Not too bad considering there's no business risk for you.

The only drawback with elance is that you're competing against a lot of other writers to get the job. An alternative is to use one of the income streams at MPAM. MPAM have a list of topics they want original articles on, and are willing to pay $5 for them. The only thing is that you must be a member of MPAM to take advantage of this income stream.

Now, their membership is not high ($29.95 per month). And the key point is that you're not actually paying for the ability to earn at home writing articles for them. This is just one of the benefits they give to members (and a great way in and of itself to cover membership cost). What you're actually paying for is the monthly web hosting, and the step-by-step training on how to set up your own online business.

Yes - you get taught how to set up a website. And, most importantly, you get taught how to get traffic to your website - and how to earn money from that traffic.

Plus, they give you the means, by allowing you access to their sites that are well ranked by the search engines, to start getting indexed by the search engines. That's the first step to getting traffic. And it is one of the snags that catch many start-up, earn at home entrepreneurs.

But back to writing. Choosing to become a member of MPAM eliminates one of the problems that besets writers at Elance - getting heard above the competition, getting your bid offers accepted. And doing this often enough that it amounts to a regular income. MPAM needs articles. They make money from them by putting them on their highly ranked, well-trafficked websites. A certain number of people visiting those pages click on the google adnsense ads on the page, and VOILA - MPAM earns an income from that click. Get enough traffic, on enough pages, and you can earn quite a tidy income. MPAM know this, and have been doing this for years (they've been in business online for 6 years, so if they weren't doing something sustainable, they wouldn't still be around).

So, that's why they WANT writers, and more than that, they want to pay their members for writing those articles. Why? Because MPAM is not just some independent company trying to make money for themselves (like the people wanting writers at elance). MPAM actually offer training on how to build your own business, as well as providing hosting, and everything else I've mentioned. They're committed to helping their members succeed. And they want to support them in any way they feasibly can. It's a win-win situation - they get the content they need, people just staring out get to earn at home whilst they learn how to build their own business.

Anyway, the first month is free - and you get to take advantages of everything a paying member does. This includes being paid to earn at home writing articles! Check it out, there's absolutely nothing to lose. You can start writing, see if you like it, get some income, and start to learn about how to make the big dollars! Look at it this way - if they're able to pay people $5 per article, plus the wages of people who sort through the articles, and do all the administrative work, how much do you think they are making per article?

Check MPAM out here, and get your first month free...