Looking for a work at home opportunity?

I wanted to review something for this post, and decided to approach it from the same direction that a person new to working at home might. I went to Google and typed in the search phrase, “work at home opportunity” (that link will take you to Google and repeat the search).

When I did the search, the top spot was titled, Work At Home Jobs: Free Legitimate Opportunities to work. Figuring that Google knew what was best for me, I clicked that link (the link to the site just above will open in a new window, so you can follow along here and see the site).

My first impression wasn’t good. Everything above the fold (on the first visible portion of the page) is either ads or a box for you to sign up for a newsletter. This is typical of sites that are designed solely to earn money via clicks on ads. Since the purpose of such sites is to earn money via ad clicks, providing useful content is secondary.

But, I wanted to give the site the benefit of the doubt. I’m playing the role of someone new to all this, so I click the Job Search link.

This looks better, I’ve got a categorized listing of opportunities. There are 5 in the Forum Posters section, so let’s check there. I could post on forums all day long! The top item is titled, “Forum Poster - Get Paid to Post About Anything!” That sounds nice, so let’s click it.

We have to wait through a loading page that is nothing but ads. After the loading page we end up on another page on the same site. There is absolutely no reason for the loading page, other than to try to entice you to click an ad. Another hit to the site’s credibility.

The page about paid forum posting, at first glance, looks fairly professional. It’s laid out like a job opening you might find at Monster.com or other online job sites.

And yet…contextual ads are displayed, and the links are all affiliate links that earn the site owner money when you click and sign up. There’s even a hokey “You’ve been selected for a chance to win $5000″ link that is totally out of place in a job listing, that takes you to an online survey site that earns the site owner money if you sign up.

And the sign up bonus listed says you get a “Free Sony Vaio Laptop”. The link takes you to one of those “complete 5 offers and get your laptop” type of sites. And you guessed it, the site owner earns money if you sign up for it.

Most of the links on the page are totally inappropriate for the subject, and none of them actually lead to sites that will pay you to post on forums. There are a couple of clever links, one for health insurance (since you’ll be working as a contractor), and another to an e-fax service (since, according to the site, you’ll need to accept faxes to do the job).

I could go on and review other “opportunities” on the site, but I expect I’d find more of the same. Content loosely wrapped around every affiliate opportunity the site owner could find, all nicely optimized to make Google think that the site is providing useful information.

This is all too common in the world of work at home opportunities. There are a lot of people looking to profit from the desire of those of us who want to legitimately work at home. It’s important to be able to cut through the bull and identify the sites that are providing useful information.

If you have any sites you’ve been wondering about, let us know the URL and we’ll take a look.