There are quite a few legitimate work-at-home opportunities for those who want to start a career at home. Many of them involve the use of the computer, writing, or customer service. Some are for other companies and some would be for you working on your own for another company. Some of the most common tasks that work, as home professionals will do are as follows:

Answer inbound phone calls: You can provide an answering service for busy companies who do not have the time to answer all their calls. You can be either directly employed by the company who you would do the services for or you could contract out your services for a flat fee.

Make sales calls: These are calls that you can make to potential prospects in order to convince them to buy a product or service. You can contract your services out or you can find a company who will hire you on. They will either pay you buy check or they will pay you electronically.

Sell Insurance: If you are an insurance agent you can work out of your home selling insurance.  You can also offer yourself to be available to new clients who are in your jurisdiction. You usually would represent a much larger company who wants to expand their territory, or a new company, which wants to begin selling insurance.

Complete Writing or Graphics Projects: These are projects that are usually done on your computer for a company. This is usually contract work that is assigned to you for a fee that you would charge. You can work for clients regularly, and you can also work for clients a few times. Writers will often complete manuals, website articles, stories, books, and other items that they would sell to someone who would purchase their work. Graphic artists will do similar, except that they usually sell computer art. Sometimes traditional paintings and drawings can be sold online as well, but a majority of the graphic arts opportunities posted online are for designing business logos, creating pictures for books, and similar art.

Sell Crafts and Greeting Cards: If you are very artistic, especially if you can combine your artistic talent along with technology, you can make money creating and selling your own greeting cards, and other types of stationery for gifts. You can also sell gift baskets as well.

Sell Computer Software: If you are a computer genius (a.k.a. computer geek) you would be proud to know that you can sell your newly created software packages online. This takes quite a bit of testing at first, and you have to find the right market for your products, but it can be done. You can make quite a bit of money designing new software.

Sell items at Online Auctions Sites: Some people have made a few thousand dollars a month just cleaning out all their storage spaces in their homes.

Schedule Appointments: You may have to take clients' appointments for your boss if you as well.

You can also start a variety of businesses that would reach out to your community that can be started at home. For instance, you can start a janitorial service by giving out your home phone number to people who would be interested in your services. Not only that, but you could also start an interior decorating service from your home, or any other service where the office can be located in your home, which reaches out to the community. You can also start a day care in your home where your customers will come to you. You have quite a few options when it comes to working at home, or starting a business out of your home.

Many work-at-home jobs where the client or business never has to see the inside of your home, with the exception of you talking through a web camera (yes other industries besides adult ones use them) is a safe way for you to do business. This is especially true with people you don't know. In fact, you can even have a telephone number connected to your computer in which the IP address of your computer is hidden, or you can use an unlisted, untraceable phone to conduct business. This will help ensure your safety.

If you would like to you will also need to watch out for home business scams. In order to avoid being taken aback by a company offering you a lucrative work-at-home opportunity you can watch out for a variety of attributes of that company's promotions. For example, they may promise you unrealistic results in a very short time, such as "Make a Million Dollars in One Month". Although this is possible, you need to read the find print to find out how much work you need to put into a business to reach that income bracket.

You also want to be wary of companies that place fake testimonials on their ads. The best way to know if their testimonials are fake is to try to research the names signed below the testimonials. You will also notice that many testimonials talk of too-good-to-be true results. If any opportunity seems as though it is unrealistic, chances are it is, or they are just not telling you the full cost of making those results happen.

Beware when jumping aboard any work-at-home opportunity. That warning applies to both freelance and direct hire home positions.