Many of them have the potential to grow into large businesses, if the owner wants.

Some of the most common ?legit? work at home businesses are:

Medical transcriptionist

Blog Writing, Managing, Promoting

Web Article Writer

Graphic Artist

Telephone Answering Service (via an Internet Phone)

Office Outsourcing

Virtual Assistant

Forum Poster

Debt Management

Property Investing

Stock Photographers

Teaching/Tutoring

eBay Selling

Collection agent

Mortgage broker

Property Managers

Coaching

Investing

Can you make $1200 a week writing for discussion boards, also called forum posting? Yes, but only if you work for a company like Odesk.com, or Elance.com, and you don't need to pay someone $50 - $100 to learn how to do it.

Can you make $1000 a month writing free content articles? Yes, if you use an article writing software program to help you research, and you have the right contacts.

Is it possible to make $1000 working 2 days a week, posting ads to a blog? Yes, but only if you learn the art of blog management and how to write ads without breaking the ?theme? of the blog. You also need to manage about 15 ? 20 blogs.

There are literally hundreds of work-at-home, or telecommuting jobs as they use to be called. Most of them build on skills you already have. The one thing that keeps people from success is lack of knowledge.

What Should You Pay For?

You should not pay to learn how to make $500 a week posting to forums. However, you can pay for the resources that can make it easier to do your job. These may include software programs such as speech to text, so you can create articles faster, premade business forms, strategies for investing and managing, and other ?technical? or ?managerial? knowledge that you need to succeed.

What you shouldn't purchase is a program that offers to help you make great wealth, quickly, without doing any work. You shouldn't pay for the ?secret to success.? Also, do not pay to join any secret organizations or networking groups that appear elitist. You also don't want to pay for any opportunity that promises that you can make hundreds of dollars a day, doing unskilled work.

Joining a forum, or a newsletter group is a good idea.

The bloggers who talk about work at home success cite ?lack of knowledge? as the number one hindrance to a home based business. The second is lack of work.

One of the biggest ?self sabotaging? problems with online business is answering emails, looking up free articles to teach you how to manage a small business, chatting in social forums and blogs, and ?learning.? Some business owners spend so much time ?learning? they never get around to doing anything that generates income.

It is important to realize that it is easy to make $1000 a week, but that usually entails working a six day work week, for about 10 ? 12 hours a day. When you look at the numbers that way, $13 - $16 an hour is quite reasonable.

Skilled Work

No one will make $1000 in their first week. Forum writing, mortgage brokering, blog advertising, all of these are skilled work. One thousand people will fail because they don't take the time needed to build their skills, and learn how to do the job, and run their business, better than the thousands of people who have no skills, and will never reach their full potential.