New and exciting work options seem to pop up all the time in today’s fast-paced cyber-world. Even so, certain fields have emerged as the most popular — and successful — online choices. Explore our hot picks to see if there’s something that fits your skills, talents or interests.

1. Coaching and Teaching
2. Communications/Information
3. Direct Sales
4. E-tailing
5. Event Planning
6. Parenting Services/Products
7. Personal Services
8. Virtual Assistant
9. Website Consultant
10. Work-at-Home Support

Mompreneurs Online

Donna Gonzalez recently posted her resume on websites like Career Builder.Com and quickly got a reply, “They just need people who already had bank accounts set up, so we could cash the checks for them.”

According to Donna, a company called Global Healthcare Inc.,out of London, sent her a contract asking her to cash checks and wire them the money. It was supposedly quicker than doing it overseas. Donna was promised 10-percent of the money cashed, “It looked legitimate I mean I went to paralegal school and I knew some contractual law and so the contract looked legitimate, but it wasn’t evidentially.”

After Donna cashed a check from a “so called” customer and wired the company more than 25-hundred dollars, she later found out the check was fake and she was the one who was stuck paying, “I was so devastated I cried so hard.”

Sgt. Kevin Smith of the St. Petersburg Police Department says, he gets calls like this one at least two times a week, “It’s heartbreaking because you really hate to see people out there trying to work, trying to sell something to be taken advantage of.”

Sgt. Kevin Smith says websites like Career Builder.Com are safe, but people need to be more aware of who they’re dealing with, “Unfortunately anybody has a right to log in and look at those resumes so you really don’t know who’s actually offering you a job.”

He says thieves are also targeting victims through the mail and even fax machines. . Sgt. Smith says it’s difficult to catch the thieves because of trying to coordinate with other countries. He says banks don’t take responsibility for these incidents, because it’s the account holder who’s cashing the checks, even though they’re not aware they’re fake.

Donna now believes if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, “I’m really afraid to go on line anymore and even answer emails from companies.” While she paid an expensive price, she hopes others learn from her experience

First Coast News

What kind of job did you have at 17?

I posed that question to the grown-ups I encountered recently while exploring Whateverlife.com. The teen-girl site and company was started by Ashley Qualls, an entrepreneur from a working-class neighborhood outside Detroit, who happens to be 17 herself. At that age, LeeAnn Prescott, the research director at Hitwise, was working at an amusement park, fashioning faux Civil War shots of people. Robb Lippitt, the former COO of ePrize who consults for Qualls, had worked his way up from dishwasher to prep cook to manager of Buddy’s BBQ. Ceca Mijatovic, the founder of the girls portal dayZloop, didn’t have a job yet; she was a foreign-exchange student from Yugoslavia. Me? I was delivering pizza for Domino’s.

“Of course, this,” says Ian Moray of ValueClick Media, referring to Whateverlife, “is something we all wish we’d done when we were 17.”

If only the Internet had been around then. One of the many fascinating things about Whateverlife is that Ashley didn’t set out to start a business. The Internet practically did it for her. Web design was a hobby, something she’d been learning online since she was 9. As a high-school sophomore, she figured out how to create layouts for MySpace pages, and her friends at Lincoln Park High School were keen to customize theirs, much like school lockers. As word spread throughout the MySpace universe, the 15-year-old couldn’t afford the servers to support her exploding online audience. A friend suggested using Google AdSense, which generates ad revenue based on a site’s traffic. Ka-ching. Whateverlife was off and running. Ashley has created nearly 3,000 layouts, her monthly audience is around 7 million, and revenue has grown from a couple of thousand bucks a month to as much as $70,000 - more than $1 million in less than two years.

Fast Company

You hear a lot about companies routing their customer-service calls to workers overseas, but a less-noticed trend is the growth in home-based call-center workers. The number of such workers in North America has tripled since 2000, according to an estimate by research firm Yankee Group, with more than 670,000 phone agents in the United States and Canada now working at home.

Thanks to the Internet and better call-routing technology, more companies are finding they can outsource their order-taking, sales and problem-solving calls to home-based workers, said LiveOps Chairman Bill Trenchard. LiveOps not only runs an outsource operation, Trenchard said, but it provides technology for companies that want to set up their own home-based call centers.

Home-based workers tend to be better educated and more loyal than their counterparts at traditional call centers, Trenchard said. Most of LiveOps’ workers have college degrees — Opara has a master’s — and turnover is low.

Call centers usually have no tolerance for audible distractions, so a crying baby, barking dog or ringing doorbell could get you fired. (Some companies require their workers have dedicated offices with doors to minimize potential distractions.) An operator also needs a dedicated phone line, a computer and high-speed Internet access.

Some call centers that say they are currently hiring include:

• Alpine Access
• LiveOps
• Arise
• West at Home

MSN Money

Just over a year ago, we covered Ether, which makes it easy for (budding) entrepreneurs to sell spoken advice and support by providing them with a dedicated 1-888 number for customers to call, and taking care of billing and payments. Now, a massive player has joined the arena. Skype’s latest software release includes a beta version of Skype Prime. The service is very similar to Ether: sellers set a price, fixed or per minute, find buyers for their service, and Skype handles the rest. Of course, instead of using phone lines, both sellers and buyers use Skype’s voice over IP platform.

While Skype charges ‘call providers’ more than Ether does—30% commission versus 15%—Skype’s obvious benefit is its existing global user base. Skype has over 171 million registered users, is available in 28 languages and is used in almost every country around the world. Which means a very large reach for minipreneurs who’d like to sell their services, whether they’re offering Spanish lessons, tax advice or something saucier. (Note that Skype’s guidelines state that call providers cannot offer any content or service that is adult, sexual, pornographic or paedophiliac.)

Other alternatives include BitWine and Wengo.

springwise.com

Wendy Newmeyer started her foray into the balsam business by selling the cut branches of the balsam fir trees for a local incense factory.

Quite coincidentally, she had read in a book that Native Americans used balsam trees as herb for many different home remedies. With her long-standing interests in herbs “that got me excited into thinking about balsams in a different way,” said Wendy. She became a supplier to the incense factory, which used her balsam fir boughs to stuff souvenir pillows.

Through the years Wendy has experimented with trade shows, catalogue sales, the QVC home shopping network, and many other avenues to showcase her products.

She recently set-up a web site, to widen her market reach and take a dip on Internet retailing. Her worldwide outlets now exceed 4,400 stores and her employees have increased to 12. Sales of Maine Balsam Fir Products have reached well over $500,000 per year.

Unusual Business Ideas That Work

A bold claim, perhaps. But new technology and opportunities make it easier than ever to start a lucrative business at home.

Gone are the days when a fledgling business required a large investment of start-up capital. With a phone, a computer, and a great idea, it’s possible to join the legion of people who have started businesses from home.

Home-based businesses now comprise almost half of the estimated 26 million small businesses nationwide, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data. New technologies have made it possible for a solo entrepreneur to begin a business that once would have required the resources of a much larger organization. Thanks to new tools, the range of home-based industries stretches far beyond consulting or even eBay businesses. Read the rest of this entry »

Russell Hirst was just 21-years-old when he set up his online flower delivery service from a bedroom at his parents’ home in Manchester, England. Hirst’s ‘one room, one computer’ company is now selling flowers to 120 countries.

Hirst says he is self-taught when it comes to the internet and attributes his success with Valueflora to noticing a gap in the market. By putting customers in touch with the farms that grew the flowers, he could cut out the middle man.

Customers choose their flowers from the website, their order is sent directly to the flower farms, where they are packaged and sent. There are no call centres – everything is done online, and Valueflora has just six members of staff.

Amazingly, Hirst claims his global enterprise cost under £10 to start. “It was done on a shoestring,” says Hirst. “I paid £8 for the domain name and it was pretty much just me for the first 18 months, cold calling people and getting in touch with the farmers.”

Hirst is planning to branch out into providing flowers for events, and remains keen to extend the Value brand further. With a current annual growth rate of 700% and a 2006 turnover of £1.2m

Startups.co.uk

Once you’ve decided to take the plunge and move your home-based business to a commercial office space, there are a number of decisions you’ll have to make. First, where will you go and what facilities will you need?

Taking an office close to your home and your employees’ homes is always a good bet, as it will cut down both on gas costs and on driving time. An office outside the home should provide a comfortable space—such as a conference room—where you can meet with customers and employees, particularly if one of your motivations for leaving home is to impress clients and appear more professional.

So be cautious about the length of the lease you sign, Lasher advises, no matter how good a deal a landlord offers you on a long-term lease. “Try to negotiate a one-year lease with a one- or two-year option if you have any reservations about your move or whether the space will meet your future needs.

Jeffrey Landers, a serial entrepreneur and the owner of Offices2share.com, agrees. “The most common and often the most fatal mistake made by fledgling businesses is signing a multiyear lease which can require a financial obligation that may outlive the business itself,” he says.

Once you’ve settled on a location, draw up a list of costs to include in your budget. You should include one-time costs associated with the move and the purchase of new furniture and equipment, as well as ongoing fixed costs, such as rent, insurance, and utilities. Will the building provide adequate parking for you and your employees? Make sure you include parking costs in your budget.

businessweek.com

Want to make a living playing your favorite games? There are many ways to break into the videogame industry, according to experts. These job types offer the fastest path into sought-after studios like Electronic Arts, THQ and Ubisoft.

Paying your rent playing videogames sounds fun, but the reality can be far more tedious, says Kaos studios associate producer Dennis Allard Crow. When he started his career as a game tester, he played the game Tony Hawk’s Underground for days at a stretch, searching for errors. It might sound mind-numbingly monotonous, but the job is one of the few left in the industry for inexperienced youngsters. The problem: The secret is out, and studios are inundated with applications. Crow says that for every tester at his studio, they have 10 applicants. To get your resume noticed, write summaries of 10 games you played, detailing what you liked about the game and what you didn’t. “Demonstrate a love for videogames,” says Crow.

forbes.com

A layer of ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate chip cookies. A good idea, huh?

Richard LaMotta thought so, and in the 25 years since he invented the Chipwich, a billion have sold.

The Chipwich didn’t become a sensation because of TV ads or marketing, but because LaMotta used an army of college students to hawk it on pushcarts on street corners - going directly to the consumer.

Now LaMotta, a resident of Mount Kisco, is promoting another new idea that again bypasses grocery stores and other traditional venues.

His new venture is called myStudentBiz. And, once again, students are the centerpiece of his marketing plan.

LaMotta intends to recruit high school and college students from around the country to distribute novelty snacks in neighborhood businesses, such as Laundromats, dry cleaners, car washes and bridal shops.

The students make $5 for every box they sell. The retailer gets a 45 percent profit, and LaMotta gets a way to put new products into the public eye without spending a penny on advertising.

The students can also win a $10,000 bounty if they discover a food item that myStudentBiz can market.

LaMotta said he has personally invested $3 million in myStudentbiz.

LaMotta, who is 54, said that when he was a young man, he spent 15 years attending college at night. He wants to help today’s students make some money to avoid his experience.

“It harkens back to my own childhood. A lot of this comes from being a poor kid growing up in Brooklyn,” he said. “I want every kid who is interested in this to have an opportunity.”

thejournalnews.com

Homestead Technologies commissioned a study on home-based businesses and found the following as their list of “hot” opportunities that can be run from home:

1. E-Learning: With advances in new web application tools such as podcasts and video blogs, development costs will decrease.
2. E-Bay Aftermarket: Helping companies conduct market research, pricing strategies, shipping, and competitive analysis is a great niche business.
3. Children Arts Education: There is a major market for teachers of right-brained education who are thought to help foster the development of future innovators.
4. Garage Organizers: Just as organizing closets was the next big thing in the 80’s, the messy garage is the final space to clean up.
5. Background Checks: Small businesses with limited resources are turning to background check companies to handle investigation and due diligence.
6. Pet Sitting: An ideal home-based business where you get paid to walk and enjoy the companionship of pets.
7. Specialized Coaching: The coaching market has boomed in the recent years including specialized areas such as life, spiritual, corporate, relationship and business.
8. Home-based Debt Collection: Debt has become a way of life for many Americans. Operating a low overhead home-based collection service can serve the niche sections of this market.
9. Specialized Outsourcing: The small business market has limited resources and a focus on core competencies. Specialized outsourcing from home to small business will have a solid position market position for years to come.
10. Scrap Booking: In today’s easy to save and store digital age, opportunities abound for the home-based scrapbook artist, workshop teacher, or a direct sales rep.

Will you get rich with any of these ideas? Probably not. But, that is not the point for most who choose to run a home-based business. It is to earn income while enjoying the flexibility and freedom of running a small business from home.

Most work-at-home jobs don’t guarantee regular, salaried employment. Many neglect to mention that you have to work many hours without pay. Others require that you spend your own money for products or instructions before finding out how the offer works. And the “work” may entail getting others to sign up for the same job–which continues the fraud.

Work-at-home scams have cost victims thousands of dollars. Check out all jobs before responding. Legitimate companies provide information in writing.

There’s no easy road to wealth. Operating a home-based business is just like any other–they require hard work and good products or services, and it takes time to make a profit.

Order a free DVD from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service on work-at-home scams.