Are Data Entry Jobs Real?
Data entry job opportunities seem to be everywhere on the Internet. A search will throw up numerous results for those you can do from home - but which ones are legitimate and which ones take you down a blind alley? Before you click on any of those results, it's important to know what to expect and how to differentiate between a legitimate offer of data entry work and something that is little more than an affiliate marketing scheme. It's also worth noting that even if you do find some legitimate offers online, it's unlikely that you will make a lot of money, and more likely that you will find yourself becoming part of a marketing ploy rather than a data entry worker.
Be Fully Aware of Scams
First and foremost, as with any potential offers of online work, you need to be aware that scams are in operation, many of which may look tempting. Do remember that these offers are little more than attempts to get money from you, rather than help you to earn it. The most common scams are the ones that require you to purchase software or job kits to carry out these jobs. Alternatively, some websites will carry offers to supply you with a list of legitimate data entry jobs online that are often touted as 'secret', supposedly unknown to the majority of online users. These are not legitimate offers of jobs because the results you may (or indeed may not) receive are neither exclusive nor secret and you should never pay any money to any of these organisations. Instead, carry out your own searches and learn how to spot the genuine offers from the pie-in-the-sky promises.
Is It Easy to Recognise a Real Data Entry Job Online?
Data entry jobs are frequently used as bait to lure people into a false sense of hope about landing a good work from home job and real data entry jobs online are very few and far between. If you haven't been asked to part with a lump sum of cash and you don't feel pressured into providing some personal information and details about yourself and your lifestyle, then there's no real harm in signing up to one of these sites, except for encountering a lot of dead ends as a result! But how can you avoid these searches that lead nowhere?
The best possible way of finding a data entry job online is to sign up to a legitimate work from home jobs website that looks professional, carries little in the way of promises to make you loads of money and appears to be active and busy in a few different areas. For example, they may list survey taking as one of their jobs, or perhaps they have opportunities to write blog posts or articles for publication on the Internet. You can usually spot the scams by the unrealistic claims of how a stay at home mum is making £500 a day; and sites with pictures of monthly four figure sum cheques should definitely be avoided.
Keeping it Real
If you're serious about taking on a data entry job that will earn you actual money, then you probably won't want to waste your time checking out 95% of these so called 'opportunities' as you'll probably become frustrated very early on in your search. Why is this the case? Because most data entry jobs are carried out by people who are already employed full-time in an office environment, and very few of these jobs are ever carried out at home. Therefore, the hunt for online versions of data entry jobs will be more difficult that you might at first have anticipated, and all those flashing and blinking offers of how to make 'real money at home' come nowhere near to what the actual truth of these positions really is. But that doesn't mean that online data entry jobs don't exist at all; and it doesn't mean that you have to affiliate yourself with anyone either - all that signing up to and receiving junk email, advertising on your blog, and repeat offers for all sorts of useful things simply for the sake of earning a tiny amount of money, need not put you off the scent of finding a truly legitimate data entry job.
Most data entry jobs online are US based, and a search within the UK may prove less fruitful. Nevertheless, there are two promising looking UK sites that appear to be offering genuine data entry posts online: Reed and Guardian Jobs.
These sites look like they have actual jobs rather than dead ends, and they may be just the sites you are looking for.