It is always difficult to find legitimate work from home jobs, but I have found that Craigslist can be a good source. However, it does take a bit of work to find the good telecommute jobs amongst the “regular’ jobs and the scammers. To make the job easier, I have come up with these tips to finding a good work from home job on Craigslist.

1. Don’t limit your searches to cities near you. When you work from home your boss could be half away across the world from you, location really doesn’t matter. Start with the larger cities and work your way through the whole list of Craigslist. One thing I would like to see with Craigslist is a search feature that includes all cities. As far as I know you can’t do that right now. So for now you need to do your searches city by city.

2. Start your search with cities where employers have to pay to place an ad. Not all Craigslist ads are free. In some of the larger cities, employers are required to pay to place an ad. Scammers don’t like to pay for ads, so this weeds out a lot of scam artists. San Francisco and New York are two cities that you need to pay to place a help wanted job on Craigslist.

3. When you work from home, it really doesn’t matter what location your employer is at. So don’t limit yourself to only searching cities near you.

4. Look at all job categories, not just the field you want to work in. Not everyone classifies things the same way. For example, I have found bookkeeping jobs in almost every category, including general labor and manufacturing. Some employers will classify by the type of business they have, as opposed to the type of job. So, if a manufacturer needs a bookkeeper, they put the ad under manufacturing.

5. Use the search box! Don’t spend your time scrolling down lists. Most jobs posted will not be telecommute or work at home jobs. Use search terms such as “work from home”, “telecommute”, “work remote”, etc. Make sure to use the quotation marks to precisely define your search and weed out the results you don’t want.

6. Watch out for the scammers. No matter where you look, there will always be scammers. Be sure to read up on how to spot a work from home scam, and know that with few exceptions, you should never have to pay to get a job.

With these tips and a little work you should be able to find a number of opportunities for legitimate work from home jobs. Good Luck!

If you like watching courtroom TV, you might enjoy working from home as an eJuror. The United States is a country where anyone can sue anybody, anytime, for just about any reason. Attorneys will use mock juries to help them determine various issues that may come up in court. With a mock jury an attorney can test out their arguments before they get to court, they can determine a settlement amount, and they can get a feel for what the average person thinks about their case.

Working as an eJuror you will be asked to review cases from your local area. You will read a summary of the facts of the case, arguments from both perspectives, and then you will answer questions about the case and what went into the decisions you made.

There are a few sites where you can sign up to be an eJuror. All require that you be at least 18 years old and a U.S. citizen. You will be asked to provide demographic information about yourself, and agree to standard terms and conditions. According to the websites, cases will take around an hour to read the summaries and answer all the questions.

Trial Practices, Inc. says they pay $10 per hour to their eJurors. There site does not have much information for potential jurors, just a sign up page.

Online Verdict.com has an informative site that says they pay $20 – $60 per case, depending on the amount of time required. They pay monthly by check.

eJury.com pays $5 to $10 per case and pays by PayPal. They have a very informative site, and include sample cases. The sample cases are a nice way to preview what you will be doing.

Unless you were able to take on many cases per day, I don’t think you could make a living as an eJuror. But it is an online opportunity where you could make a decent amount of money per hour, working from home with a flexible schedule.

I found this older post from ZenHabits today. I find that while I love working from home, I do sometimes find it hard to stay productive. There are so many distractions, and no one looking over my shoulder making sure I am working!

While I was reading the post I was struck by how much of the advice related to working at home the way you would work in an office. Things such as setting a schedule, limiting the number of hours you work, and taking breaks are all things that happen naturally with most “away from home” jobs. I tend to either have trouble getting started and spend all day procrastinating, or I get so involved in my work I work 12 or 14 hours straight and forget to eat. Honestly, I’m not sure how productive I really am after 10 hours of working without eating!

While all 30 work from home tips were great the last tip was my favorite.

30. Be grateful you’re working from home and not in some cubicle! That gratitude will motivate you to work harder, so you can continue to work from home.

So click on over to ZenHabits to read the rest of the 30 work from home tips, and find even more great tips in the comments.

Would you like to share your best tips for staying productive while working from home? Comment with them here and I’ll put them all together in a WFH Pro post and give you credit!

Those of you who know the joys of working from home, whether you’re self-employed or freelancing or telecommuting, know also the joys of procrastination and the lures of laying on the couch. Now, I’m as much in favor of a good nap as the next guy, but a nap should be a break, not your default work mode….

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As more and more people work from home and take company calls from there, it’s inevitable that we’ll be hearing more and more interesting sounds in the background going on at people’s homes. Everyone has heard the toddler trying to talk to daddy or mommy while they’re on an important conference call. Here are some of the other intriguing sounds you might be hearing in the background:

• Excessive slurping of coffee
• Small children to the extent that is sounds like the employee is moonlighting at a day care
• Dogs barking
• Toilets flushing
• Trains
• Cabs
• Heavy breathing

The office creates a sterile environment for conference calls devoid of ancillary noise but at home, life goes on and the presence of families and their activities provide a backdrop for the modern day conference call.

My favorite is the toilet flush. I have not personally experienced hearing one on a call, but I have had friends who have heard one go down (excuse the pun) on a call. The funny thing is that many times, the initiator of the sounds can be identified since often there is a limited group of call participants who are at home while most are in the office. How many of you have succumbed to the call of mother nature and muted a call during a pit stop?

I’ve experienced an employee conducting another phone call in parallel with a conference call that I was on with them and they accidentally added the other party and the conversation to the first call! Although it was not a memorable call to listen in on, about 7 of us were listening in on a call that we weren’t invited to. Our call participants went silent as we were overcome by another conversation.

While we try to make avid use of the mute button, inevitably there are mishaps. It’s inevitable that you will be on the wrong end of the equation at some point in your work from home life.

This article I ran into explains that in companies with a high concentration of telecommuters, there is an adverse effect on those who are left behind in the company offices.

These workers are more likely to feel less committed and are more likely leave the company. There is a perception that those left behind have been left with more work and are permitted less flexibility than their peers.

With the focus in the press so often placed on the telecommuters themselves and the benefits derived, here is another ignored side of telecommuting that companies need to be aware of.

I made the trek up to the 3rd floor to my home office and found the above gruesome but not-too-uncommon discovery on the carpet by the door. A few feet away I found another pile of body parts, this time, internal organs:

And then there was the bulk of the remains a few feet further away. It appears I came just in time – the octopus could be saved but the goose was too far gone.

The culprit was found, surprised that we had located her …

As a manager for a consulting services organization who works from home, I occasionally need to get out of the home office and actually meet with humans face-to-face. Although the rigors of the airport ritual make me wince when I think about traveling, I enjoy getting out of the house and into a real office talking with people in the flesh.

Leading customer meetings in-person is much more demanding mentally and physically than conducting them via phone. If you don’t get out there once in a while, you get out of practice and your skills start to decline.

If you’ve been home-bound for too long, I recommend getting out there and creating a reason to get into an office. Meet with your coworkers or your customer in-person. Doing so could prove to be rejuvenatinating if you feel that the working from home pattern has been repeating itself for too long.

If you manage a team of telecommuters, find a way to get an in-person team meeting at least once a year. Over the years, I’ve encountered budgetary resistance to holding these but it is critical that these be held. The team bonding is one of the biggest reasons for it. It’s hard for people to feel like a team if they’re geographically dispersed and never see each other in person.

Telecommuting full time has it’s benefits but staying locked up in your home with no outside stimulation is not healthy over the long term.

I remember my first “real day” on the job of my first WFH position. I had just taken a consulting position for a hot pre-IPO software company and I really felt like I had taken my career up a notch. My pay was up 75% over my previous job and everyone I knew that worked for this company was poised and scary smart. As a result, I felt immense pressure for my first days and weeks to be performed at my best.

It was primarily a travel job – I worked from home and flew to customer sites on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, my very first customer visit in the new position didn’t transpire as I would have liked.

I traveled on Sunday night for a Monday early start. It was probably a large insurance company having issues with their software implementation and I was to parachute in and save the day. Those were some of my favorite engagements: the customer could be losing millions of dollars a day with a non-performing system and you had hours to turn around major improvements. I was always rather good at it.

My flight in was uneventful and I made it to the hotel without issue and proceeded to find a restaurant to grab some dinner. I located a major-chain Italian restaurant (small town options were limited) and ordered the seafood pasta dish. Dinner went fine and I went home to bed early so that I could be on top of my game for my first-ever customer.

I began throwing up around 3:00 AM and continued to do so for about 4 hours. I cursed the chain restaurant all night and vowed never to return to any of their locations as long as I lived (10 years later, I haven’t returned).

Nonetheless, I cleaned myself up and left sleep-deprived and dehydrated for the customer site with my suit and tie properly applied. I remember that the day went remarkably normal and nothing really came of my weakened state and I completed the engagement successfully.

It was just one of those times in life where you wonder to yourself if someone is pulling the strings, controlling your fate and trying to mess with you. I have this image of me as a marionette with an ethereal figure above me directing me to eat bad seafood and laughing an evil laugh: “Ha, ha, ha, let’s see how he handles this curve ball”. What are the odds that the only time I get food poisoning is the night before one of the most important professional days of my career at the time?

This article is stating that by 2011, there will be 1 billion mobile workers in the world and 75% of the U.S. workforce will be mobile. I take that as meaning telecommuters plus workers who travel heavily for their job.

The usual causes for the trend are outlined in the article (reduced corporate real estate costs, proliferation of wi-fi availability, etc.), but for the first time that I can recall, the article states that companies who embrace it will enjoy a competitive advantage, not just happy workers and reduced costs:

“Organizations deploying mobile solutions enjoy a strategic competitive advantage over their competitors who have not invested in integrating mobility into their cultural roadmap.”

I thought I’d call your attention to this good article written by Jody Gilbert, a 12-year telecommuting “hermit” (her words), documenting 10 points that can help you evaluate your own suitability for telecommuting.