If you type in “internet job” or “online job” into Google, 99% of the search results are probably going to be scams. The sites that claim to give only legit or scam-free opportunities are the scammiest of them all. Sites that claim to have been scammed and now offer the best, scam-free online opportunities to help you are straight up scams. Paid online surveys, paid work from home, paid to this and that are pretty much all scams. All the sites that go along the lines of “make thousands a week working a few hours a day” are straight from scammedy central. As cliche as it sounds, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, especially, perhaps, on the internet. So we wrote this section to hopefully help you avoid all the scams.Basically if you follow the principle of “if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is,” you’ll protect yourself against most scams. Here’s another major principle that will protect against most scams: NEVER pay for a job. You’re the one getting hired. Why would you pay a fee to get it? It might sound like a “no duh” but this is how people get scammed often on the internet. The typical scam website along these lines will have a lot of hype about how much you can make, with “real testimonies” from “real people,” and then toward the bottom will offer to help you make that money if you’ll pay a one-time fee of any from $30 to $80. Often times, they’ll make this one-time fee look like a discount from what it used to be, and often times will try to trick people into paying them by saying it’s a time-sensitive or limited offer (like, only in the next 10 minutes! or only 6 spots left!). These are all blaring signals of scam. Stay far, far away.

Be especially careful with sites that claim to be scam-free or claim others are scams. Think about it. Microsoft doesn’t claim to be scam-free when they’re hiring. Neither does Google or Yahoo. They still are able to hire people last time I checked. In fact, go on Monster or Careerbuilder and see how many job listings claim to be 100% scam-free. If there are any, they’re probably 110% scams. A real job opening or listing carries legitimacy without having to claim to be scam-free, or claiming others are all scams. Keep that in mind, especially when coming across sites that try to tell you they’ve finally found scam-free work online opportunities.

So are there any legitimate online jobs? The quick answer is yes, but they’re not as glamorous and easy as the scams sound. The major one I know of is Tutor.com, based on hearing from friends who have worked for them. They hire mainly college students and pay $7-$10 per hour for tutoring high school and middle school students. There’s a pretty long application to fill out. It’s isn’t going to make you rich but could be for you if you enjoy tutoring, and earn you some spending money.

There are other ways to legitimately make money online, but you’re dealing with a rough crowd. One of the other ways to do so is if you have a really popular blog. You can get paid for advertising on your blog site, through Google Adsense, provided you have a lot of unique visitors daily. Without at least a few thousand or so unique visitors daily, it’s hard to make any substantial amount off of this. Overall, I would recommend working a campus job over working online, as it is far less risky and has other benefits. See our campus jobs section for more.