Picture this: Sleeping in, going to work in your pajama, not having to worry how your hair looks, not even having to leave the house and then finishing at 2 o'clock - that surely sounds like an awesome day at work, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, most people don't have that luxury and need to wake up at the crack of dawn. Sitting in traffic for a long time and having to deal with a cranky boss when they finally arrive at work. Later finishing work after slaving for eight hours and off onto the road again, only to arrive at home tired and exhausted from the long day, with yet another couple of those ahead before the weekend starts.

Many people wish they could work from home and on top of that earn good money while doing so.

You can work from home and earn a decent amount of money. How?

Well, here are a few things that I have tried out:

1. If you google for work from home jobs, you will mainly hit scam websites like PaidOnlineWritingJobs, whom I have already written about.  Do not trust sites that ask you to pay money in order for you to make money. There are plenty of websites out there, where you can register for free and start working right away. The best examples are Amazon's Mechanical Turk, Microworkers and Elance. Mechanical Turk provides great jobs, that can earn you a nice income. However South Africans have no option to get paid out in cash. Only Americans and Indians can withdraw cash. Users from any other country will receive an Amazon gift certificate equivalent to the amount that they've earned. Microworker and Elance both pay out via PayPal. Since PayPal is available in South Africa via FNB, this is one option to earn some extra cash on the side.
2. Trymyui is also a great way of making money online. All you need is a computer with a microphone and you are sorted. You will do website reviews via an audio recording and will receive $10 for each review. Sounds great, doesn't it? In order to earn R10.000 you'll only need to do about 143 tests a month. Working Monday to Friday for 6 hours a day, that means you'll need to do 5 tests an hour. This can easily be done, as one test takes between 10 - 15 minutes at a time.                                Too good to be true? Yes! ...Unfortunately Trymyui use Amazon's Mechanical Turk for users to access their tests. Another issue is that the demographics are mostly set to US residents only. I have been on trymyui for over 2 months now and only been invited to do 1 test thus far. I did get my $10, but it is in my Mechanical Turk account, meaning I can only use it to buy stuff on Amazon.com.
   
3. You can work for a company who requires you to work from home. I have recently tried that out for two different companies and if you are able to do the work, you are guaranteed the income at the end of the month. Where do you find those positions? Well, the one position was posted on Gumtree. It was a foreign company, who was looking for foreign language speakers to work from home in South Africa. All you needed to have is of course the foreign language skill, a computer and internet access. They advertised a part time position, that required 5-6 hours work per day for a total salary of R10.000 net.                                                                                                                       The other company, was looking for agents to support their business. The requirements are the same, a computer with internet access and some experience in the industry. I found this job on Google, while googling for work from home jobs. I filtered for sites from South Africa only and happend to land on a company's website, whom had posted this job alert on their own site. Compared to the other position, the income stream is unlimited and depends on how hard you work.

Websites such as Mechanical Turk, Elance, Microworkers or Trymyui are really great to make some extra money on the side, but unless you live in the US, you will probably not be able to make your sole income by working through them.

Stay away from websites who offer you a great income working from home, where you are promised a minimal time effort and streams of money flooding in. This is either an illegal pyramid scheme or they will require you to pay money in order to have access to their database and secrets of making money online.

Ultimately, if you want to make money working from home, you will still have to work hard just like any other person. The benefits if course are plenty, like being with your children or pets all day and not having to travel. On the other hand, there might be some disadvantages, like not having colleagues to talk to.

The best option yet to work from home, is to find an actual company, which either exists in South Africa or a country that you are familiar with (have been born in or know the culture). Now a days, in the age of technology and rapid internet access, many companies resort to having people work for them remotely. It just makes business sense not having to rent expensive office space and equipment. Many foreign companies open branches in South Africa to forgo the high minimum wage requirements and rocketing employment taxes in their countries.

Whatever you decide to do, be it working from home or being office based, you will need to work hard in order to make a good income.

You can also make money writing blogs for other people or advertising on your own blog. Blogstash lists over 55 websites that will pay you to blog. Most of the Advertisers will pay you to write a positive review about their product or service.
However, in order to get people to advertise on your blog  and live of your blog's income it needs to have a large amount of traffic. Your best bet to make money with your blog from the beginning, is to list a Google Ad Sense account.
This program can be used on any website that has traffic to earn money from advertising.