3 Great Stay-at-Home Jobs

There are many benefits to working from home: There’s no commute, the hours are flexible, and you can even do your job in your pajamas. However, some jobs are better suited for a home office than others. Plus, there are plenty of work-at-home scams lurking about, so you need to be careful.

To find the best work-at-home jobs, we searched for occupations with good hourly wages and promising growth prospects. We then sought out actual companies that hire home-based workers for legitimate work-at-home positions. Here are some of the top jobs we found.

Virtual Assistant

Let’s start with virtual assistant. Do you have a passion for organization as well as administrative experience? If so, this job is for you. Virtual assistants do everything a traditional assistant might do, like scheduling appointments, managing digital files, preparing presentations and making travel plans, but on a contract basis. That means you can take on multiple clients. Average pay is $15 per hour, and you’ll need at least a high school degree.

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Online Tutor

Expertise in a particular subject, a computer and a bit of patience are what it takes to break into online tutoring. There are a couple of options here. For one, you can consult web sites like InstaEDU.com and Tutor.com to be connected with students virtually. You’ll be hired on a freelance basis. Or, check out GetEducated.com, which lists remote job postings at community colleges, libraries and universities. In this scenario you’ll likely be hired and paid as a part-time employee. Average pay is $15 per hour, and you’ll be required to have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Translator

It turns out your high school teacher was right; it pays to be bilingual. A number of firms hire multilingual people as translators to freelance translations of business documents, consumer Web sites, computer software and academic papers. You can earn an average of $24 per hour, and bachelor’s degrees are preferred. Pay and employment prospects improve if you speak in-demand languages such as Chinese and Japanese. Top experienced translators who can handle complex projects can rake in six-figure pay annually.

If these positions don't fit your skills, check out seven more work-at-home jobs that might.

Before joining the Kiplinger team as Online Community Editor in 2013, Rebecca was associate travel editor at the Huffington Post, where she also handled the travel section's social media. She landed at AOL/HuffPost after earning an MS in journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School, with a concentration in health and science journalism. Prior to that, she covered lifestyle at Jacksonville Magazine, in Jacksonville, Fla., preceded by a stint at American Cheerleader magazine. She holds a BA from the College of William and Mary.