How You Can Cash In

Let us accept that at least the tools or means for such exploitation are now readily available at a reasonable cost – the growing computer awareness and basic familiarity with Internet browsing or ‘surfing’ knowledge, along with basic user-friendly computer applications like ‘MS Word’ and ‘MS Excel’, and even easy Website building software! Computer hardware costs are also falling and are now within reach of the middle income groups. Those who cannot afford this can also access these services at about Rs. 10/- to as low as Rs. 5/- per hour at Internet browsing centres or ‘Cybercafes’ which are mushrooming everywhere and are probably available in your own neighbouring locality in urban centres. Having come upto this, let us see how your own home (or neighbourhood ‘Cybercafe’) Personal Computer (‘PC’ for short henceforth), coupled with basic computer and Internet knowledge, can generate additional household income for the unemployed, student, retired salary earner and even housewife (in the West she is now dignified as ‘homeworker’, because she contributes no less to hidden earnings by saving costs of hiring external labour for daily household chores). The opportunities arise because the exponentially increasing volume of work involved in marketing, advertising, and creating and maintaining database to serve the growing needs of the ‘global’ marketplace requires huge manpower, even beyond the capability of individual BPO companies specialized in providing or taking care of such services for other companies. Therefore, either these BPO companies themselves, or the source companies in need of such services, are reaching out to individuals with access to a PC and Internet connection to serve as their workers from home. Due to the huge number of such companies wanting to outsource some of their supporting activities to individual workers on the ‘Internet’, companies or organizations have sprung up to specialize in distributing work outsourced to them to individuals who can do part of the job using only their home computer and communicating with the work-providing BPO through the Internet, i.e, by E-Mails or specified areas to be accessed on the provider’s own or other ‘free classified’ Websites. The provider stipulates the nature and specifications of the jobs as well as payment details, send them to individuals who register with them through their sites on the Internet, and collect the finished jobs from the individual workers again through the Internet. Sometimes the work provider simply collects information on source companies in need of outsourcing, creating ‘Directories’ of these companies and sharing this information with people like you and me through their Websites, and charge what they call a ‘one-time’ fee just to enable you to approach these companies on their Websites, without taking any responsibility themselves for paying you on behalf of these companies!

The Procedure of Home Internet Job Registration

You have to first register with a job provider by going to their specified Website, clicking the appropriate button like ‘Register’ or ‘Apply’, and filling up your personal data like Name, Address, etc. in a form which opens on your computer screen when you click the correct button. Once you have filled up the form, another button like ‘Submit’ or ‘Continue’ will need to be clicked to open up another page specifying several options to pay your initial registration fee to the job provider - your Credit Card, bank draft, etc. In case you pay by Bank Draft, you have to send a copy of the registration form (so you have to first take out a printout of the registration/application form before clicking the ‘Submit’, ‘Continue’, ‘register’ or ‘apply’ button to go to the next stage of payment) along with Draft to the specified postal address. However, most job providers prefer to remain postally anonymous (often for nefarious reasons) and require you to pay electronically by authorizing them to charge the fees to your ‘credit card’. For international companies, the most preferred modes of payment are through ‘Paypal, ‘egold’, ‘alertpay’ and similar other internationally accepted ‘fund transfer’ agencies - some may be Credit cards, while some may merely make transactions through your Indian credit card or Indian bank A/C, provided you already have ‘online’ transaction arrangements with your Credit Card issuer or bank. So you need to first open an account with any of these agencies – Paypal is the one which is most universally accepted. For this, you need to open the ‘Paypal’ website (www.paypal.com), and follow the instructions there for registering with them; you will need to give them an E-Mail Address you use, and this is going to be the Account no. or Account ID which the various job providers will ask you online when you fill up the form to register with them on their Websites. You also need to fill up the 3-digit TPIN No. at the back of your credit card, so that ‘Paypal’ can verify your Credit Card with the said TPIN No. – they won’t ask you for the actual 16-digit Card No.

Once the above procedure is complied with, your work will begin to come to you on the Internet at the E-Mail Address you specified while filling up the registration Form (some still use the old-fashioned method of sending input materials and collecting the output by CDs) about 24-48 hours from the date the job provider gets your Draft or online payment. The registration fee may vary from Rs. 500/- to as much as Rs. 6,000/- depending on the type of job applied for – the higher the payment promised, the higher the fees. But remember, so also is the work volume, if not complexity. 90% of the ‘Get rich quick with only 30 mins…..2 hrs. on the Internet’ schemes screaming at you in attractive language from beautifully designed Websites are scams which simply devour your fees and then fail to provide work or to pay, on one pretext or another.