3 best (and real) work-at-home jobs

Consider these 3 jobs - some rather traditional and others unexpected -- for interesting at-home work and good (if competitive) prospects.

Virtual assistant
This is a field with much potential, in part because the title description covers many things. "You can fit your offerings to what you know how to do," says Foster. One can own a virtual assistant business or work from home for a company that makes you available to other employees or clients.
HomeWithTheKids.com, for example, currently features several such companies. Small businesses hire virtual assistants to help when they can't justify a permanent employee. The International Virtual Assistants Association, which Durst co-founded in the 1990s, began with 28 members and has grown to more than 600 and charges from $15 per hour to more than $100 per hour.

Medical transcriptionist
As Foster knows, being a medical receptionist is a demanding job, and nearly every company listed on her site seeks applicants with experience and/or training from certain schools. The work involves listening to and typing up dictation from doctors -- some of whom have difficult accents, slur words together, and even "eat, drink, chew gum (and) talk to other people in the room" while dictating, she says. But hearing about medical matters can be interesting, and good transcriptionists are in very high demand. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2010 data, the median hourly rate for transcriptionists is $15.82.

Translator
Those with fluency in more than one language translate audio files or documents, not just word for word, but often with cultural differences in mind. "Companies can access home-based translators with hard-to-find language skills without being held back by geographic location," says Fell.

Foster's site lists 14 companies that seek home-based translators. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook 2012-13, which groups translators and interpreters, notes a projected employment increase of 42 percent over the 2010-to-2020 decade, much faster than the average for all occupations.

The national median hourly wage for translators and interpreters was $20.82, with a median annual wage of $43,300 as of 2010, according to estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some industries pay significantly higher, with the highest paying jobs generally in the professional, scientific and technical services areas, in which the annual median wage was $51,650.