You've probably seen the commercials with the young, beautiful mom standing next to her brand new SUV with the giant house in the background claiming to make $10,000 a month with her baby on her lap. If the thought of working from home intrigues you, their are many things you need to know. While legitimate work from home opportunities do exist, they are not as easy to find as these commercials make them appear.

First, you need to understand the difference between a work from home job and a work from home business. A job is a situation where you work for an employer who sends you a regular paycheck for the hours you worked or the projects you completed, typically taking out taxes and other withholdings. A work from home business is a situation where you work for yourself, selling a product or service, only are paid when you complete a task or make a sale, and taxes are not taken out. You are also not responsible to a "boss," as you are the owner of the business.

Work from home businesses can be quite lucrative, but they require a lot of work and often some investment for equipment, advertising, and an online presence. This deters a lot of people, because finding the money upfront is difficult. Also, many people fail at home based businesses because they do not have the proper skills to market their product or service, or they are not disciplined enough to keep working at their business.

Finding a home-based job is not easy. There are some companies that hire home based workers on a regular basis, however. Call centers are starting to outsource their services to home based workers in order to save money on overhead. If you are looking for a home job that pays hourly and is a structure where you work as an employee of a larger company, this is probably your best option. Most other home-based jobs are jobs offered to workers by the company they are already working for.

Since working from home is strongly desired by so many people, the competition for these jobs is intense, so you will need to have a good skill set to get one. Also, some home-based jobs are only offered to people who live in the area where the main office is. They require occasional trips to the office, which makes them less than ideal for someone with young children at home.

If you need to find a home-based job, keep looking. They are out there, but keep in mind that they are not as easy to find as the ads make you think. Watch out for programs that require you to pay for "job leads." These are almost always scams, and you are better off doing the job searching yourself with more reputable sites.