The Work-at-Home Diaries

Offers show up every day in your E-mailbox promising that you can escape your straitjacketing day job and make plenty of money working from home. Could it be that your E-mail inbox is concealing a hidden gold mine? Inc road tests a few.

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My E-mail assures me I can make thousands of dollars a month without ever changing out of my pajamas. In these trying economic times I'd be foolish not to try ...

They show up every day, as predictable as the New York Times. Stacked in my E-mailbox with sender IDs that resemble the alphanumeric mishmash of comic-strip profanity, they tempt me with the chance to escape straitjacketing hours and a brutish commute and instead "BE YOUR OWN BOSS," "EARN $$$ FROM HOME NEXT WEEK," and embark on "THE HOTTEST AND EASIEST HOME BUSINESS EVER!!!" The promised compensation is relatively high: sometimes $5,000 a month. The requisite skills are negligible. The pajamas-and-robe dress code is implied.

Like most of you, I automatically consign those uninvited overtures to the trash, along with the ads for Viagra and offshore casinos. They must be scams, right? Nothing is that easy.

But with two kids in college I can certainly use extra cash. The magazine business these days is headline-screechingly dicey. And I confess, I'm curious. What if behind all that E-mail smoke actually burns a fire? A fire that adds up to FABULOUS OPPORTUNITY!!! ... THE EASIEST MONEY YOU'LL EVER EARN!!! ... FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE!!!

What if I were actually to respond?

This past fall I decided to lay this particular what-if to rest. I would seek my fortune among work-at-home opportunities, expecting little but privately hoping for some of the $$$$ promised by faceless would-be employers. Here is what happened.

September 4

Already I like the new workplace vibes. I'm in my home study, which is comfortably cluttered with such relics as my grandfather's Underwood typewriter and a calendar depicting old wooden sailboats. This first evening I am not in my pajamas, but the knowledge that I could be if I wanted to is strangely liberating. I've made some calculations: if I'm on the job just two hours each evening, I should bump up my weekly earnings by $300 or so.

The first task is to choose my opportunities. I'm taking work at home literally, meaning that I'm determined to operate entirely from my wooden swivel chair. I'm open to anything that lets my fingers do the walking.

I shuffle through a pile of E-mail that I've been accumulating over the past month, and one message in particular catches my eye. As a work-at-home associate for ProCard International, it says, my job would be "calling back or E-mailing" people who express interest in the company's services. I call up ProCard's Web site on my Compaq desktop, and it looks as though I may be onto something. By paying as little as $14.95 a month, ProCard customers apparently save an average of 30% on their dental, prescription-drug, and other health and legal costs, so long as they stay within the company's provider network. As an associate, I would collect $10 each time a person responded to my calls or E-mail messages and subscribed to the ProCard plan. ProCard would provide me with free leads to prospective customers and access to an 800 number for sales calls.

Sounds dandy. But I'm a little squeamish about the $19.95 ProCard asks for as an activation fee. Nor am I overjoyed that I can qualify as an associate only if I subscribe to the ProCard plan myself or recruit a customer who will. The rate, which includes physician coverage for associates, is $14.95 a month, money that ProCard would withdraw directly from my checking account.

On the upside, associates have the chance to win a five-day Caribbean cruise. In one photo an attractive couple -- presumably successful ProCard associates -- stroll arm in arm on the beach. They look impressively tan and healthy for people who must spend a lot of time in their home offices. Still, I earmark ProCard as a definite possibility.

September 5

I am taken by the candor of an E-mail from Judy Hardin of Palestine, Tex. "This is not one of those get-rich-quick schemes that you see all over the Internet," writes Hardin, describing an opportunity for home typists. Hardin isn't offering a free lunch but rather "real work for real pay." She even divulges her name, a rarity in work-at-home solicitations.

OK, I'm not a great typist. I'm self-taught, and I never learned to touch-type the numbers and symbols on the top row of the keyboard. (See all those dollar signs in the opening paragraph of this story? Making them was no walk in the park, believe me.)

But I won't let being top-line-challenged stand in the way of an extra $75 a week. Hardin touts the opportunity as "very beneficial" for stay-at-home parents, which I'm not. But I do like to work with The Simpsons playing in the background, and this job sounds sufficiently mindless to allow that. "Simply follow our instruction kit," Hardin's E-mail explains, "and handwritten names and addresses come to you every day, and all you have to do is submit them for your pay of $3 for each and every name and address you compile and type."

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