As the economy and job market fluctuates more and more people are looking at trying to find opportunities where they can work from home instead of working for a traditional employer.Working from home gives you a host of benefits including paying less for gas, being your own boss, being able to spend more time with your family, and being able to make your own schedule. With all of these benefits you can see why so many people would want to move from the traditional workplace environment to a work online business opportunity.One of the most popular home business opportunities is writing articles. Since the introduction of sites like Helium and Associated Content, it has never been more accessible to the general public to be able to sell their writing online. You can choose either to write your own topics or depending on the site you may be able to build up your own list of clients to write for in a matter of a few short months.Surveys are another popular option for making extra money from home. Survey sites allow you to register and take surveys about different products and services in exchange for either points, drawing entries, or straight up cash.If you are a fast typist you may want to look at some online opportunities such as a data entry professional or transcription. Data entry professionals take client information and type it into forms or excel documents while transcription professionals listen to audio files and type what the audio said word for word into documents and submit them back to the client.Another popular work at home opportunity is reading emails. It may sound unbelievable but there are companies out there who will pay you just to read an advertisement email about a specific service that a company offers. You will usually be paid a small amount of money per email but the money does add up quickly if you keep at it.Turking is a newer opportunity provided by Amazon.com. What a turker does is verify information that a computer program or software cannot on its own. This could be doing anything from logging onto a website and seeing what pictures or headlines are where or just looking up a specific zip code. Each task has a cash value assigned to it which will be added to your account once your work has been verified.It is important to remember that in most working from home opportunities you will be a self employed contracted employee. What this means is that you will be completely responsible for things like state and federal taxes. If you make over a specific amount of money per month you will also be required to pay a 15% self employment tax. It is usually an intelligent idea to open a savings account and put away a specified percentage of your income for tax purposes for each payment you get.Whatever you choose to do, making the switch from working away from home to working from home may just be the first step towards gaining and additional income as well as having the freedom you desire, all at your own pace and on your own schedule.