Working and earning cash from home can look like a dream, but it can also be a reality. You can be cautious of the real ways of earning money by working at home, but they do exist. Here are some of them :

Working from home is awesome … right up until the cat throws up on your computer. And your neighbor, who you can only assume is building a time machine, starts firing up all sorts of power tools and noisy machinery across the street. For many modern professionals, working from home every once in a while is a luxury that our respective companies afford us. But which environment actually allows us to be more productive: the home office or the office office?

Survey Taker: There are plenty of opportunities for scams in this industry, so you have to be careful. Avoid giving companies your sensitive information or paying upfront fees, as they’re likely to be fraudulent. There are, however, opportunities to make money at home by taking job surveys from legitimate companies. Elementary school substitute teacher Andrea Spain and her mother Bonnie Alcala take online surveys for two hours a week, ringing in around $100 a month in cash, gift cards, and other prizes.

Enjoy your flexibility. Find your focus wavering? Take a break with a bike ride, swim, or even by quitting work for the entire day. That’s according to Patti Hill, founder and managing director of Austin, Texas-based Penman PR. “Because my work schedule can be as flexible as I need it to be, sometimes it’s important to walk away,” she says. “It’s amazing what a cool dip on a hot day can do for helping boost creative juices.” Enjoy disruptions. While some remote workers eschew personal visits during the work day, others take the opposite tack. Denny Daniel, curator of New York City-based The Museum of Interesting Things, says he started his own thing to reap the benefits of being his own boss. “So when people drop by I try to live life and see them unless I am with a client or not here, of course. If it is busy then at least I see them for a moment and enjoy life a bit too. It makes me work better in the end,” he says. See more details at Free Work From Home Strategy.

Swagbucks is one of the few all-inclusive platforms that lets you get paid for completing a variety of tasks. Like some of the other recommendations on this list, you can get paid to take daily surveys and you can also watch videos or play games for rewards points too. If one of your freelance gigs is writing or web research, you can “double dip” by performing your web searches through the Swagbucks search engine which will provide the same keyword results as going directly through Google or Bing. Every point you earn can be redeemed for gift cards or PayPal cash.