Well you've come to the right place, Ashtyn!!

You do not need to have a degree. I've only got a highschool diploma and a couple years of college (no finished degree though) under my belt. You do need to be 18 or older, and depending on the company you work for you may be required to have a computer that is compliant with the program you work with. (Some companies will ship you out a specialized computer that will only be good for your work. Mine right now is like that, and it is VERY HEAVY on security. I can't even use the extra USB ports on it or it will lock me out. Seriously.) Typically you will be required to have a highspeed internet connection, and depending if they use a voip service for routing calls you may need a traditional home phone set up.

I must also confess I have only been doing customer support taking inbound calls, but literally the sky is the limit when working from home. You could be a virtual assistant where basically you're doing secretarial work from your home. If you have a degree and/or experience in a certain field like law or computer programming you can obviously do work from home in that field and skip the whole customer service bit. The thing is you have to have experience and it is a very competitive market freelancing. I would love to have someone pop on here that does that kind of work to fill me in.

As far as legitimate companies, the link I popped on the second post has a table of companies and what I would suggest doing is going to a forum like workplace like home and check out other people's experiences. Usually word of mouth is the most powerful form of reference and a way to make sure that you aren't scammed. Also, other than a $40-50 fee for a background check and drug screening there really shouldn't be much else required money wise to get started. Heck, when I first started companies were footing the bill on that. I think now that it's starting to pick up in popularity they're losing a lot of money out that way and are now requiring you to pay that.

---------- Post added 05-02-2013 at 02:46 PM ----------

I will warn you though...I was looking through the forums, for my company in particular, and there is a LOT of negativity floating about. You have to take it with a grain of salt. There are definitely downsides to working from home that you honestly will not escape no matter who you work for. I've worked for two really big companies who do outsourcing. One was West At Home, they're legitimate but I have had a bad experience with them. What seems to happen when you sign up for a telecommuting job in customer support for a big company like this is you are a number to them. It's very easy to get lost in that sea of numbers.

Also, I wouldn't recommend doing this as a primary source of income. It is doable, but right now with the transitioning between companies I'm finding that my hours have been severely cut this week while we're waiting to be moved to training. I typically do 35-40 hours a week and this week it is like 20-25. I have grabbed shifts for my weekend, fully expecting to only get a half day in but hoping it rounds me out a bit better.