Perhaps the reason you’re interested in setting up a home
business is because you’ve seen an ad somewhere, or you’ve been
approached by someone. It was all about a great work from home
money-making opportunity, and you’re excited. Finally, you can quit
your job!
If you’re thinking of working from home by someone
else’s rules, though, you have to realize that at least 99% of the
offers out there are scams — after all, if it was that easy to pay a
few dollars and make thousands, wouldn’t everyone be doing it by
now? Here are the biggest scams out there, how to recognize them,
and how to avoid them.
Location, Location,
Location
Where did you see that work from home
offer? If you got it in the post, or by email, or saw it on a poster
taped around a telephone pole, then I can guarantee you right now
that it’s not a legitimate offer. If you saw the ad in a newspaper,
in a jobs magazine or on a jobs website, then it’s a little more
likely to be legit — but not much. Always check out any offer, and
assume it’s a scam until you’ve iron-clad proof to the
contrary.
Envelope Stuffing
This is
the most established work from home scam, and it’s been going on for
decades. Basically, once you pay your money and sign up to work from
home, you’re sent a set of envelopes and ads just like the one you
responded to. You might make some money if someone responds to your
ad, but eventually there just won’t be a market for it any more.
Anyway, work from home offers like this are illegal pyramid
schemes.
You just won’t make any money putting letters in
envelopes.
Charging for Supplies
The
practice of charging for supplies is hard to pin down to any one
scam – it’s the way almost all work at home scams work (including
the envelope stuffing, above). You’ll be asked to make a small
‘investment’ for whatever materials needed to do the work – and then
you’ll be sent very shoddy materials that aren’t worth what you
paid, and you’ll find there’s no market for the work
anyway.
If anyone asks for money upfront, run. A real company
should be willing to deduct any ‘fees’ from your first pay cheque –
if they won’t do that for you, then it’s because they don’t ever
plan to pay you.
Working for
Free
This variation on the scam is common with
crafts. You might be asked to work at home making clothes, ornaments
or toys. Everything seems legitimate – you’ve got the materials
without paying out any money, and you’re doing the
work.
Unfortunately for you, when you send the work back, the
company will tell you that it didn’t meet their ‘quality standards’,
and will refuse to pay you. Then they’ll sell what you made at a
profit, and move on to the next sucker.
Never do craft work
from home unless you’re selling the items yourself. Note that you
don’t need to be selling to consumers (you could be selling to
wholesalers), but you still need to be the one deciding what you
make and receiving the money.
Home Typing, Medical
Billing, and More
There are lots of work from home
scams that involve persuading you that some industry has more work
than it can handle, and so has to outsource to people working from
home. For example, you might be told that you’d be typing legal
documents, or entering medical bills into an electronic
database.
These scams have one thing in common: they all say that
all you need is your computer, and they all then go on to say that
you need to buy some ‘special software’.
This
software might appear to be from a completely unrelated company, but
don’t be fooled – the whole reason the ‘work from home’ ad was there
to begin with was simply as cynical marketing for the
software.
As you can see, running a ‘home business’ that just
involves ‘working’ for one company is a bad idea. You don’t know who
you’re dealing with. Here’s the clincher, though: even with entirely
legal work from home offers that do pay you for your work, you still
won’t make anywhere near as much as you can with your very own home
business. So why bother with them at all?
