SolveYourProblem
Article Series:
Start
A Home Business
How
To Avoid Home Business Scams
by Jeff Cohen
Have you recently seen an ad or been approached
by someone who had an unbelievable business opportunity? 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 must realize that at least 95% 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? Seriously, think about that before jumping in.
Here are the biggest scams out there, how to recognize them,
and how to avoid them.
Envelope Stuffing
This is probably the most established work-from-home scam
ever, and it’s been going for decades. Essentially, 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 it’s a dead end. Anyway, work from home offers like
this are illegal pyramid schemes.
You will NOT make any money putting letters in envelopes –
so get over it.
Location, Location, Location
Where did you see that latest 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 assure you right now that
it is not a legitimate business opportunity. 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
have iron-clad proof to the contrary. Even testimonials can
be forged.
Home Typing, Medical Billing, and More
There are a lot 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 a 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.
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 would be
needed to do the work – and then you’ll be sent very shoddy
materials that aren’t worth anything close to what you paid,
and you’ll find that 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 check –
if they won’t do that for you, then that’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 toys, ornaments, or clothes.
Everything seems legitimate – you 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 going to sell 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 getting
the money.
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-at-home offers that do pay you for your
work, you still will not make anywhere near as much as you
could with your very own home business. So why bother with
them at all? # # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
> Home > Start
a Home Business Articles:
Main Page
|
