Beware of These Work From Home Scams

If  you want to work from home online, I urge you to go for it, but also beware of the scams.  

Unfortunately, many people are so desperate to make money that they are being taken advantage of.

Have ever received a “Big Money” offer in your email, saw a poster tacked to a bulletin board or one of those little signs on the side of the road?  Then I can almost guarantee you that it’s not a legitimate offer. In fact it’s probably going to lead you to one of the work from home scams listed here:

Envelope Stuffing

This one is a classic and it’s one of the more popular work from home scams. The way it works is once you pay your money and sign up to work from home, you are sent a set of envelopes and ads just like the one you responded to. Then you stuff your envelopes and YOU pay to send them out. The only way you make any money with this is if someone responds to the ad and the chances of that happening are very slim. Don’t waste your money on this one.

MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) Are Often Scams

Many MLM opportunities are scams.  That’s not true for all of them,  but for many multi-level marketing opportunities you are being “hired” to sell products, and you must buy into the program first. This is a classic example of a scam. Any program that requires you to buy into it is a scam.

An MLM is also designed for you to build a downline; the promise is that the more people you recruit underneath you the richer you will become.  The problem is that most people in your downline will never make any money, not to mention that the drop out rate is over 95%.  The second problem is that the majority of MLM programs die after just a few years leaving you with nothing and your long term residual income will be zero.

Home Assemblers Wanted Means sure Scam

This is another one of the classic home business scams. Home assembler jobs will first require you to buy their materials before you can do any assembling.  Once you assemble the products you will find that there’s no one to buy them.

This is a common scam you’ll often see with crafts as well. You might be asked to work at home making toys, clothes or knickknacks of some sort. Everything might seem legitimate, you might even get the materials without paying any money up front, but 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.  Never do craft work from home unless you are selling the items yourself.

Quick tip: Anyone that asks for money up front is a clear indication of a scam.  A legitimate company would be willing to deduct any ‘fees’ from your first paycheck. If they won’t do that for you, then that’s because they don’t ever plan to pay you.

Typing and Medical Billing offers

Ever see home typing and medical billing offers? These are work from home scams that will lead you to believe that they have more work than they can handle so they need people to work from home.

They will tell you that you will be typing documents or entering medical bills into a computer but these scams have one thing in common, they tell you that all you need is your computer and all you have to do is buy their special software to do the job.  Don’t be fooled. It’s simply a clever way to get you to buy their software.

In some cases you might pay for and receive a large guide full of business that you must call yourself to find typing jobs.  The scam is that the businesses listed in the guide either don’t use home typists or the business simply doesn’t exist. With this scam you’ve just wasted your money and your time.

If you want to work online and you are capable of doing things like data entry, typing, writing virtual assistant work and other online tasks, instead of falling prey to the scams check out a close colleague of mine, Laura Kauth of Data Entry Online jobs. Laura runs an online business that seeks out affordable work from home jobs.  When you work with Laura she not only gives you the training you need to get the job, she gives you the job and tells you how you will get paid.