Posts Tagged ‘home based bsuiness’
Avoiding Work At Home Scams
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
Wouldn’t the world be a great place if everyone could do their jobs from home? No rush hour traffic, six a.m. alarm or hurried attempt to finish things before bedtime. You have probably passed those flyers on your way home from work or skipped over them as you were reading the Sunday paper. There are many “work at home” advertisements out there, and 99% of them are scams, bent on preying on people’s desire to spend time with their families or trying to reach independence from the workplace. But avoiding these scams can be hard, especially for those who desire so much to work at home that they are willing to look past almost anything. Here are some things to look out for when searching for a work-at-home opportunity:
1. Are they trying to charge you for information? Let’s face it, knowledge is power, and scammers know that. They use information they have found from experience or from the Internet to attract victims. The truth is, you could probably find the same information online yourself, with just a little bit of resourcefulness. It’s different if they are offering a subscription, ongoing information that may take you hours to find each week, but if they want you to pay for “the secret” to making money online, approach with caution.
2. Is your main job to “recruit” others? This is more than likely the classic MLM, or pyramid, scheme. There are a lot to these schemes that may appear legitimate, at first. Sometimes it can take months for all of the inconsistencies and negatives to pop up, but when they do, you’ve already lost hundreds of dollars. They draw you in with promises that if you work hard, you’ll make good money. It doesn’t sound too good to be true, and that’s why it attracts so many honest people. A classic MLM scheme requires that you recruit other people to sell products from a catalog (not that you sell the product yourself). It asks you to pay money for “training” so that you can become a better recruiter, and that you buy a certain dollar amount of merchandise per month from their catalog. In a way, you’re being cheated three times by one company. If you sense that an advertisement might hint at MLM, don’t even call for information.
3. Is the pay too much for a task that is too easy? Nothing in life comes that easy. Stuffing envelopes, sending chain letters, assembling products - those jobs are mostly done by automated hands now. Filling in advertisements for money? This job involves a lot of marketing knowledge and creativity, not sheer data entry.
4. Do they care who you are? If you apply for a job and they don’t ask for your employment history, a resume, or simply for you to fill out a W-9, then you don’t want to work for them. Chances are you’re either going to be scammed, or the company is doing something illegal and they don’t want the government to know. You should always be given some kind of notice as to how taxes will be handled, at the very least.
5. Are they requesting money up front? This is one of the obvious signs of a scam. If any company is asking you to shell out money before you see any kind of profit, you’ll more than likely never see the reward from that purchase. Some scammers will explain that you are joining a start-up company that requires start-up money. If this was the case, they wouldn’t be looking for “employees,” they would be looking for investors. Tread carefully.
There is some common sense involved when it comes to avoiding work at home scams. It doesn’t hurt to check any company out with the Better Business Bureau just to “make sure” it is legitimate. The worst that could happen is that you have found a scam, and that’s not a bad way to discover the truth. More than likely you will try to find information on the BBB web site, only to discover that there is nothing to show. The best things to do then is Google the name for information, or simply check out any of the number of work at home scam sites. If the company you were about to sign up with sounds like one of the companies you read about, don’t do business with them!
Tags: advice, E-Commerce and E-Business, home based bsuiness, home office, jennifer ratliff, scams, Starting a Business, work at home
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