How To Avoid Work From Home Scams

Think you already know what this subject is all about? Chances are that you don’t, but by the end of this article you will!

Now perhaps you’re interested in setting up a home base business because maybe you’ve seen an ad on the Internet or you've been asked by somebody probably a family member. It was all about a great work-from-home money-making opportunity and you're excited about it. Finally, you can ditch your job! Just wait a minute....

If you're thinking of working from home by somebody else’s rules, though, you have to realize that there is a big possibility that 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 getting involved with it by now?

Here are the major scams out there, how to recognize them, and how to prevent getting victimized by them:

Location, Location, Location.

Where did you see that work from home offer? If you got it in the post, or by spam email, or saw it on a poster taped around a phone 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 more possible to be legitimate. Make sure to check out any offer, do your own research and discover what people are saying about a company or person offering the work at home opportunity.

Envelope Stuffing.

This is the most established work-from-home scam and it’s been going for decades now. Basically, once you pay your money and is authorized 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 somebody responds to your ad, but eventually it might happen that there just won't be any more ads to promote. Most work from home offers like these are dishonest pyramid schemes.

Charging for Supplies.

The practice of charging for supplies is the way almost all work-at-home scams work (including the envelope stuffing above). You'll be asked to make a small investment for any resources that would be necessary to do the work and then you'll be sent useless resources that are probably over-priced and you'll find that there's no market for the work, too late, after you paid for their materials.

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 will 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). You need to be the one deciding what you will make and the one who will get the money for your hard work.

Home Typing. Medical Billing and More Scams.

There are lots of work-from-home scams that involve persuading you that some industry has more work than it can handle and has to outsource to people working from home. For example, you might be told that you’ll 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. Don’t be fooled! The whole reason the ‘work-from-home’ ad was there to begin with was simply as a covert marketing tactic for the software.

As you can see, running a ‘home base business’ that just involves ‘working’ for one company is a bad idea. You don’t know how long that company will outsource work to you. It can end anytime and you'll be left unsecured and without work. Here’s the clincher, though: even with an entirely legal work-at-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 base business. So why bother with them at all?

How To Avoid Work From Home Scams
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