Avoiding Home Business Scams.

Avoiding Home Business Scams.
by Michael Cobb
http://Home-Income-Team.com

Now maybe 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 realise that at a great number 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 recognise 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 have
iron-clad proof to the contrary.

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 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 won’t make any money putting letters in envelopes – get
over it.

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 like what
you paid, and you’ll find that there’s no market for the
work anyway.

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 on
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 getting
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-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 business. So why bother with them at
all?

About The Author:
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