Work from homes schemes and scams are everywhere these days and new ones are being reported all the time which means if you want help starting a home based business, you really need to be careful.

We’ll take a look at some of the different outright scams and ineffective work from home programs wandering around out there, but the rule of thumb here is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Follow that mantra and you should keep yourself out of trouble.

The Stuffing Envelopes Scheme

There has been a big crackdown on envelope stuffing schemes in the past few years so they’re not quite as prevalent as they once were but there are plenty that still exists.

You can actually go to jail for participating in an envelope stuffing scheme as they work by having your promote the same scheme they’re promoting.  It’s all a big, ugly pyramide scheme style program and needs to be avoided no matter how easy the work sounds and how much they say they’ll pay you.

Make Money Posting Links On Google

A more recent scheme that’s only been around for a short while is the make money posting links on Google scheme.  They’ll tell you how you can make $1500 or more just by posting links on Google and that you’ll get weekly checks.

That’s how they get you to sign up for a $2.95 work from home kit – they’ll tell you it has all the information you need to get started.  The problem is that you’re actually signing up for a monthly program that will charge your $80 a month or more.

Please keep in mind there really are legitimate offers that will give you trial offers out there so just because you’re being offered a trial doesn’t mean it’s a scam.  However, all of the legitimate ones will tell you when you’ll be charged and how much.  If you want the kit but don’t trust them not to charge you the full amount even if you try to cancel, get yourself a prepaid credit card and only load it up with $10 or however much you need to get started.  Then you’ll still be able to get the information but even if you’re not able to talk to anyone to cancel, you’ll be out, at most, $10 instead of hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Jobs Don’t Cost Money – They Pay Money

For those who are looking for real opportunities to work from home, keep in mind that you shouldn’t ever have to pay a company to hire you.  That just doesn’t make sense.  If you need specialized skills that require training, you might have to take a class which is fine and you’ll probably have to pay for that.

However, you shouldn’t have to pay for on the job training.  You get paid for that.  There’s some gray area here as there are job listing services that will charge money though not many legitimate ones as most of the time their money is made by charging businesses for posting job listings, not the other way around.

Fake News Sites

Boy are there a lot of these things out there these days and new ones pop up every day.  Here’s the gist of how they work.  They pose as news site and pretend to report on someone who has been quite successful running their own home based business – often times a stay at home mom.

They’ll talk about how the person is making anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 per month and how it’s so easy anyone could do it.  Then they’ll have a product recommendation.

The problem is that everything is made up.  They just want you to sign up for the program and while you’ll probably get something for your money, it’s rarely worth what you’ll end up spending on it.

A sure sign that you’re looking at a fake news site is that you’ll see several comments at the end of the article from people saying they’ve made a ton of money with the program but at the very end you’ll see that comments are closed.

If you see that, it’s almost guaranteed that everything you just read is merely a well crafted story and not a shred of truth is in it.

The Not Actually Scams, Scams

Just because it’s not an outright scam doesn’t mean it’ll help you reach your goals.  For example, many years ago when I was just a young pup trying to start my own home based business (the year 2000) I bought a internet business kit off an infomercial and they sent the information exactly as I requested.  However, a few weeks later, I got a phone call from someone who wanted to help me really get my business going.  After purchasing overpriced services from them and for the assistance of a personal coach,  I found myself spending thousands of dollars and spending a lot of time working on a business that never paid off.

I later found out the my “personal coach” had never even built a successful business himself.  Sure, he had a website setup but it didn’t actually make any money.

I eventually ended up spending $8,000 with that company and lost thousands more by following their advise paying for advertising that didn’t work.

So if you’re going to start working from home and plan to run a real home based business, make sure you do you homework before you sign up for any seemingly legitimate program.  If you can, find reviews that are posted and check to see if you can find any verifiable results from people who have used the program.

Surveys

The last item on my list here is surveys.  Are surveys actually scams, no?  There really are companies out there willing to pay you for your opinion.  The problem is that making much money with this is virtually impossible.  Sure you can make $20-$50 a month with it but anything beyond that should be viewed as just gravy.

So if you just need pizza money, go ahead and give it a try but for those looking for real home based business opportunities, look elsewhere.