Home Based Business Scams

When looking at the world of home based business and work from home opportunities, you’re bound to run across more than a few home based business scams that are really designed just to take your money.

You’ll find many more “opportunities” that are grossly overpriced and are just not worth trying.

Let me tell you a story from when I was still in the early stages of my own home based business.

I had been making decent money selling on eBay, but I knew I could be doing better. One late night infomercial later and I had purchased one of those little guides to making money from home for about $40. The information was okay, but nothing special. These days I could write a better guide to working from home before lunch… but I digress.

Spending the $40 wasn’t too big of a deal. However, they later called me to upsell me to their premium web business program. For the bargain price of $8,000 I’d get a merchant account, a website, and coaching to help me run my business. I drove a hard bargain (or so I thought) and got them to come down to $4,000.

They did provide the tools to build the website and they did help me get a merchant account. They even provided a coach that would call me every week. The problem was that I knew a whole lot more about running an online business than the joker they called my “online marketing coach.” He did succeed in teaching me how to lose nearly $10,000 in pay per click advertising, though.

While I won’t go so far as to say it was an outright scam, I will tell you that you need to carefully look into any business opportunity presented to you before spending thousands of dollars. Some are worth the money, but many others are just trying to get your money without providing the tools and knowledge you actually need to know to be successful online.

Guidelines for avoiding home based business scams

• · Skepticism is a good thing – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is
• · Anything with the word “gifting” in it is a scam – period.
• · There are many legitimate opportunities in “network marketing,” but look up the company first to make sure it’s not a pyramid scheme and if you hear words like “pre-launch” and “ground floor opportunity” – run!
• · You’re not going to make millions stuffing envelopes
• · Never respond to opportunities from spam (note: I’m talking about actual spam, not emails you get from someone whose list you signed up for – those are very different and are worth looking into)
• · If they say all you need to do is tell (or send it to) 3 people and you’ll get all the money you need, that’s a scam.
• · Don’t pay money for any type of “product assembly” type of opportunity.
• · Nobody from Nigeria needs your help to transfer millions of dollars

If you really want to get the lowdown on starting a real home based business, then get my free DVD from the NoPantsMarketing homepage. I’ll teach you how you can start a real home based business for as little as $25 – forget about investing thousands of dollars, it’s just not necessary especially if money is tight.

——————————————

More Advice On Spotting A Home Based Business Scam:

I got an email last night that reminded me that I should add some info on this page on how to spot a home business scam.

Now, to be fair, I don’t know with certainty that the opportunity in this example is an outright scam.  It could be a legitimate opportunity, but with as many “red flag” words and phrases in this email, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole.

So I’d like to go over some of the mistakes these people made when sending this email.

First of all, the email is from a name I didn’t immediately recognize.  This happens often since I’m on so many different lists, but this one didn’t even bother to tell me how I got on the list or who they were.  (This is sage advice for all list owners out there – if you don’t contact your list often, then you should be reminding them who you are every time you email them.)

Next the unsubscribe link was, well, how do I put this… weird.  It didn’t take me to any legitimate autoresponder removal but instead just emailed the person to remove me.  That doesn’t give me much confidence that I’ll actually get removed if I email them.

Then there’s the URL it took me to.  You’d think that any legitimate opportunity would at least have its own domain name, right?  Well, in these folks couldn’t even be troubled to spend $10 on a domain name and instead linked to a free web hosting website.

Now let me give you a few quotes from the email and you’ll probably see why I’ve deemed it likely a scam.

“…next biggest play on the internet and we’re looking for new people to partner with.”
“not like anything you’ve ever seen before”
“most powerful new concept on the web”
“hybrid business model”
“big WOW factor”
“going worldwide with Australia and China opening soon”

Like I said, I’m not certain this is a scam.  It could be legit.  However, it seems like these people have gone out of their way to verify the thinking of a typical prospect… i.e. –“ barely interested, this is probably a scam.”

I hope this gives you some more insight into the red flags and language used by home based business scams.

And if you’re looking for a legitimate home based business, remember to check out the home page to get my FREE DVD – How To Start A Home Based Business For Less Than $25.

No related posts.