Working from home is a dream for many – but actually going ahead and starting a home business may have some difficulties. Maybe you became interested in setting up a home business 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, though, you have to realize that around 95% 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’s a list of some of the scams out there, how to recognise them, and how to avoid them.
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. This is just an illegal pyramid scheme.
Charging for Supplies
This is the way almost all work-at-home scams work, including the envelope stuffing. 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.
If anyone asks for money upfront, run. A real company should be willing to deduct any ‘fees’ from your first paycheque – if they won’t do that, then it’s because they don’t ever plan to pay you. One exception to this: some companies do charge you for a background check fee, which is required because of the kind of work you’ll perform, involving sometimes confidential data from companies.
Assembling Work for Free
This is most common with crafts. You might be asked to work at home making clothes, ornaments or toys. Everything seems legitimate – you get 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.
Only do craft work from home if 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
Lots of work-from-home scams try to persuade 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 marketing for the software.
