Work at Home Scams?

Many people want to enter the world of telecoummuting by trying to develop a business or job they can do from home. While there are a few good opportunities out there, the majority seem to be a bit dodgy and mostly intended to make money for the person selling the information. It is extremely hard to find factual data regarding how much anyone is really making, but it is clear that most of the content in the search engines on this subject is tainted at best.

Typical Landing Page

In the last several years, there has been a tangible increase in sites like the one pictured here. It purports to be a review of work at home opportunities, and creates the appearance of being endorsed by some powerful media outlets. Closer inspection shows that the only claim being made here is “as seen on” which only promises that these outlets have discussed the topic at some time, and there is no indication that these outlets are aware this site exists.  The page itself contains two links to affiliates that presumably pay the site owner for traffic. Both of the affiliates will want some money from the prospect in order to get set up for these “opportunities” and presumably to pay for the affiliates that refer candidates their way.  The links show a privacy policy, which is considered a benchmark of legitimacy for some reason, although very little data actually is on hand to be protected. This link is reached via various methods, including Google adwords.

I have no objection to the particular site, it seems harmless enough and may provide some revenue for the site owner. I suspect it takes quite a few of these to generate “Internet Millions” and that this is the result of another form of “work at home” program that teaches people how to create these useless stubs as landing pages to route traffic to affiliates. I will admit that I have dabbled with these programs and it is a tough way to make a buck these days. A few years back, it made some serious money for a few folks, but now they make most of their living selling that technique to newbies into the marketplace.

While this whole process is legitimate and much more respectable than a lot of other money making schemes on the Internet, it serves to clog the entire spectrum with all these fake informational pages containing so-called reviews of vendors. I did not do any serious research into the links shown above, but expect that their main criteria for inclusion in these reviews was their willingness to pay an affiliate fee. Unfortunately, they usually fail to actually check out the business they recommend either. The search engines and advertising pages are filled with thousands of these pages, created by special programs and designed to look just professional enough to pass a quick inspection and still look legitimate.

My suggestion to wade through this arena is to select a possible method to earn money working at home or remotely and investigate the available opportunities directly. Keep in mind that most legitimate businesses that would hire a person to work remotely will not charge a fee to sign up for opportunities or to learn how to do it.  They may require you to provide samples of your work, or experience that qualifies you for the opportunity in question, but that is not unreasonable. As soon as you see the request for payment, consider what you expect to get for your money and check around for others who have been scammed by the same vendor. It is remarkable what comes up when you just search for “<site name here> scam” or review, etc.

The bottom line is that the Internet has opened up a whole new world of possibilities to earn a living without going to a brick and mortar business and waiting for customers to come in the front door. Just like any other way to make a living, it still takes hard work, but if you have what it takes and are a self starter, there is no greater feeling than knowing that you can work from anyplace in the world where there is an Internet connection.