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Work At Home:How To Avoid The Most Common Home Business Scams

While I must confess I don’t know you, I assume that you are interested in home busies because you have seen a newspaper ad telling you of a very lucrative home business opportunity (I come across such ads every day), or maybe a friend told you about it. So probably you are a lot excited to start your own home business. Because finally, you can quit your 9-to-5 regular job and concentrate on something creative!

However, not everything is as rosy as it seems when it comes to home business. If you are planning to start your home business based on someone else’s rules, you must be careful. Almost 99% of the offers out there are scams. Just think about it: if it was possible to earn thousands by investing just a few dollars, wouldn’t everyone be doing it by now? Below I tell you of some of the industry’s biggest scams, and how to avoid them.

1. Source of the advertisement: First, jog your memory a little. Can you remember where you got that work from home offer? Based on my experiences, I can say that: if you received that ad by email, or by post, then most likely it is not a legitimate offer, although there maybe exceptions. If you saw the ad in a popular newspaper then it is likely that the offer is legitimate, though not always. My advice is that always thoroughly check out any and every offer you receive and assume it a scam until you have solid proof to the contrary.

2. Stuff that envelop: Under this scam, you are sent a bunch of envelopes and ads similar to the one you responded to. You are supposed to earn some money when somebody responds to your ads. While this might make you some money in the short term, be assured that there is no established niche for this type of work and so you won’t be making any money in the long term. Just get over it and find another job!

3. Charge for supplies: Under this scheme (read scam), the company asks you to pay a small charge in order for them to send you a certain ‘home business kit’. What you eventually find is that the materials you receive are not worth the time or money, and that there is just no established market for that kind of business. Bottom line, if any company asks for money from you upfront, just run away from it. A well established company should b willing to deduct any fees from your first paycheck; if they don’t do that, chances are that they’re never going to pay you anything.

4. Craft and lose it: Let’s say that a crafts company hires you to make clothes, toys, ornaments, and other types of crafts from home. When you finally submit the output to the company, they say that your products are not up to the mark and then refuse to pay you. Then they sell the products at a huge profit and then move on to trap the next gullible person.

Always make sure that you are the one who sell the products when it comes to crafts. You don’t need to sell your products to the end-users (consumers); you can sell them even to wholesalers. Just make sure that you are the one deciding what you make and getting the money.

5.Home typing, Medical Billing, etc: I know this one much more better since I was also one of those who are lured into this scam but fortunately I fled from them before they could scam me! One example of such scam is the job of medical transcriptionist. You are told that there is too much work in this industry to handle and so the industry has outsourced the work. All you have to do is just type medical bills into an electronic database from home. And they assure you that you will get paid handsomely for it. All you need is just a computer (I was told that I don’t even need a PC; I can work from their office) and buy a ‘special software’ which will teach you the skills needed for the job.
You might notice that the software is from a different company altogether, but the truth is that the purpose of the ad in the first place was to market the software.

Granted that you get paid good money from your job, but when you are working from home for another company, you don’t make as much money as you can do from your own home business. So there is no need to bother with them at all, at least, in my opinion. For more information on how to avoid the most common home business scams, [adrotate banner=”37″]