How to Spot Work-from-Home Scams

by MIKE COLLINS on FEBRUARY 28, 2014 ·

Have you ever seen an advertisement for a “business opportunity” that promises you’ll earn thousands of dollars from the comfort of your own home? If you’re already of the mindset that you want to quit your job and work a more flexible schedule from home, these ads can seem like the opportunity you’ve been waiting to come along.

Unfortunately, many of the so-called “business opportunities” you’ll run into are nothing more than scams designed to separate you from your money. The only people who get rich are the shysters running the scam. Work-at-home scams are rampant and they can come through email, snail mail or a phone call. They are often advertised in the classified ads section of a legitimate newspaper or magazine. You will even see them disguised as “news stories” on legitimate websites.

Being able to identify these work at home of scams is the first step in avoiding them so take a moment to familiarize yourself with the following warning signs that a business opportunity is actually a scam.

The offer came as an unsolicited email. Check your email’s spam folder and you’ll probably see plenty of examples of “business opportunities” that are nothing more than scams. Sometimes these emails manage to avoid the spam filters and make it to your inbox, but that doesn’t make them any more legitimate. Think about it. If you knew of a can’t-miss way to get rich online, would you blast out the details to a million strangers via a Hotmail account? That’s not how reputable businesses find partners and investors.

Promises of guaranteed or unusually large returns. I own Coca Cola stock because I consider it a solid company with a long history of appreciating in value and consistently paying out dividends to shareholders, but there’s no guarantee that the stock will continue to perform well. Something unexpected could happen that would send the stock price into a tailspin, or the company could decide to eliminate dividends altogether. If an iconic brand with a long history of success like Coke can’t guarantee a profit, what makes you think you can do any better?

You need to pay a fee for start-up materials. One of the oldest scams on the books is one where you’re promised an opportunity to work from home doing something simple like data entry, assembling crafts, or stuffing envelopes. You fork over your hard earned cash for the start-up materials but you either receive nothing at all or something completely different than what you expected.

For example, one common form of the envelope scam promises you’ll get paid for each envelope you stuff. You pay for the starter’s kit and all you get is a letter explaining that you need to place a classified ad promising other people that they too can make money stuffing envelopes if they just send you money for a starter’s kit. When they send you the money you stuff an envelope with a copy of the same letter you had received explaining how the “business opportunity” works. In other words, you make money by scamming people the same way you got scammed.

You sense something is wrong. Sometimes you just have to trust your own instinct and recognize that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Have you ever heard of a work-from-home opportunity that smelled like a scam? Were you tempted to try it even though you sensed something wasn’t right?

Anything that requires sending in an application fee or start-up fee definitely should just get tossed right away. There are so many ways to work from home these days and you just need to figure out what works for you. Some ideas to consider: do side jobs like blog, freelance, house sit, walk dogs, and brand ambassador.