Falling for a work at home scam is so easy, anyone can do it! Just forget common sense. Be eager for big earnings with no effort. And forget the cost… you’ll be earning big bucks in no time, right???

Step 1: Search “Work from home,” “home business opportunity,” “earn money fast” or similar terms.

You may very well find some legitimate options under these terms. My own site can be found under some of these terms on some search engines. But these kinds of terms are also targeted by scams as they’re so easy for people who want to starting working at home to think of.

Step 2: Become very excited about the first opportunity you find that promises big money with no effort.

Squeeee! Bounce! Lookit all the money people have earned following these instructions! Lookit all the pretty exclamation points! All the bolding and highlighting! The page is just so pretty, it has to be true!

You don’t even have to make sales. The money will come rolling in, all on its own. But if you recruit other people into the scam… err, business opportunity, you’ll get a part of their earnings too, even if they never buy anything else! Hooray!

Step 3: Sign up with no further investigation.

“I’m going to be rich, I’m going to be rich! Whoopie!” Or a similar thought process. They have a guarantee, after all, it says so right on the site. Surely that will protect you. And if you can’t trust people on the Internet, who can you trust?

Step 4: Ignore all naysayers.

Admittedly, this can be a good policy even if you aren’t falling for a scam… but that’s the only time. Just because someone can point to sites that explain the exact scam or to points on the FTC site that explain why the opportunity is a scam doesn’t mean they’re right, does it? They’re just jealous and/or afraid to succeed themselves.

Step 5: Keep trusting, even as things start to fall apart.

You’re not making money yet, but that’s okay. It will come soon, really. This business can’t fail, the model is too good. It has to work. It just has to!

Maybe if you just sink a bit more money in, just to speed things up a little… maybe you just need more recruits… pay no attention to rumors of an FTC investigation, can’t be true, they’ll show the whole thing is legit, right?

Back to the Real World

The hardest part of this whole thing is that some legitimate opportunities have you do very similar activities. Network marketing, for example, is often best done while also recruiting a downline. Investing more in a legitimate business can be a smart move.

The trick is to know when you have it right. That means researching the opportunities you are considering. Taking your time. Knowing what to say to the naysayers, even if nothing will convince them that you’ve got it right. Even being optimistic when things aren’t moving as fast as you’d like… which is very common in home businesses, especially legitimate ones.

I came across an article last night that I think is a good reminder that it’s not just people wanting to work at home who fall for scams. Even professionals who are earning a good living can make big mistakes.

This particular Ponzi scheme was pretty sneaky. It was run using facilities at the University of Miami. They claimed to be selling perfume and electronics to a company in Chili and Peru.

But as with any classic Ponzi, there really wasn’t a product. The numbers were faked, and people earned by recruiting. Accountants, lawyers, business people and retired law enforcement officers all fell for it.

Of course, it wouldn’t have worked if any of these people had let common sense take the place of greed. They were promised a quick 18% return on their investments. One person stands to lose $2 million.

As with any other scam, I take this as a good time to remind everyone to think before you join any opportunity. What are you being promised? What do you have to invest? Are the stated returns on your investment reasonable? Are you paid for recruiting rather than selling?

Taking some time to consider each of these factors, doing your research, and sometimes trusting your gut when it says ‘no’ are all good ways to avoid being scammed.

The bane of searching for a work at home job is avoiding all the scams. They’re so prevalent that finding a real opportunity is a pretty long search for most people.

Ever wonder why so many scams thrive? There are a few reasons.

1. Affiliate programs.

Not all affiliate programs are bad, not by a long shot. Many sell physical products, such as in Amazon’s Associate program.

But the trouble comes in when dishonest affiliates recommend a dishonest program. Sure they’re making a bit of money… selling to you the same report that got them started, recommending that you sell the same report to new people.

It’s the online variation of the old envelope stuffing routine.

This is why you have to be so careful about when you see a product being enthusiastically recommended by many people. Some won’t have even bought and/or used the product themselves. They’re recommending it based on the sales copy and the desire for a quick buck.

2. Name changes.

Things move fast online. It takes less than $10 at most registrars to buy a new domain name. That makes it very easy for a scam to just change names and keep going anytime the old name starts to develop a really bad reputation. It also means it’s very hard to catch the owners.

3. The Internet is international.

When you’re dealing with an online business, you often don’t know where they’re located. A physical address could be nothing more than a P.O. Box. While some use these to keep their home address private, others use it to keep the real location of their business secret.

As you can see, motivation makes a big difference there. If you’re running a home business there’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep your home address out of it, but other reasons for a P.O. Box can be less honest.

The international aspects of the Internet are some of its greatest delights, but also its greatest challenges. You can interact with people from around the world. But that also means that if someone is running a scam from elsewhere in the world there is little to be done about it.

What Can Be Done?

To avoid online work at home scams your best protection is education and research.

Educate yourself about what a scam looks like. With name changes so easy to make you cannot just rely upon a lack of negative reports. Study up on the signs of a work at home scam, especially in the areas you are interested in working in.

But even in areas that have legitimate opportunities there can be scams mixed in. This is where research comes in. Check out the company. Typing their name into your favorite search engine can help, but you need to do more than that to really protect yourself. The name alone may get nothing more than the enthusiastic affiliates that are promoting products they don’t really understand.

The BBB is not always a help. Too often they have no information or the business has cleared up those negatives reported to the BBB. Check on sites dedicated to scams or to working at home and ask for opinions.

If You Do Get Scammed

Don’t let the scammers win if you do fall for a scam. Report what happened to the FTC, your state’s Attorney General, the BBB and the site where you learned about the scam. The FTC can do nothing about a scam without complaints about it. Same for the rest.

Were You Really Scammed?

Be sure you understand the difference between a scam and an opportunity that just didn’t work out for you. Scams make big promises that cannot come true.

Most people will have a business opportunity or so flop for them before they find the right fit. That’s normal and has nothing to do with scams. But sometimes people will call it a scam because they’re so frustrated with how it all turned out. If you can be honest with yourself about whether something failed because you were scammed or because it really wasn’t for you, you can learn from the experience and do better the next time you try to work at home.

In the search for a work at home job, you may have come across sites telling you that you can earn big money as a rebate processor. All you have to do is send in your money and they’ll tell you how.

Right from the start, one of the classic hallmarks of a scam. Pay us and we’ll tell you all about our glorious opportunity that is sure to make big bucks for you!

Now not every product that tells you that you can make good money is a scam. But the more hype that is used, the better the chances. And any quality product will be upfront enough to tell you that not everyone makes big money working from home, no matter the business. All they can do is give you some tips to help you get things going.

There are a couple of rebate processing scams out there. The older one used to be called HUD or FHA refund tracing. They’ve since changed it to rebate processing as people became too aware of that scam. The basic idea is that you help people get their HUD refunds. Not a bad service, but if someone knows they have money coming to them from HUD it’s not too hard to claim it.

And to make things more difficult, FHA and HUD deal only with the person due the refund. They don’t deal with you. Makes getting paid a bit risky.

A fairly popular variant is one in which they’re really going to tell you about affiliate marketing. The idea is that you sell products as an affiliate, and the customer contacts you for a rebate. The company they most often promote for this is Clickbank, which sells electronic products.

There’s one very simple problem with that, and it lies in Clickbank’s terms:

“You agree to make no such promotions promising customers rebates, coupons, tickets, or vouchers in connection with their ClickBank purchase.”

You can read all the terms at http://www.clickbank.com/terms.html

That’s right. Offering a rebate on a customer’s Clickbank purchase is against the rules. They’ll cancel your account if they catch you at it.

Other companies have similar terms. You can only offer rebates with special permission, and that may have to be granted by the company whose products you are selling.

Add in the complications of being certain that the sale went correctly through your links, worrying about customer refunds after you’ve given them their rebate, paying out money before your affiliate commissions come in, and so forth. Earning money this way is not so neat and clean as the people promoting these opportunities would like you to think.

As with many a work at home scam, it comes down to something very simple: If it were that easy, a lot more people would be doing it. Instead there are just a few companies, generally offering points for affiliate purchases rather than flat out rebates, and it takes a whole lot of them for the customer to get any cash out of the deal. Just give that some thought.

All that said, there are occasional companies that hire people to process rebates from home. There’s one in Tempe, AZ, that I have listed in the data entry section of this site. You have to be local to them to pick up the rebate forms, and they are not promising you the big bucks.  What they offer is hugely different from what the scams say. Just something to keep in mind.

I am not at all surprised to announce the demise of AGLOCO. John Chow posted about it on his blog, after having promoted it heavily.

While I’m filing this under scams, it’s more sham than an actual scam. Maybe they’ll sell their list or something, I don’t know, but you only lost money on this if you chose to promote your links in a way that cost you money.

Time lost, on the other hand, may have been significant.

I had considered joining AGLOCO early on, not so much out of faith that the business model would somehow work this time, but for an inside view of how these things work. I eventually decided against it.

The business model has failed many times, and if it comes up again, I expect it will fail again. It doesn’t matter how much the Internet grows, the advertisers won’t be getting enough money from advertising on that kind of a network to make it worth the surfers’ while. And that’s why these things fail.

It’s a basic example of “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”.

Earning money from home is rarely easy. A few people hit it lucky and have the lifestyle everyone else wants, but most have to work hard for it. Long hours, and often a long time with poor earnings. But if you do your research and don’t give up easily, it is possible to find ways to earn money online. But don’t go for the promises of easy. It probably won’t be.

Technorati Tags: agloco, john chow, bad business ideas, work at home, home business