They’ve been promising for a while that they’d be looking harder at online activities, and now the FTC has taken action against a number of scams as a part of “Operation Empty Promises.” These scams were damaging to a number of people who were trying to find work in this challenging economy.

To be specific, they’ve taken 90 actions against companies that falsely promised employment or successful businesses to job seekers. It’s good to see these things go down, as while I’d love for everyone to be able to spot a scam without help, desperate people don’t always think so clearly, and get taken for large amounts of money.

I do mean large. The article notes that with the scam through Ivy Capital, some people paid up to $20,000 for coaching that was supposed to help them start a business. I can scarcely imagine the pain of being desperate for an income and losing that much money. A part of the claim is that coaches weren’t competent, and other offerings were not as they seemed.

They started by getting victims contact information when they responded to work at home ads and online business opportunities. The ads were for companies such as Jennifer Johnson’s Home Job Placement Program and Brent Austin’s Automated Wealth System.

People responded to these ads, and received telemarketing calls that would do a hard sell on them to get them to sign up for services that they said would gain them a lot of money with little effort. You may know my opinion of such things, but if you don’t I think it’s ridiculous. Very few people make any sort of a living based on a few hours of work a week, never mind thousands of dollars.

Fake Sales Jobs

Another company, National Sales Group, is accused of making false claims about available sales jobs, claiming to recruit for Fortune 1000 companies, then charging excessive fees for background checks and adding in recurring fees without informing their victims. I suppose while you’re stealing someone’s money you aren’t going to be too anxious to let them know about it.

These first companies are just in the process of being taken down by the FTC, and there has not yet been an official ruling on them. Nevertheless, they have been court ordered to cease their practices and have had assets frozen.

Other Scams Shut Down

The FTC had a few victories in court cases against some other scams as well. A couple of these are practically classic examples of work at home scams. There was a home crafting scam, an envelope stuffing scam, and some job board scams. Good to see these gone.

How Do You Look Into Opportunities?

Whether you’re looking at a work at home job or a home business opportunity, you need to do your research before you pay anything or give them much information about yourself.

The first thing you need to be aware of is any expenses associated with the opportunity you’re considering. This should be easy to discover. If the offer is vague, that’s not a good sign of a legitimate opportunity. You should know what your upfront expenses are and if you’re likely to continue to have expenses.

If you’re talking about a job, there shouldn’t be any upfront expenses, aside from occasionally a very reasonable cost for a background check. Many employers do not charge applicants for the background check, so be a bit extra wary if they want you to pay for it.

Paying for access to job listings can be legitimate, but only occasionally is. If they’re claiming that you absolutely, positively will get a fantastic, high paying job, step back. They’re probably not honest about what you’ll get. No job board or other job resource can promise you that. It’s up to the employer.

You should also consider how fast they say you’re going to be successful. Scams always make it sound easy to succeed, but the reality of any business is that it takes a lot of work to earn a living. Starting a business online does not mean you’re going to earn massive sums of money. If it were that simple I wouldn’t have to write these kinds of warnings. We’d all be on a nice island vacation or something.

Business opportunities are supposed to disclose what the average results are with their program, not just what their top performers do. Scams usually don’t.

I have to admit, that one is a bit tricky. Given how many people want to start a home business, and buy information to help them do it but never take action, the average almost has to be close to zero. Even of those who take action, I don’t believe there’s any one program that will be right for every person who tries it.

You should also know exactly how you’ll be working on your business and earning money. Hands off is not realistic. A real business requires you to do something.

Even autoblogging, which many online marketers talk up as an easy form of business, takes work. You can’t just throw a bunch of articles on a site and make it work. You need to research to figure out how to get the best information to your site, and you have to build backlinks for it. Not my kind of business at all, as most are easily taken down by search engines for not providing useful information, but also not as easy as proponents claim.

The most important thing is to just be realistic about what you expect you can earn from home and what it will take to get there. It’s not all easy. There’s a lot of hard work involved, and if you think otherwise you’re setting yourself up to fall for someone else’s scam.

I’ve posted in the past about the Google Money and related scams. Now I’m reading on Marketing Pilgrim that they’re finally suing the scammers for using the Google name.

It’s a kind of interesting situation since they don’t yet have the names for all of the defendants. That’s one of the challenges of the internet, of course. Scams thrive because they can be done anonymously.

Google’s doing what they can. They’re permanently disabling associated AdWords accounts in general that provide a poor user experience. But it’s challenging because it’s so easy to pop up under a new name when you’re online.

These are the names Google says to be aware of now:

Names to be wary of: Google Adwork, Google ATM, Google Biz Kit, Google Cash, Earn Google Cash Kit, Google Fortune, Google Marketing Kit, Google Profits, The Home Business Kit for Google, Google StartUp Kit, and Google Works.

They know quite well that more names will appear; that’s the nature of this kind of scum.

It’s kind of a pity to see the name Google Cash up there, as there was also a legitimate product by that name, made by Chris Carpenter. But now the scammers have used it too.

As always, remember that no product can guarantee you riches or any degree of success. If they’re making wild promises, just don’t believe it.

There are products that can help you along the path to building a real business, but there are still a lot of factors that may keep you from succeeding, allow you to succeed beyond your wildest dreams, just let you earn a little extra spending cash or anything in between. It’s mostly up to you. The information just helps.

I’ve posted a bit about the Google Money and similar scams. Today I saw that Google has also posted their take on these scams.

It’s some good tips, although as usual the people who most need to read it will probably never see it. But they do go over the legitimate ways you can earn money from Google (AdSense and the Google Affiliate Network), plus some of the symptoms of these and other scams people try using Google’s name.

I particularly liked this section:

Some sales pitches use the word “Google” or other trademarks right in their name with targeted phrases like “cash,” “pay day,” “money,” “secrets,” “home business,” etc. If you can’t find it on our list of Google products or on the business solutions page, don’t trust it.

A great point for anyone facing any product making big claims while using some other company’s name.

I posted a while back about the Google Money scams. They’ve been all over the place, heavily advertised through AdWords, presenting itself as fake blogs and fake newspaper stories. Google finally did something about it, at least the parts that go through their site.

They terminated the AdWords accounts of those advertising them.

Not just suspended or deleted the ad campaigns. According to Search Engine Watch, they deleted the accounts and informed the account holders that they cannot open new ones. Period.

They mean business this time!

But don’t you worry! If you need big money promises, similar programs claiming you can make big bucks through Twitter are now out there, according to the L.A. Times.

Usual routine, you too can earn hundreds of dollars with little effort. Tons of Twitter followers! Big money! Easy!

Just pay a little money for shipping and handling. Oh, and even more per month, but that’s deep in the terms and conditions. You might not even notice until it shows up on your credit card.

These kinds of programs walk a very fine line on legitimacy. While they technically do list all charges, they’re often hard to find. In addition, the claims are pretty hard to believe for the simple reason that they aren’t likely.

Sure, some people do make good money with Google or with Twitter. Most people, even with instructions on what the other guy is doing… won’t. That’s business for you.

These companies can be deceptive about where they’re located and/or make it very difficult to cancel your subscription and get your money back when you find out what you’re being charged. They aren’t always on the wrong side of the law, but they’re often not far from the edge.

If you want to make money advertising on Google, study pay per click advertising. Perry Marshall is a reputable source.

Making money on Twitter can be more difficult, in part because it’s newer territory and there are fewer guides with a proven history. There are plenty of tricks to building a big following, but pick the wrong one and your account gets banned. Or just appear too spammy and see what happens.

Building a loyal following that cares enough about what you have to say in a tweet and will buy from links you post is an entirely different challenge.

It comes down to the simple truth that there is no easy solution to make big money for most of us. Sometimes someone will hit it lucky, but the next person to do what appears to be the same thing may not succeed. If it were that easy we’d all be earning the big bucks.

Researching an online home business is tough these days. It’s not just the ever present scams, it’s detecting them as those who promote them get smarter about how you research opportunities.

The big example is that searching for the opportunity or ebook name plus “scam” is often taken up by people promoting the opportunity. They’ve come to realize that this is a big term people use to check them out, so they try to claim it for themselves on the positive side of things.

These “reviews” can be hard to tell from the real thing. However, if you see a review of an opportunity or ebook starting out with something along the lines of “Is (opportunity) a Scam?” and then go into a glowing review of how it’s not a scam, be wary. Be doubly wary if all they have to say is positive. Just about any opportunity is going to have some negatives. A good review should note these.

Be even more wary if you see more or less the same review on site after site. Odds are it was provided by the business itself and the affiliates or promoters were too lazy to change it for their own sites.

So Where Are the Real Reviews??

Ah, that is the question, isn’t it? And it’s not easy to do sometimes.

Persistence is your #1 tool. Search on the business name. Use the name plus review. Use the name plus scam.

Check the testimonials on the site and see if you can contact the people giving the testimonials. If they have domain names with their testimonials you may be able to find a way to contact them on your own.

A lot of the big launches have big name marketers giving testimonials. That’s nice, but to me it doesn’t prove much of anything. A person who has been having success for a long time is going to see things quite differently from someone just starting out, and what they like may not be as useful to you if you don’t have the background knowledge yet.

Check their contact information and whois. Contact email addresses should be related to their business website in most cases. If you own your domain name, this is easy and comes with the hosting. Whois information can be kept private, but if it shows names and contact information it must be honest.

Read all the fine print, privacy policy, terms of service and so forth. Some sites don’t make it nearly clear enough that there’s a monthly expense for the information or opportunity. You need to know what your real expenses will be.

Try to figure out how it is you will be earning money. Mistrust any opportunity where either that’s not clear or you realize that you’re earning for recruiting rather than selling, especially if you only earn for recruiting.

Check Ripoff Report. Check scam.com. You can even check with the BBB, but honestly they have their problems as a resource.

Be wary if the site looks like a newspaper review of the business opportunity. That’s a popular way to present some programs just now, but they really are not news stories. Take a good look and you will realize that pretty much everything clickable on these sites relates to the opportunity being presented.

Ask on any work at home forums you know, such as the one here.

Think about if you can really afford to risk the money. No matter how good the opportunity, even when it is legitimate, you face the risk of failure. Not every person will succeed in any particular business. Sometimes it’s not a good match; other times it’s a scam. Either way, be sure that you can afford the risk.

Will This Guarantee That You Don’t Get Scammed?

Sorry, no, can’t promise you that. But you can cut down the odds that you’ll be scammed, which is a great place to start.

Always remember, be skeptical. Know the difference between home businesses and work at home jobs. Know what’s likely and what’s improbable. Ask questions. Do your due diligence. You are the one responsible for your decision in the long run.

And if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!