work at home scams

Don't get burned when looking for a work at home job

ConnectingWAHMs.com wants to be sure your'e safe when choosing a work at home job. Unfortunately many times when people are looking for a work at home job, they come across ads for work that seem too good to be true but the ads are so enticing that some people fall for these scams. While some are absolutely legitimate, others are not.

Here are some work at home scams you may have run across that you should avoid (and information that you can use).

Just about everyone has the desire to work from home. We all know what the wonderful benefits can be; you can work when you want, do what you want, don’t have to answer to a boss or request time off, and you get to earn money in the process. Who wouldn’t enjoy this kind of lifestyle? As with most anything in this world, there is a good side and a bad side. With the desire of so many people wanting to work from home, there are many less-than-desirable folks out there who want to take advantage of these well-meaning folks and these are the scamsters that want to make a quick buck off of you.

Here are a few work at home scams to look out for:

The Envelope Stuffing Scam

Just about everyone has heard of this scam and many of you may have already fallen prey to it. How it works is this: you’re required to stuff envelopes which the company sends to you after you have paid them a fee to do so. The agreement is that you will be paid for every envelope you stuff. The problem is, you never see the money and end up losing the money you sent to these scammers in the first place.

The “Call 1-900″ Scam

This work at home scam involves you dialing a 1-900 number in order to get more details on the work from home opportunity you’re interested in. However, 1-900 numbers are NOT toll-free (although the scammers are hoping you don’t know that). What happens is that you end up paying for the phone call and get information which is of no use to you.

Data Entry Scams

If you’ve seen an advertisement telling you that you can get paid just for typing from home, you have seen a “Data Entry Scam”. So how do these work you might wonder? Although it varies, oftentimes this work from home scam involves you typing ads for the Google AdWords program. The company gives you a set of keywords to type into a Google AdWords campaign but here’s the kicker…YOU have to pay for those ads. And lo and behold, where do you think those ads point to? Your sites? Absolutely not, they point to the scammers sites and the scammers earn money - not you. If you don’t know what you’re doing in regards to Google’s AdWords program, you could VERY quickly end up paying a lot of money. AdWords is not cheap.

The “Sending E-mail” Scam

This work from home scam promises that you’ll be paid just by sending out emails. In order to have this “privilege” you have to pay money for the instructions. What you get for this fee is a list of email addresses that you need to send emails to. But here’s the deal…you end up being labeled a spammer and get penalized in the process.

Unfortunately, these are just a handful of work at home scams. There are many more on the Internet, in magazines and even in your local paper. You need to be extremely careful and exercise a lot of caution when you see something that sounds too good to be true.

If you noticed, many of the scams we listed above required that you pay a fee in order to have the opportunity to work for them. This should immediately send up a red flag for you.

See also:

Have you been scammed before? Let others know what to look out for and help out other Mom's in the process by posting the information on our Connecting WAHMs message board. You can also check out what other Mom's are saying.