These days work from home scams are all too common and have become a very sad fact of life. A lot of people blame them on the internet but the truth is that many of these scams have been around since long before the internet was even thought of. They used to be run by mail, out of a post office box, by phone, with advertising in newspapers, magazines, bulletin boards, by leaflets through your door, or any other way the scam artists could think of. The internet just makes them a bit easier and cheaper to spread.
These days the false advertisements often arrive in the form of email because it’s free and very easy to send out millions of emails without any work. There are no direct mailing costs or other costs or time involved. You can still find work at home scams in newspapers and all the other traditional places every day, but mainly they have moved onto the internet. Even so, the ads themselves are often the same old thing that they always have been.
Here are 3 of the biggest and most common work from home scams that have been around for a long time and are still going today…
1. The Stuffing Envelopes Scam
Filling and addressing envelopes for direct advertising was something that used to be outsourced to homeworkers decades ago, before the invention of word processing and mass mailing machines. These days it is virtually all done by mailing companies. They can print addresses to look like handwriting if that is what the advertiser wants, and they can do thousands of envelopes quickly and cheaply.
If you see an advertisement telling you to send money (usually around $5 to $10 or so) to find out how to make money at home by stuffing envelopes, it will probably be a scam. All you will receive is a letter telling you to put up ads similar to what you just responded to and have people send you money to find out how to work from home by stuffing envelopes, so that you can send them the same letter. That is if anybody even replies. Do NOT ever fall for one of these!
2. The Pyramid Scheme Scam
Pyramid schemes are based around the idea that you pay a sum of money, say $20, then recruit 10 people who pay you, so you make $180 profit. For example; you have probably seen a chain letter or email that tells you to send a certain amount to the person at the top of a list, then add your name to the bottom of the list and send the letter on to everybody that you know. That is a pyramid scheme that you should avoid. Pyramid schemes are illegal and can get you in a lot of trouble and some hefty fines. They are not worth it!
These are different from multi-level marketing (MLM) programs where you may again aim to recruit a certain number of customers but they are buying a product. Often they are confused with each other but they are not the same thing (usually). If people are buying a product or service that is worth the money, it’s generally OK. If they are just handing over money for nothing, it’s an illegal pyramid scam.
3. The Computer Software Scam
This is an updated version of the old work from home scams where you would be sold expensive equipment that would enable you to do some highly skilled job that you were told was in high demand. For example, when doctors began having to submit claims electronically in the USA a demand grew up for people to do that for them. They didn’t want to have to buy the special software themselves and then have their skilled nursing staff waste time entering data.
So companies that made this type of software began marketing it as something that you could do at home. A lot of people fell for it, bought the software and then found they had no clients. The doctors were all giving their business to large, reputable data entry companies. They didn’t want random home workers to have access to their patients’ confidential records. The aspiring home workers were out a lot of money and wasted time. Be suspicious if you see an ad that says something like, “Buy this and make $XX,XXX amount of money by using it” or whatever. Is there really a demand for the skills that you will have? If not, it could be a scam.
The above work from home scams and variations of them are very common so keep your eye out and don’t fall for any of them. The are many versions of these scams so don’t be surprised if you get pitched one that isn’t exactly the same as described above, but you should still be able to spot it by the similarities.