Work At Home Scams

by Tony Clifton

Everyone has seen some of these ads "earn from $25 to $125 per hour!", "make 5k weekly at home" etc. ads which promiss to make you rich by working at your home. In general they don't want any qualifications from you, no special knowledge or anything. Sometimes there is only a small "investment" needed. Of course, the cruel realitiy is very different from that.

What kinds of "work at home" scams can we find on the Net:

Easy typing jobs. You are paid for typing various "assigments". However if you weant to register to be a paid "typist" you have to pay a small fee, usually $50 - $60. Too bad, after your payment happens some of the following:
- no further contact from the "company". You just wait for the jobs, but they never come. When you contact the site you usually won't get a responce.
- the jobs are sent, but instead the nice bucks promissed you are getting dimes. This is what happens in most of the cases.
- the jobs are sent and the payment is good. But there is a high minimum and you can't withdraw before you reach it. Thus you work at least a month or two before being able to withdraw - and then you understand that noone will send you the money!
NOT ALL typist jobs are scams. However, just like with HYIPs, most of them are. So you have to research the Net about the company you are planning to use and ensure there are real people who are getting their earnings from it.

Read and reply to emails, send emails. These scams want you just to read emails, some of them ask you to reply, others to send emails to someone. The theft is done in similar way. You have to pay a fee to participate. Then you either realize you will be earning pennies or noone would send you the payment. Example for such "company" is directmoney.com

Paid surveys. The most of these companies are just ponzis like our well known HYIPs. They pay to the "workers" with their own registration fees and with the fees made from the newcomers. When the new cashflow goes down, the company closes down and you won't be paid - you are loosing either your time or your money or both.
There are real paid-to-survey companies, but they don't give amazing salaries. However, if you want to find a real paid-to-survey company you should know at leats that they won't accept you if without interview and if you don't meet their (often very specific) requirements. If you are asked for money to join, rather than for specific geographic, age and sex characteristics, then you are going into scam.

Paid to click. These are the "lowest isk" work-at-home scams because they almost never ask for sign up fee. They are looking for poor surfers who are ready to

clicks links for pennies. Nothing bad if you are happy with that payment. But most of the times you won't see it. These programs are just short term scams - they are ran by traffic sellers which get money from advertisers to send them "real hits". Instead of sending them targeted visitors they use "paid" clickers. They create a site, offer 1c-5c per click, but you need to collect at least $50 or $100 to get paid. But before you can collect that amount (you need at least 2-3 months for that) the company is gone. So they have gotten your "work" for free. You've been scammed for not being paid and their customers are also scammed for receiving untargeted traffic.

There are many more work-at-home scams, but they all can be recognized either by asking for a signup fee or by having a high minimum payout. If you wnat to find a real work at home jobs, you always need to check them at various forums and review sites.

Published at Dec, 06 '05 ; read 573 times;

If you liked this article subscribe to the Free HYWD Newsletter