Would it not be wonderful, if we could all sit at home and earn our income, doing maybe two or three hours of actual work each day.
No having to drag yourself out of bed each day to go to a job you do not really enjoy.
Always being able to 'take the day off' if you feel so inclined.
Having the opportunity to work double the number of hours and double your pay (only if you want to though!).
Well, I don't know about you, but to me that really sounds wonderful, just show me the way, where do I sign, I want to start right away! Many millions of people also think this way and are searching for this 'Holy Grail' answer, to a better and easier life, and because of this quest, their normal guards or suspicions are at a much lower level than would normally be the case.
Consequently every year more and more people opt (or try to opt!) out of conventional employment, choosing to set themselves up as a home business, believing the wild claims they read about on internet or newspaper scam adverts.
Then, a large proportion of them find the hard way that these work from home opportunities that sounded too good to be true, were in fact, too good to be true.
Consequently, these gullible innocents waste millions of dollars as they make the purveyors of these "work from home scams" even richer.
How do these actually work schemes work, and how, or why do they take people in.
Lets look at a couple that you see everyday on internet job ads or newspaper ads.
Envelope stuffing One that has been around since the dark ages and is still going strong is 'envelope stuffing'.
"Earn Guaranteed $350-$700 per week working 2 hours per day in the comfort of your own home stuffing envelopes".
Sounds wonderful, I wish it could actually work.
Why does it not work and what makes it one of the oldest internet job scams? Well nowadays any corporation, or company that requires large amounts of letters or documents putting into envelopes for posting or distribution will already have a sophisticated, automatic envelope stuffer on site, that will fold, insert, seal and then franks the envelope at the rate of 5000 per hour, label application at an hourly rate of 12000.
If this is the case, then what about all these fabulous money making opportunities advertised? Well when you reply to the scam advert, firstly you are identifying yourself to the home business scam artists as a potentially vulnerable target, so you will be placed on the list of potential customers, to bombard with future job opportunities.
Secondly, you do not receive any envelopes or material to stuff into them, but you will probably be sent more promotional material telling you about more lucrative money making schemes available, and you would only have to send a small amount of money for the instructions to be forwarded to you for this alternative scheme.
If you are then further 'sucked in', the instructions received in return for the cash you sent, will tell you that to make money all you have to do is place a small advert similar to the one you replied to in the first place! If you persevere with the envelope stuffing route, then you will probably have been told that the next step involves sending more money for a package containing advertising costs, postage costs, envelopes, printing etc, which are useless.
You are also asked to recruit friends and acquaintances for the same scheme all of whom become part of your 'downline' and you earn commissions on the packages that they in turn buy.
Whilst all this is going on, no envelopes are actually stuffed, just the purchase of the system or anything associated with it.
It is on record that the US Postal Inspection Service does not know of any work at home envelope stuffing business that has ever come close to producing the wild income claims made by the promotional adverts.
Home Product Assembly This scam is aimed mostly at the mothers who have to stay at home looking after kids, cannot go out to work, and could benefit from some extra cash.
The advert will claim that anyone can easily assemble these products using a few simple tools that you probably already have at home, and when you submit the assembled product you will be paid immediately.
When you apply to the company, you receive a booklet or pamphlet that has a description of the finished product.
Once the item is finished (as many as you can produce) you return it to the company and you will be paid a certain amount for each item assembled.
Once again this all sounds fairly straightforward doesn't it.
Well here is the scam side of it all.
When you receive your instructions for assembly, you will be informed that all materials for the project will have to be purchased from the actual company involved (this is to ensure that the 'correct quality' of material is used).
In most cases the materials could have been purchased a lot cheaper elsewhere.
So to start with you have already paid money to the company and are out of pocket.
Then after submitting the finished product for payment, you receive a letter (not containing a cheque!) and this letter informs you that your finished products have been rejected for being sub-standard due to some ludicrous reason or other.
Why would this happen you ask? Well the simple answer is that the products you are asked to assemble do not have any actual buyers.
The only money made by this scam is by the originating company or individual selling you overpriced materials to complete your tasks.
More home business scams will be discussed in future articles.