Introduction

When it comes to finding legitimate work at home opportunities, the industry is riddled with job offers and employment options that are cleverly disguised scams and schemes, designed to steal your time and money. Many job seekers are seeking to be able to work from home and are looking for flexible work. Such work-from-home scams are becoming so common these days that almost everyone may have come across such fake job ads at one time or another in their job search especially when searching for an opportunity to work from home even on large legitimate platforms.

I’ve come across many disguised as email marketing such as Cliqly, seemingly innocuous simple data entry job offers and paid surveys. Some types of job scams may come across as job placement services offering you a job with a detailed remote job description. Job hunters applying for a job to work remotely are often asked to send in their resumes. The recruiter of such a scam will even ask you to attend a fake job interview before the job is offered. The scammer will ask for a fee or offer to help them start their own business. The full amount of the fake remote work offers out there is not fully documented. These job scams have been around for a long time and new ones keep popping up.

Although you could earn some money with them, these would eventually run dry since they are not legitimate work-from-home opportunities and do not actually provide any real product or value to the consumer. Buying into them hurts your reputation, wastes your time and money. If something sounds too good to be true and raises a red flag with you, make sure you do your research by checking with the better business bureau or the federal trade commission before providing any detailed personal information.

So, how can you avoid being a victim of these online employment scams, and focus instead on viable, reputable and legitimate job opportunities?

Here is an overview of the industry’s most common work-from-home job scams to recognize and avoid.

1: Paid Job Websites

When it comes to using job databases and directories to find and secure home based employment, be careful not to fall victim to paying for a work at home job.

With these job membership sites, you are required to pay a membership fee that claims to give you access to the most up to date, lucrative job postings and offers. Instead, you are likely to find that the majority of these fake job postings and job ads are outdated, already filled and in many cases a freely on external websites, work at home forums and job banks.

Instead of paying for access to an employment membership site, consider exploring the opportunities on public directories and databases such as www.Monster.com or www.Jobvertise.com

2: Content Sample Requests

This is a difficult one to always avoid, because when it comes to potential employers asking for written samples that showcase your writing style, you often need to offer a sample of your writing.

The way the scam operates is that you are asked to submit numerous samples of original content. These so called employers will then utilize this content on their own websites, giving themselves access to as much free content as they need. They then indicate that they will let you know when they are in need of your services, only to never hear from them again.

An easy solution is to create an online portfolio that showcases a summary of the different styles of your work, and direct potential employers to this website. If they require original content, do a quick search, conduct your due diligence to determine whether other freelancers have experienced problems with this company, and make your decision accordingly.

For the most part, companies should not require original work in order to determine whether you are able to produce high quality material, so keep that in mind.

3: Data Entry Job Offers

With data entry job opportunities, there are legitimate offers available online, however, there is also an abundance of opportunities that are anything but traditional data entry tasks.

For example, one of the most common data entry scam is to offer what is described as a data entry position where the employee is simply told that their duties will involve entering in customer names and email address where they’ll receive $25 for every task completed. When they join, they quickly discover that their job isn’t so straightforward, in fact, they are required to refer and recruit new data entry members where they are paid on a commission basis. Worse, with many of these opportunities you must market and promote the offer yourself, where you are an affiliate, not a legitimate data entry job at all.

4: Paid Survey Opportunities

While there are many reputable survey companies willing to pay you for completing polls and providing feedback on products and services you currently use or are interested in, there are many survey membership websites online that require you to pay a start up fee in order to be eligible to participate in surveys. The problem with this, is that you are merely paying for the compilation of information freely available online, meaning that the only documentation you will receive as a member is a collection of survey companies that you can easily find online with a little research.

If you are interested in participating in legitimate survey opportunities, here are a few places to help you get started:
American Consumer Opinion
Website: http://www.acop.com
Blarry House Research
Website: http://www.Blarry.com
CashCrate
Website: http://www.CashCrate.com
Click IQ
Website: http://www.ClickIQ.com

5: Envelope Stuffing

When it comes to envelope stuffing, these opportunities go back to the very beginning of the Internet. The advertisements claim that you can generate a full time income from the comfort of your own home simply stuffing envelopes with brochures, or preparing packages at home and mailing them to potential customers.

The real opportunity is quite different, once you pay to become an envelope stuffing agent, however. Instead of simply being paid to insert documents and mail them to clients, you are simply reselling the same opportunity you joined, recruiting envelope stuffers who pay you for the job information to be mailed to them. The only documentation you are sending out is a one page advertisement similar to the one you yourself applied to. You are paid on a commission basis for participating in this elaborate ponzi scheme. There are dozens of other scams online focused on the desperate job seeker, who is desperate to find a way to generate a full time income online.

How Do You Quickly Spot a Scam?

A combination of the following factors are good indicators that the job offer is a certainly a scam:

• You are asked to pay a fee to get the job and before earning any money. (This makes us skeptical of many online courses but there are many out there that are legitimate and then those that give everyone else a bad reputation. Check out the online reviews and do your due diligence before signing up.) Or asks you to send money in order to receive any money.

• There is no real product involved

• You are required to recruit others to do the same in order to earn your money

• The job seems too good to be true, sounds like a dream and there is little work involved

• Scams promise seemingly large amounts of money for an easy job

• A fake company

Thanks for having me be part of your journey. Just by being here, you are taking the first step towards a better life.

Do you agree with these scams? Have you fallen for any of these before? Which ones were they? Will this article help you avoid falling into these traps? Comment below. Rate and share if this was helpful for you. Thank you. Thank you.