So How Do You Work From Home Without Getting Scammed

As a divorced mom of two young children I made
the decision to work at home. I am college educated
and thought that it should be fairly easy to find decent
paying work. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine
that finding legitimate, honest work would be so tough.
There are literally thousands of ‘Work at Home’ programs
to choose from. However, each one seems to charge a
processing fee, or a licensing fee, etc. Just why is it
they are charging me if I want to work for them?
Something smelled fishy.

I got up in the morning and sat down at my computer to
search for a real work at home program. Before I knew it
3 hours had slipped by and I still hadn’t found what I was
looking for. Sure, they all promised me that I’d make
between $5000-$15000 a month if I really worked at it. I
would be driving that brand new car I wanted and taking
my family on that vacation we’d been planning. Somehow
I just couldn’t wrap my brain around that idea. It just
seemed too good to be true. Guess what? Most of them are.

I learned a very expensive lesson that day. There is no
get-rich quick secret. You have to find a successful program
that works and then work that program. I shelled out almost
$200 to several companies that day for their internet marketing
products and guide books. I won’t deny that for the most part
it was great information that I really needed to succeed at an
online business. But the rest of it was really just information I
started learning on the internet for free. It took many, many
long hours on the internet to find the reputable companies that
I now work with. Unfortunately, to get to that point I lost money
requesting information about stuffing envelopes, processing
credit card applications, and becoming a “phone actress” just to
name a few. More importantly I wasted my valuable time wading
through so many disreputable websites and classified ads. That
was time I could have spent with my children.

So how does the average person find honest, legitimate work from
home without getting scammed or going bankrupt in the process?
My advice is to start at the work at home message boards and
free home business forums. This made all the difference in the
world for me. I connected with people like myself from all walks
of life trying to find the same things I was. Most incredibly I got
advice from some of the most successful internet marketers and
home business gurus. This proved to be an incredibly, invaluable
resource that happened to be free. I found messages posted there
about phony companies to avoid or legitimate companies that did
measure up to their promises. I got some great leads and I started
my job search from there.

My next bit of advice is to make sure the company you work for is
registered with the Better Business Bureau or some such organization.
When I saw companies that were registered with those organizations
I felt more confident working for them. They appeared more credible
to me.

Lastly, I would strongly urge people to check out the multitude of
business ezines and free articles. They really are a wealth of knowledge. Remember if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Most of us
won’t be millionaires in our lifetime. But I’ll settle for making some honest money from home and enjoying every minute I can with my family.



Kathleen Murphy has been an internet marketer for several years. She
is the author of several home business articles and internet marketing blogs. She is also a single mom of 2.


Kathleen A Murphy
http://www.WorkingMom2005.com
http://www.blogging2success.blogspot.com

Excellent article Kathleen, well done.

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Sohaib

Very good article. Very informative. This is probably a bigger problem than most people think it is.

Thanks! Very good reading. Very informative!

Great article! I am still having problems even at WAHM message boards. I will go in and start posting and asking questions and get spammed with more things that want $ to start up.Guess I shouldnt say spammed, because I did ask for the info!

I almost started the same way but the difference was I did not have the money to pay for the fees required by those companies. When I found myself with nowhere else to go I stumbled upon Yahoo Answers. I place a question about free online job and they gave me a link. That's where it all began.

This is very informative and I still find it hard to believe alot of people fall for the get rich schemes and the work at home offers sent via email and even seen on TV. The only way to make money is to earn the good old fashion, no short cuts. I can say however, I got lucky when I started my business, it literally fell into my lap.

I have found that a person's safest route to take is to create their own products. If you have some writing ability, then simply creating articles on various tpics and offering them for sale can make you some money if you're just starting out. Also, you can use your own content and take the adsense route. Original content done on a good website platform has a good chance to earn some money through adsense.

If you have some experience and/or success in internet marketing, then creating a how to ebook and setting up an affiliate program through clickbank or paydotcom is another way to make some money. An offshoot to this business is making instructional videos. Camtasia is the standard for doing these...but costs around $300. There is a free alternative here: http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Wink is a free screen capture and presentation tool. If you want to work in ebooks...you may find it easier to just make a video and say what you want...as opposed to writing and designing an ebook. I've found videos are a great way to teach others about a product you have...and cut down on the support time.

I do find alot of scams in the internet. So far I only trusted those company that I could contact with. Before investing any of my money, me myself do look out for forums such as these and a few more to determine weather if the company is real or fake. It's good to do research before making any step just incase you do not want to be scamed.

Great article and very informative.

A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with a serious illness that has left me disabled. Before my illness I had been working full time at my job for over 6 years and loved it. The difficulties that my illness presents have just made me give up working outside my home altogether. It took me 2-3 years to finally find anything decent, and even then it's not much. I think where I went lucky was that I couldn't afford to pay for any of that information so I had to find it all myself. It takes a lot of sifting through the garbage, but there are jobs out there, and if you work hard enough you'll be ok.

Thanks for the great article, because right now there's someone out there wading through all the garbage trying to figure out what's legit and what's not, and hopefully they'll stumble upon your article.