Realistic Expectations When Starting a Home Based Business

June 17, 2008

While there are many legitimate home based business opportunities available today, there are also no shortage of home business schemes and scams. It can be quite difficult to know the difference at times. Here is a list of several well known home business scams. Hopefully this list will help you from losing your hard earned money to these scammers. Envelope Stuffing

This scam has been around forever it seems, and don’t worry, it’s still as popular as ever to those who don’t know about it. You typically answer an ad that looks something like this:

“$500 - $1,000+ a WEEK working only 1 hour per day from the comfort of your home stuffing envelopes! All supplies included. FREE information”

It sounds very appealing doesn’t it? What an easy way to make a living. But what is the real story. You will most likely be required to send in $20 -$40 for a kit to get started. Usually, you’ll get nothing in return and that’s the end of the scam. But, if you do get something back it will tell you to place small classified ads (like the one you responded to) and use your address to collect money from the next batch of unsuspecting people. The cycle continues.

Or, you may actually get some materials and send out mailings, thinking you will be getting a check, only to find out that you didn’t do them properly and there will be no check, or, no one ordered anything from your mailings so there is no pay coming back to you. Envelope stuffing is complete scam. Don’t let yourself fall victim to it.

Get Paid To Surf Companies

Here is a favorite Internet scam that has been going around for a number of years. The idea is that you get paid to click on various website ads. The more time you spend clicking on sites, the more money you supposedly make. How can this be? The get paid to surf company charges fees to its advertisers. The advertisers in turn hope that you will see their ad and then buy their product.

Of course, you may never be paid for the time you spend surfing, but if you do you can expect it to be very little. Perhaps $20 a month if you are lucky, and that’s after spending hours upon hours a month clicking on ads.

Get Paid To Take Surveys Online

This sounds like an enjoyable home business. Take a survey every day, express your opinion, and get paid for it. Let’s look a little closer at how it really works.

You have to register with one of these survey clubs or sites to get started. They all charge you a fee to join, some as much as $49 or more. You get access to their database of survey companies. They will usually email you a list of surveys every day to look over. What you will then find out is that you are not qualified to take 95% of them, so it can take a while before you even get qualified for one survey. Next, when you do take a survey the company will most likely pay you with “credits”. It may be something like 25 credits for each completed survey. Then, when you have for example, 500 credits, you can redeem them for cash, generally around $10-$20 per 500 credits. This can easily take you 3-6 months to just make $10, if of course you get paid at all.

Mystery Shopper

This business opportunity sounds really cool. You get to go out shopping at a retail store or eating at a restaurant and get paid for it after providing a review of the experience. It sounds great, so what’s the catch?

There is a huge list of companies offering jobs as mystery shoppers. The pay rate varies, and is generally $10 or a little more. You must be willing to travel where you are sent. With gas prices so high, this can easily eat up your pay, because you are not reimbursed for travel expenses. If you are sent on an eating assignment, many times the meal will become your pay.

The number of assignments are few and far in between, and unless you live in a major metropolitan area your chances of getting any assignments are zero. If you make $25 a month, consider yourself lucky.

Get Paid To Read Emails

One of the biggest scams on the Internet are the get paid to read email companies. Supposedly you are going to be paid to read emails by the company you signed up with. The emails are really just ads, and the company gets paid by the advertisers, but it doesn’t really matter. The fact is, you will never be paid! You can jump up and down and shout all you want, but you’ll never get any money from them. Eventually these scams get shut down by the government.

But, let’s pretend though that you do find a legitimate company and actually get paid. The standard pay rate is around 1-2 cents per email read. You might get 10-25 per day. That comes out to around $3.00-$10.00 per month. Is that anyone’s idea of making money? If it is, then you can do a Goggle search and find tons of these home business opportunities.

Internet Research

This is more like a job than a home business, but I wanted to include it nonetheless. As an Internet researcher your job is to search the web for information and provide it to the company paying you. Sounds easy enough, but there is much more to it. You will practically need a Masters Degree in order to get one of these jobs. The subjects will be highly technical in nature. You will also need to have excellent search engine skills. Finally, the pay is not good. If you’re lucky enough to land one of these projects you may get paid $20 for an entire days work. Not exactly a good way to make a living.

Home Assembly Companies

I saved the best (or worst as I should call it) for last. Perhaps the worst scams to be found anywhere are home assembly companies. They have been scamming people for many years now and continue to do so. Here is how it works.

You answer an ad and get sent a letter in the mail. The letter contains instructions on getting started making small crafts and sending them in to the company for approval and payment. You will need to purchase a materials kit from the company that can cost from $20 up to $75 or more in some cases. You could easily buy these materials for a much cheaper cost at Wal-Mart, but you must buy them from the company. You may also be required to pay an up-front registration fee to set you up in their system.

When you complete your first project and send it in you will be credited with the cost of your kit along with payment if you have been approved. And that is where the scam begins. You will never have your work approved! It doesn’t matter if you followed every instruction to the letter, you will never be paid. You will receive a letter from the company telling you that your work was not approved no matter what. All of these home assembly companies sound good from reading the ads, but the truth is they are scams. Don’t give them your money.

About the Author

Discover more information on Home Business Scams as well as information on home businesses at http://www.Home-Business.InfoFromA-Z.com
Realistic Expectations When Starting a Home Based Business

by: Rebecca Gilbert

Working out of your home with an internet business can be the most rewarding experience, both personally and financially, that a person can undertake. The internet has made more millionaires than any other vessel in history, and you don’t have to any education or experience to obtain the riches that the internet has to offer. We all want to make more money, spend time with our family, and these are only a few of the fringe benefits that owning an internet business can provide. However, individuals that have made their fortune on the internet have certain characteristics about them that have allowed them to be successful. These riches were not obtained overnight, and they were not obtained without realistic expectations.

Lets look at some of the things that would prohibit you from being successful online…

Are you currently unemployed?

I see so many people sign up for internet programs these days that are not currently employed and expect that an internet business will provide for their families right off the bat.

Businesses on the internet are not 9-5 jobs that pay by the hour, they are “businesses”, and most pay by commission. As with most businesses, there are things that have to be set in place before you are going to start attracting customers. This does not happen overnight, this is something that you will put in place over time. When this is done over time, your commissions will grow and grow to the point that an internet business will replace your current income or career.

Are you unwilling to invest your money?

Many programs on the internet offer free sign-ups, free products, and free websites to help an individual get started in a internet home business. This is fantastic, because in order to make money on the internet, you have to have a product to sell, and your going to need a website to enable your customers with a place to go to purchase your products. However, visitors won’t know that your website exist unless you advertise it. Many high traffic sites on the internet will allow you to advertise your products on their site for a fee.

Getting your website listing on the search engines is free and will supply you with a never ending traffic stream. But many search engines are unwilling to list free affiliate websites. The way that we overcome this is to build our own sites and link them to our affiliate websites. Building your own website will cost you around $25. So as you can see, if you cannot initially invest at least $25 - $50 a month on your internet business, your probably not going to succeed.

Are you unwilling to invest your time?

I spend about 2 hours a day online through the week working on my business. I am advertising and submitting my website to various search engines, directories, and other high traffic sites. I am critiquing my website, sending emails to my affiliates in training, making deals with other webmasters, etc.

I also do an enormous amount of reading. I have found that entrepreneurs who have made a fortune on the internet are only too happy to share their knowledge on how they got there. Some days I put in more time and some day’s I don’t work at all. But, I know that every hour I spend on setting my business up is just one step closer to reaching my financial goals. If you are unwilling to invest your time…your probably not going to succeed.

Are you unwilling to give up your skepticism?

Many times I have an affiliate sign up for my program, and the first thing I hear is how they have been burned by another internet business. While I’m sure there are millions of internet scams out there, I see a common characteristic that all these people seem to have…they don’t DO ANYTHING!

When people sign up for my program, the first thing that I do is suggest that they complete a short online training on how our program works and the compensation plan. I have a statistics page that will tell me when the affiliates in my down line complete the training, I can see when they have made a sale or signed up an affiliate of their own. All these people that claim to be scammed in the past never even get past the online training. Then oddly enough, they will have enough gall to email me the next month and ask where their paycheck is?

Do people actually believe that they will earn a paycheck just because they signed up? Is this why so many believe that they have been scammed in the past? Are they so nave that they think a company will pay them when they have made no sales? If any of these things sound remotely familiar…your probably not going to succeed.

In closing, operating an internet business is not a get-rich quick program, nor can you be successful if you are unwilling to invest some time and money. You must have some realistic expectations and stay focused on the goal at hand. If you are capable of doing these things, you can expect many handsome rewards in the future for your time and effort.

Best wishes for your future success and prosperity!

Sincerely,

Rebecca Gilbert

http://www.101homebusiness.org

About The Author

Rebecca Gilbert is the owner of a successful internet business located at: http://www.101homebusiness.org.

For more tips and articles written by Rebecca, please visit: http://www.101homebusiness.org/home_based_business_articles.html

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