Know what you are getting into

With all of the free advertising places popping up and gaining popularity the work at home scammers and schemers are having a ball.  I was recently searching for some legit work at home jobs to post at It's Free and was amazed to see how many are posted everyday and all over the country. 

So how can you tell if it's a legit job offer or a work at home scam or scheme?    There are some things you can watch out for.   Most real job opportunites will include a business name, a job title, etc.   The schemes will always promise things like "no experience required", "start immediately" and "Make easy money".   Watch out for the terms "join my team", this typically translates to joining an MLM unless they are giving you the company name upfront.  

 You will also get to be familiar with terms like "Test products for companies" and the poster will make it seem like a job but they are really trying to get you to sign up for an offer site.   The same thing for "Research Participants needed", the poster wants you to sign up through their affiliate link for an offer site or survey site.  

Keep in mind, many focus groups DO post their openings on these advertising sites but they always tell you what company they are, they never just ask you to click on a link without giving you the details up front.

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Contactthem Scam?

I recieved this email this morning and with all the promises of making a great amount of money from home just by advertising their links I had to check it out.

"Hi, We've seen your website at http://www.katieshugs.com/ and we love it! We looked at your traffic rank and your link popularity. With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $4,800/month to advertise our links on your website. If you're interested, read our terms from this page

 LINK AND NAME REMOVED

 The ContactThem Network"

So of course I had to go digging and find out if ContactThem is a scam or if this was a real offer to advertise on my website.

It didn't take long to find out what was going on.   Contactthem is owned by Stephan Ducharme who you might remember as "TheFreeAdGuru". 

Still, making $4800 a month just for placing an ad on my site seems like a great deal.   Well that isn't exactly the case.   The ContactThem software lets you dig up information and statistics from many databases.   Why would you want to do that?   Well so you can send all those people a nice little email like the one I recieved and hopefully they will sign up under you as an affiliate.

So basically.. it's a spam email and the software makes it easy for you to spam others.

Tags: contactthem scam, work at home, make money at home,

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Real job or scam?

This was asked on a website about this company and there job:

http://euro-invest-germany.com/Jobs.html

Here is a brief description of the job in case the link doesn't work:

        This job will allow you to:

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  Work efficiently from home;

  
  


• 
  

  Increase available personal time

  
  


• 
  

  Achieve financial independence in half the normal time (1-3 hours per day)

  
  


• 
  

  Develop high self-respect and esteem.

  
  

What exactly will I do?

  You will work as a Financial Agent, meaning you will perform e-currency exchange operations, communicate with other agents to facilitate the process, fund closed transactions, receive other funds collected at closing and disburse all proceeds to appropriate parties.
  Our employees hired for this job assure the foundation of our business and that is speed and reliability in dealing with our clients money and delivering a highly respected service in our branch.
  You will work 1-4 hours a day in your area, depending on how many tasks are assigned to you.

Now if you were able to visit the website you will notice that the "job" is very well publicized.   Everything is about the "job".. although there is a little about the services they offer..  Plus there is a news blurb from November 07 about a job opening. 

The first thing that screams "run!" at you should be that they want you to open a bank account.   Then if you read between the lines you will see that this sounds just like a fancy way of saying "payment processor".... bad bad bad..

I decided to dig a little deeper and ran a whois on the site as well.. look what comes up:

Domain Name: EURO-INVEST-GERMANY.COM
   Registrar: ENOM, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.enom.com
   Referral URL: http://www.enom.com
   Name Server: NS1.DNSPNET.BIZ
   Name Server: NS2.DNSPNET.BIZ
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Updated Date: 19-mar-2008
   Creation Date: 17-mar-2008
   Expiration Date: 17-mar-2009

Shame shame shame.....

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Work at home envelope stuffing scam

Envelope stuffing scam. 

This one always amazes me.  Just the fact that it has been around SO long in one form or another.   Remember reading the classifieds and seeing the ads?  Well you still find the ads in the classifieds but now you find them online as well.   

Earn Extra Income! Make $1275.88 after stuffing ONLY 100 envelopes!! 

Make Money from the Dorm, Home or Office! 

Earn Extra Income for College! 

Pay off those Loans!

Just send $29.99 for training materials and start making money today!


Uh huh.... here is what you usually get:   Your training materials consist of information telling you how to start your business.   Just place ads online or in regular newspaper classifieds sections offering a work at home job stuffing envelopes.. make your ads look really good and sound legit.  Now YOU ask for $29.99 or whatever amount to send other people these SAME training materials. 

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Find the Pinecone Research Banner

When we talk about surveys being scams, this is definately NOT one of those instances.   People have spent years trying to find the Pinecone banner to sign up.

The Pinecone Banner has always been elusive and hard to find but no longer.

PineCone Research is looking for Men and Women ages 18-24, get paid money for giving your opinions PLUS get an entry into a sweepstakes for every survey you take.

Pinecone Research sends out surveys that are generally simple and fast to take and they pay for each and every survey you take... quickly!   Just click on the Pinecone Research banner below to get signed up and start taking surveys for Pinecone.

Tags: pinecone research banner, pinecone banner, surveys, find pinecone, money, get paid

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Transcription job!

Mountain West Processing is hiring and will allow you to work at home for this position:

From the website it appears that they are only hiring for a Corporate transcriber at this time.. get those applications in!

Transcriber:  We have three divisions: Legal, Corporate and Medical. 

Basic requirements for all divisions include:

            1.         High Speed Internet Access
            2.         Dependable computer running Windows 2000 or XP
            3.         Good quality headset (you may not use speakers nor may you plug your headset into the speakers
                        as this distorts the quality of the audio.)
            4.         Excellent typing and proof reading skills.
            5.         Ability to turn around a 10 minute audio in 60 minutes or less.
            6.         Available at least 10 hrs weekly.  Preference given to those available during the day, Monday through Friday.
            7.         An FTP file transfer program installed and working and be able to use it to download audio and
                        upload completed Word document.  There are many free ones.
            8.         Microsoft Word as a word processing program. Word Perfect or any other word processing program is not acceptable as these other formats are not accepted by our clients.

                                                             See full job description here

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One of the funnest ways to work at home is by blogging.   Whenever I mention blogging as a way to make money from home I get a standard response.  People don't understand how it works or how to make blogging work for them. 

You can make money with a blog by using google adsense to generate income.  You can also sign up with blogitive and payperpost and post advertisements for them.   You can also use affiliate marketing through cj.com or linkshare.   These are the traditional ways to make money with a blog.

Another great way is to write a blog for a company or website.  More and more companies are finding out that blogging is a great way to get more traffic and therefore more customers. 

One website is looking for guides right now and pays very well.   You can go to http://beaguide.about.com/ and find out all you need to know.  The compensation package is great (I am thinking of applying!) and you can also find out what they expect experience wise. 

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Why do we fall for the scams?

This is easy to answer and hard to answer all at the same time.   It seems like when people in general get on the internet they tend to believe whatever they see.   Kind of like believing whatever you read in a newspaper or watch on television.

For instance why do you think those websites promising hundreds of dollars a day while you sleep are still up and running?    Ever see the websites promising data entry jobs and they have thousands of companies in their database you can work for?  All you have to do is pay a one time fee of $39.95 and of course this is the discounted price for one week only.   Bet if you go back a month from now they are still offering the discounted price.  I would also bet that once you pay for access to their wonderful data base you will find out there is no job at all.   Just a way to run a pay per click business and that business will cost you a lot of money if you don't understand what you are doing.

These places are still in business because we make it profitable for them to be in business.   With the mindset of it it is written it must be true we fall prey to their promises and send in our hard earned money. 

The internet is really not any different than the outside world.   The internet does offer us a information and a lot of it on any subject we wish to explore but it cannot make jobs magically appear with just your credit card number.   It cannot promise you work instantly.  Just because it is written doesn't make it so.

Before you hand over that credit card number do some research and make sure you know exactly what you are signing up for.   Stop and think about what it is you might really be purchasing and make sure you will be able to live with your decision.