With rising
costs of living, employee downsizing, corporate layoffs, constantly
increasing gas prices
and long commutes to work, more
and more people
find it now necessary to find
a work at home
job or to start
a home based business. A vast
majority of these individuals turn to
the internet for their work at home salvation. There
are literally thousands of work at home
and home based
business opportunities out there on
the World Wide Web but of
course all
that glitters is not gold.
Upwards of 90% of the marketed home based
businesses I
would say are scams.
These are schemes designed
with the sole purpose of making the individual marketing the
product to
you rich, while you are left holding the bag as
it were.
Having said
this however
there are many legitimate home based
business opportunities on the internet. The problem then is
weeding out the good from the bad.
Unfortunately this is
a matter if trial
and error and a
LOT of research.
Finding legitimate opportunities to
make money from home
can become an extremely time consuming and ultimately a
very expensive
undertaking. There are a
few things one must look
for when searching for a legitimate work at home job or home based business
opportunity. Any
aspiring web
entrepreneur must look for these important factors before selecting any work at home business opportunity, work at home job or affiliate program.
The
first thing you should
do is to review their standing with the various
Business Regulation Agencies such as the
Better Business Bureau. You should
check on any
complaints that may have
been filed by consumers and whether or not it was satisfactorily resolved. In
most cases this
can be done online at the
agencies web site.
They must have very good
products and or services to promote.
No matter their claims, if
no one finds it
useful no one
will buy. On this note beware of any "opportunity" where you have to buy-in before you know
exactly what you will
be getting for you hard earned cash. As you can imagine there are many of these out there with a slick sales letter but absolutely no mention of what the product or service is.
There must be a reliable support system
in place with training and good leadership. Any program that just
hands you the
material and expects you to just figure it out on
your own
isn't worth your time and money.
Paychecks should be sent out on time and at
least once per month.
Some home based business opportunities make you wait until your account
reaches a preset
limit before you
get paid. Others let you choose your own limit and or frequency, you be the judge of what is acceptable for your individual needs.
Longevity is most
important, so they should have been in business for at least
three years. The scammers and con-artist usually cannot stick around this long with any individual program. They pack up and leave to
return with something new. If a company is around this long on the internet I would say they must be doing something good.
I must also add here a simple
rule to follow; if it sounds too good to be true it probably isn't.
We've all seen those
ads with claims such as you can make $8,000 a day or in a few hours, just a little
common sense goes a long way with
these. While I'm not saying that it's impossible to make thousands of dollars a day, it's impractical to think it will just happen over night.
Any home based business venture you get into will take time and effort; there will be a learning curve. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, so take your time and
learn the ropes. There is no such thing as a get rich quick
scheme or
we would all be millionaires.
Juan Mendez is a web entrepreneur and aspiring writer.