Work at Home Online Scams

After doing my first two stories (Registry cleaners, Online TV), one common aspect stood out. It is the fact that both scams are able to spread fast because of affiliate marketing. Now the gigantic scope of online work at home scams cannot be all covered in this article. What I will focus on is to give you some general advise on how not to throw away your cash at worthless scams, and talk about problems with affiliate marketing.

Search terms, “work at home” or “make money online” probably result in the biggest number of scam sites. They entice online opportunity seeker with the promise of easy money. “You don’t have to do anything. You can enjoy your life and let the money making system work on its own.” Sure, they all sound good, and some even sound very convincing. However, in the end, they will try to sell you an ebook they put together that probably does have some good info in there, but nothing you can’t find online yourself. Most ebooks are repackaged from other ebooks.

My main problem is this. When someone who has an expertise in an area tries to create a product or service to sell, it’s all dandy. But when someone who, without proper education or experience, tries to simply look for ways to make some doe online, the product ends up substandard and/or becomes a scam.

This is how an average newbie’s journey starts. Let’s say Joe wants to look for ways to make money online. He starts by searching on a search engine (SE), “work at home” or “how to make money online”. Eventually he will be drawn to the affiliate marketing. He buys some ebooks; maybe even sign up on some paid membership that promises to make him rich. These ebooks and “gurus” will tell him to create a website and promote their product and other popular products on Clickbank (Clickbank is where affiliates and advertisers meet and it also provides the system for transactions and commissions). He will sign up on Clickbank.com to start promoting products. The easiest and the likely product he will promote is an ebook on how to make money online. You can already see the irony in this. Joe doesn’t yet make any money, but he is teaching others to make money like he does. Joe doesn’t have any skills in website design, so he uses one of the provided one page templates to write his sales pitch.

Joe may make a few sales after making his site search engine optimized, spamming forums and message boards with his link, and paying for some advertising on Google Adsense and other PPC ads. His revenues after all this effort doesn’t even cover his costs, let alone a proper compensation for his time. Now this may evolve into a real website with third party ads (ie. Adsense). Then if he’s lucky, he will get another Joe to buy from him. See the cycle?

What most affiliates are trying to do is copy the success of big websites that earn huge income from affiliate links and advertising revenue. The difference is, most affiliates don’t have a website with good content to drive traffic. They’ve been told to create a website that will drive traffic. But this is a backward approach. You are supposed to create a website with genuine content, and when you start getting traffic, you earn some money with advertising, not the other way around where you try to make money with advertising and try to build a website content around that.

Some may succeed with a lot of effort, but then these ebooks and programs already lied to you about making money while enjoying a cruise ride. Plus, have you thought of what you are actually promoting? Like I’ve covered in the first two stories, most of these affiliate programs that attract average Joes sell scam products. Does ethical business mean nothing to you?

In conclusion, if you want to work at home using the power of the internet, look for legitimate job opportunities. They are out there. From virtual assistants to programming, these are actual jobs that will pay you decent money. But like any other job, you work hard for your money.

Recommendations

• Look for legitimate jobs – oDesk.com is a good website where job seekers and companies meet. They provide software to track workers’ performance so that employers don’t get cheated on hours. Popular jobs seem to be programming jobs. So if you have that skill, take a look. There are other jobs available, too. Sign up and take some tests to enhance your profile.  http://www.odesk.com
• Another one, like oDesk, I just found (Sept. 2, 2009) is http://www.limeexchange.com
• I found this ABC article on work from home tips. It is very informative with lots of links to interesting websites. Hopefully that’ll give you some ideas. LINK
• Don’t waste your time reading all the material online, whether free or paid. There’s so much stuff on this subject, you’ll never actually get started. Start something first, and then when you need help, search and read. You learn as you go, not endless learning.
• Workathomenoscams.com – This guy does reviews on websites to see if they are legitimate or scam. But most articles are about paid surveys and click-ads-to-make-money type of deal. At least you’ll know what’s a scam and what’s not. Plus, he provides you with weekly list of job postings.
  He is advertising his affiliate links with every article he does, so if you just sign up to everything that he says are not scams, you’re only making him rich. Same owner, different site that has job postings: LINK
• Don’t pay for a job – A job is supposed to pay you, not the other way around. Although there are legitimate paid training programs out there, most of the time, it’s a scam. Plus, all training programs teach you the same things. If you are focused and smart enough, you can find out what all these guys are teaching their members.
• If you’re already into affiliate marketing, think about the legitimacy of what you are promoting. Affiliate marketing in itself is not a problem. Every website does affiliate marketing. I just have a problem with the way it’s evolved into this monster that snatches poor money seekers.

If you have some good suggestions on working from home, you are welcome to comment.