Work From Home

Exaggerated Sales Pitch (Earn Without Working Style)

While most people juggle more than two jobs at a time to meet the rising cost of living in today’s world (whether one may be an office work and another a home-based job), many capable individuals can stay at home and not worry a beat about earning. 

But before you engage on various types of work from home jobs, you must first check the validity and legality of the work.

Below are tips on how to NOT be easily convinced by exaggerated marketing strategies of some home-based business opportunities or work that is currently being promoted in the market:

Guarantees large income with very little effort

It’s easy to know if a home business program is trying to victimize you. Check its sales pitch page and look for a too-good-to-be-true pitch like, “In 1 day, you will earn $10,000 without lifting a thumb.” If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

Pays Just By Recruiting

If the project is what it tells itself to be, chances are, it would not need rigorous marketing because a lot of people would already have heard of it and that the company would have more than its share of list of probable members.  Pyramid scams are the usual sources of these kinds of marketing requirements.

Price Differences

If the products you are required to sell or services involved are of very low quality but are being sold at a price higher than its real value, which your intuition should inform you, you must be wary enough not to engage yourself on such work. Not only would the probable consumers be deceived, but also such work does not last and would only be an unstable source of income for an individual.

Upfront Fee Requirement For Kits, Manuals, etc.

Not all work from home projects that are advertised over the Internet are legal or free from scam.  Another way to check if a home-based business opportunity might be a fraud is when an upfront fee is required for any product that the business will provide. Let it put your senses on red alert, although not all who have such policies are scams.

Initial fee for joining

If a work-from-home job requires an individual to pay a certain amount that would serve as a membership fee or payment for various fees and other miscellaneous items, which in turn really have very little or no use at all for the start-up work, chances are, this may be a scam that would offer no good.

Upfront Payment for Manuals and Kits

An example would be asking for an initial payment for manuals.  These manuals are said to contain instructions on how to go about the business or work and other information that are said to be relevant to the project. For crafting or selling of certain products, attention over the fees are often deviated by giving away kits, which at first glance may look like equal to the amount paid by the individual.  The person concerned would think that he or she really has not lost the money because it had been repaid or returned in the form of said products.

Experienced work-from-home workers inform those who would like to test the waters of doing any job at home to take any upfront payment as a red flag. Although not all home business opportunities that require upfront payment is a fraud, many of them are. Just be very careful and trust your gut instinct.

Phishing

Phishing is an activity of criminal act through techniques of social engineering.  Phishers, people who engage in phishing, tries to fraud sensitive information that they have acquired from other people.  Such information may include credit card details and passwords.  They would try to masquerade as a businessperson in certain companies that you can fully trust. 

Most of the phishing techniques are accomplished through the use of deceiving technical designs creating a link in an email which looks like it belongs to an organization; but in reality, that organization is not authentic.  The prominent tricks are misspelled address of the websites and utilizing subdomains.

Another method on phishing is through the use of a service's own scripts or bank against the individual to be scammed.  These types are quite difficult to handle since they will direct any user to register or sign in at the attacker’s bank or own web page, wherein everything looks proper.

There are ways in which you can protect yourself from opportunistic phishers.  Before you transact anything concerning the job or fill the contract on job placement, there are tips you need to follow:

1. Do not trust official-sounding business names immediately. There are scammers who operate using long-standing and reputable firms.  This is one of their tricks in luring victims to trust on their scheme.
2. Never ever transfer or forward money coming from your personal accounts.  Suspect if the business will require you to wire money.  Any legitimate job will transact in to wire transfer using the company’s account and not yours.
3. Do not send your personal information, especially your financial accounts.  A legal employer does not ask employee’s bank account, Paypal account, or even credit card.  Authentic and legal companies do not need these things.  They will just directly deposit it to your account.
4. If you are in doubt of the job, go and ask your country’s agency on labor.  The Better Business Bureau is one agency in which you can ask to assure your financial safety.

Many home-based jobs are available nowadays.  Some of those are real and legal while some are not.  We have to be smart enough to take time in observing whether they are scams unless you don’t care about losing money.  Some of the precautionary measures are already given out; a little understanding is the only thing you need in order to avoid being fooled by phishers.