Just Another Work From Home Scam?

The internet is awash with websites and e-mails offering to show you how you can make money working from home. All too many of these so-called latest and greatest and newest bizopp ideas from supposed millionaire gurus are actually last year’s rehashed and reworked "biz-flops" from people who didn’t make any money on them last year either. Others are never meant to be anything other than just another clever way to separate you from your money, aka "scam" "fraud" or whatever else you want to call it.

Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to tell legitimate home business opportunities from totally dishonest scams. There are a lot a variables and fewer hard and fast rules than you might think. For instance, some have said never to pay for anything in order to work for someone. That is not true on the internet any more than it is true in the brick and mortar world. It is even less true if you plan to start your own home business.

Conventional employers often ask you to pay for your own fingerprinting, background checks, DMV printouts, etc. Online employers may want a background check. You may need to have certain office equipment that you are expected to provide at your own expense. Some freelance sites allow you to view teaser job offers for free, but if you want full access to everything there is a monthly or quarterly fee. This is legitimate.

However, before you pay anything to anyone, do your homework!

Visit the website of the opportunity you are investigating. Copy and paste the website address (url) into the search box on http://whois.domaintools.com/ . Look at when the domain name was registered. If it was very recently and only for a year or two, you might want to look elsewhere. If it has been a year or more and the registration expires several years down the road, that is a good sign. If the server is blacklisted, that is not good. Again unfortunately, these are not hard and fast rules.

Type the website name - probably the same name as the offer you are investigating - into your favorite search engine. Add "+ scam" or "+ fraud" (without the quotes) and see what comes up. Also type any person’s name into the search engine with the same two additions and also "+ legal action" or "+ lawsuit." Keep in mind that you may get a lot of results for a common name and you need to check whether any of the "hits" are really the person you are looking for. Check with the Better Business Bureau and look for unresolved complaints. Legitimate businesses do get complaints because it is impossible to please everybody, but if you see a lot of ignored or unresolved complaints, that could indicate a problem.

Type the business or offer name into the search engines with the above additions. You have to be especially careful here because you might get hits for a lot of forums where people are venting frustrations. They may have tried something legitimate thinking the money was going to flow into their bank accounts without doing any work. When that doesn’t happen, they cry "scam" or "fraud" when it may not be at all. Perhaps they tried to contact the offer and got no response. They cry "scam" or "fraud" when the problem is really with blocked e-mails. Some internet service and e-mail providers are not very good at discerning the difference between spam and legitimate communication.

If you are looking at an ebook that has been written to help get you started in a home business, investigate the reputation of the person who wrote the book as well as the people who are endorsing it on the sales page. Have they been around awhile? Have they been at this business awhile? Who else is their name associated with and what kind of reputation do they have?

As you can tell, starting up a home business is not something to be taken lightly. You need to spend time - a lot of time - doing research. If you are a praying person, spend time in prayer. Once you are confident you have chosen the right home business for you, pour your heart and soul into it. Make it work for you!

For a selection of Home Business Ideas carefully chosen for moms who want to make money working from home, visit:

123 I Work From Home 4 Me

123 Home-Based-Business-Works-4-Me

Article Writing: Top 5 Skill In Demand By Businesses And Waiting For You

(How To Cash In While The Market Is Still Hot!)

A recent hiring trend report for February, 2009, from Elance.com noted that article writing is one of the top 5 skills businesses are outsourcing to freelancers. This is not surprising information coming from Elance as Elance caters mostly to online businesses. Think about it. The internet consists of images and WORDS. The choice of words and how they are used is crucially important.

Believe me, most Internet marketers have neither the skill nor the time to write. That means a lucrative opportunity for people like you with some writing skills.

In addition to article writing, there are other in-demand skills for online ghostwriting, such as copywriting, blogs, press releases, email marketing, white papers and more. The market is wide open for you! There are many opportunities to specialize and actually charge MORE for your services.

If you’ve been thinking of breaking into ghostwriting and doing it quickly, I recommend this Ghostwriter Starter Kit. It will show you:

- How to market your services without spending on advertising
- Where to find clients with deep pockets
- Why and how to put up a professional website
- Which industries are virtual gold mines for ghostwriters
- How much to charge to actually make profit
- How to set yourself apart from your competition
- How to develop your portfolio especially when you haven’t had a single client yet
…and more!

To have a successful ghostwriting business, you need the right tools and strategies - the same ones successful entrepreneurs use. This Ghostwriter Starter Kit gives you the inspirational stories of two successful ghostwriters who earn a full-time income writing from home and includes some great tips on how they do it!

The best part is, because this guide is written for Moms, the price is just right. In fact, you’ll easily earn back the cost of this guide with your first writing assignment.

Check it out for yourself. Ghostwriter Starter Kit

Also check out the Just Add Sweat Home Business Ideas for Women for more great home businesses!

QUIZ: Are You Ready to Work at Home and Start Your Own Business?

Have you been thinking of starting an online business, but
aren't sure if it's right for you?

This quick quiz that will show you if you're suited for an at home career, what type of business you might set up and additional tips to help you get started.

The quiz only takes a couple of minutes and you can take it by clicking on the title above.

Download FREE Questionnaires For Your Ghostwriting Clients!

Most experienced ghostwriters have had the frustrating experience of writing some articles for a client only to have the client say, "This is not what I wanted at all" or "That's not what I expected."

If you are just a beginning ghostwriter about to take your first client, this is something you want to avoid at all costs. Nobody wants to do all that work only to end up with an unhappy customer.

Ghostwriters all want to serve their clients and serve them well, but that requires good communication by both parties. It's important to gather as much information about your project as possible BEFORE starting.

To help you do this, check out these very handy, fully-customizable ghostwriting client questionnaires.

Now all you have to do is quickly send the appropriate questionnaire to your client and you're well on the way to delivering EXACTLY what your client wants.

The questionnaires come at absolutely no charge, no sign ups or any type of obligation.

Just go to this page to get yours.



FREE Questionnaires For Your Ghostwriting Clients!

Home Based Tutoring Business

I have a casual acquaintance who is no longer able to be in the workforce because of health issues. However, she is still bright, cheerful, articulate, intelligent, and in need if an income to support herself. She decided she would try tutoring in a subject about which she has knowledge.

The other day she mentioned that she had to take her advertising sign off of her car because she had more business than she could handle!

There is a great need out there for tutors. Adults as well as school children and teens often are looking for that little bit of help. What do you know that you could teach others?

Although there is great interest in and demand for tutoring in basic school subjects such as The Three R's, there is also demand for typing, computer use, music, arts, sports, you name it. Do you speak more than one language? You could tutor others in a second language. Do you speak only English? Teaching English as a Second Language is a booming business where there is great demand!

Here are some sources to help you start your Home Based Tutoring Business.

Bizymoms Tutoring Service Home Business Kit

Online Tutoring Step-By-Step

Confessions Of A High Paid Tutor!

Three Pitfalls To Avoid In Your Work From Home Search

I have been working from home now for several years, and I am always amazed by how many people are enticed by internet hype. They think they can just sign up for this or that wonderful program they find advertised online and the money will somehow automatically come pouring in. It's so sad that people can be so desperate for money that their common sense just shuts down. It's even sadder that there are predators out there who are all too happy to prey on the people who are only looking to make their lives a little easier.

Unfortunately, these desperate people set themselves up for disappointment and failure. If they keep trying to make money from these get-rich-quick programs, they set themselves up for repeated disappointments and failures.

The good news is this doesn't have to happen to you!

By the time you finish reading this article, you will have learned three valuable tips that can help you avoid falling victim to brazen internet hype. Begin now to prepare yourself to successfully work from home.

1. Do not confuse "simple" with "easy." No matter what work from home business you select, the concept should be simple, but the application will not be easy. Make sure you understand thoroughly and completely what you are getting into before you start. Make sure you have the skills, resources and temperament to succeed at your chosen profession.

Many of the opportunities and ideas you will come across will present themselves as being really "simple" to do. I absolutely cringe when I read ad copy saying things like, "Simply do this." "Simply do this" is NEVER all there is to it. For instance, the ad copy may say "Simply sell 3 of these widgets a day and you will make $_.__ every month!" The ad copy doesn't tell you HOW to sell 3 widgets every day. If you have no idea how you would convince 3 people a day to buy a widget from you, then this so-called simple bizopp won't be easy for you at all.

2. Be very skeptical of ads that show models standing next to a very expensive car with a mansion in the background. The marketers can't get away with saying that if you buy their product you will live like the people in the ad, but the implication is clearly there. It may be possible to do that well, but it's also possible for any given baby born in the U.S.A. to become president. It just is not very likely, and the odds are probably about the same.

Many of these ads don't really tell you what you would be actually doing should you get involved in the business. You find that out after they have your money and contact information, That should be a very big red flag for you. If they are afraid you would run away if they told you "too much" up front, that's exactly what you should do. Run away!

3). Be wary of bizopps that provide you with a cookie cutter website and tell you that is all you will need. What's a cookie cutter website? It's a website that is identical to thousands of other websites except for your affiliate contact info. You have no control over content or appearance. That means your site would look like everybody else's site that is in the same business you are looking into. Competition would be fierce and you would stand NO chance of ranking well with the search engines.

To be fair, there are a few legitimate bizopps that provide you with such a cookie cutter site, but they tell you up front that you really need to have you own site with your own domain name and total control over the content. They tell you to use your site to attract customers whom you then redirect to the cookie cutter site which is a professionally written sales page from which the customer can place their orders. That's OK. Also OK are the bizopps that provide you with a site as part of the package you buy. You have control over the content and can optimize your site for search engine ranking.

In conclusion, if you avoid the pitfalls I've just outlined, you will save yourself a lot of grief and regret as you search for the perfect work from home opportunity for you.

Find your perfect work from home job or home based business on one of the sites below. Choose from dozens of carefully selected work from home ideas and opportunities.

123 I Work From Home 4 Me

123 Home Based Business Works 4 Me

Work At Home 101 from CWAHM.com

CWAHM.com Announces Work At Home 101 A FREE online 3 week course designed to give moms a work-at-home starting place. If you are one of the many people who has recently lost your job, you have probably given considerable thought to working from home. Most people are curious about working from home. We know others do it, but aren't sure how they do it. CWAHM.com's Work at Home 101 is designed to give you an overview of the choices available that will allow you to work from home. This online course will give you the starting place you've been searching for. No matter what happens to the economy in the upcoming months, you may find working from home so rewarding that you decide to never again enter the workforce again! Best of all - Work at Home 101 is completely free! CLICK HERE! Some of the things covered during Work at Home 101: * Where to Start * Telecommuting * Home-Based Businesses * Avoiding Scams * Entrepreneur Tips *AND MUCH MORE!