Work from Home - Ideas and Scams

Work from home - ideas on earning money at home and scams to watch out for

Homeworking falls into two categories - you can either work as an employee in your own home or you can run your own business and become self-employed. Whichever you choose, before you start it's worth asking yourself a few questions to get an idea of the kind of work which might be suitable.

Do you have any existing skills or qualifications you can use?
Do you have any hobbies or interests which you could use as the basis of a business?
Can you learn new skills to help you earn money?
Do you have any funds available - e.g for buying materials, stock or training? or do you need to apply for a Business Loan?

Ideas for starting a work-at-home business

Working for someone else

If you are not ready to take the big step of starting your own business, there are companies which offer work from home opportunities. However, beware! Unfortunately, homeworking - due to its popularity - is subject to many scams, rip-offs and dodgy dealers. Generally speaking if a money making opportunity sounds too good to be true, then it probably is! There are legitimate companies who will pay reasonable rates for working from home, but they are few and far between.

Scams

Be especially careful of any companies - both on and off the internet - which request your money up-front - be it for registration, stock, materials, etc.
'Envelope stuffing' can be a classic example - when you respond to a homeworking advert you'll be asked to send a registration fee to receive details about earning money at home by stuffing envelopes for mail order companies.

Sounds good so far - BUT all you'll receive in return for your fee is a letter telling you to put an advert up in your local newsagent or post office, asking people to send you a registration fee. These days all commercial mailings are automated and there is no requirement for homeworkers in the envelope stuffing field.

Another popular con-trick is to offer simple assembly work at home - this can be anything from greeting cards to gifts or crafts, but again you'll probably be asked to pay up-front for materials. You are then likely to find that the materials you receive will be worth a fraction of what you've paid, and when you've finished the assembly or painting work and send it off, you won't receive any payment as your efforts are likely to be rejected and returned to you as 'sub-standard' or 'failed quality control'.

The online versions of the above scams are many and varied, but some of the ones to look out for are: Buying e-books which promise to tell you how to get rich and which turn out to contain very little but instructions on how to resell copies of the e-book you've just bought! Signing up to take surveys or act as a 'mystery shopper' is another job opportunity which should ring your alarm bells if it asks for a registration or joining fee.

Finally watch out for unsolicited emails promising easy work at home 'administrative' , sales co-ordinator' and 'data entry' jobs - these will promise high hourly and monthly rates but will typically require you to send money to train or register and not produce any work and worse still may use your details for fraudulent purposes.

Top 5 scams to look out for (Daily Telegraph - opens in new window)

More work from home scams (BBC - opens in new window)

Ideas for starting a business

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