Envelope Stuffing
You see this ad in just about every paper in America and especially National papers like the Globe or Enquirer. They promise you thousands of dollars a week just stuffing envelopes and mailing them from home. Then they ask for a fee for the information that will tell you how to do this wonderful job. Sounds real because you have no idea how all that junk mail you receive gets the letters packed into the envelope and mailed to your house. Sounds like a great job since you receive all kinds of junk mail every day multiplied by every household in the Country and you figure well somebody has to do it right?
The Reality
First, there are hundreds of companies across the Country that have envelope inserting machines that do this for a fraction of the cost of what these people are promising you. Why would anybody pay you $5.00 per envelope stuffed when they can do this for a penny apiece at an inserting company. How it works is they take your start up fee and send you your start up kit. The kit then tells you to place the same ad in newspapers and magazines and resell the kit you were sent. The only way you make money on this is if somebody responds to your ad or letter. You may make a little money but I can promise you it wont cover the cost of the ads or mailings. Even worse is knowing you ripped somebody off, you may not be able to sleep at night.
Medical Billing
You can find ads for medical billing in most magazines, internet, radio and television. Most will tell you there is a shortage of bill processors in the health care system due to increased medical claims. They then almost guarantee you will make $50,000-$70,000 processing medical bills electronically from home. They may also tell you that most Doctors are wanting to outsource or contract out the billing services to save money. You will be told there is no experience necessary and they will provide you with clients who will be eager to contract your services. Sounds almost to good to be true right? Well it is.
The Reality
First you will be asked to invest $2,000-$8,000 for training, billing software, and technical support. After your investment you will typically receive a licensing agreement, disclosure document, software, video training cassettes and testimonials about how great others are doing in the program. Some will encourage you to contact others who are currently using the system and most of those people are hired to give favorable testimony. If you do go through the training and put yourself in a position to contract your services out, you find that there is not much of a demand for this service as you were told by the promoter. There are several companies that already provide this service for hospitals and doctors and the competition is fierce. Basically you invest thousands of dollars on $100 worth of materials and broken dreams.
Assembly work from home
This scam comes in many forms ranging from assembling crafts or jewelry from home to sewing aprons or baby clothes. Again you find these ads in national newspapers and magazines promising you riches beyond belief working from your kitchen table. Then you think to yourself how hard can it be to glue together a refrigerator magnet. Even better you do the math in your head and figure if you can assemble 10 and hour at $3.00 apiece which is what the company is promising to pay you can pull in $30.00 per hour and finally buy that new car you have been eying. And all that money without even leaving the house. Yea right.
The Reality
Most often the promoter asks you to pay a fee up front between $30-$50 and this is to process you as a contractor and put you in the system. After you are set up you need to purchase the materials you will be assembling (from them) to get your career started. When you proudly send your assembled items back to them they have to pass an inspection for you to get paid. You then receive a letter letting you know the quality of your work did not pass their standards and offer some tips to improve. Fact is they will just keep selling you overpriced junk and the quality of your work will never pass. This is how they make their money. If you think about it companies can buy items from all over the world for pennies on the dollar so why would they pay you to assemble them from home?
Rebate Processing
This one is similar to the medical billing scam. The ad usually starts by convincing you there is an increasing demand for rebate processors and the industry cannot keep up. They will also tell you that the companies promoting the rebates would rather contract the work out to save money than hire people internally. Again you are asked to pay a processing fee to get you in the system and that buys you a list of companies to contact and offer your services. Wow, $50,000 a year just printing rebate checks on the computer and mailing them out, sounds like a dream job!
The Reality
Yep, you guessed it. You just paid somebody $34.95 for a gravy job and you contact the companies on your list just to find out don't contract that sort of work out. Rebate processing is a high volume, low margin business that is usually contracted out to large processing centers so I would strongly advise passing on this one.
Chain Letters
Most often these come in the form of a mailed letter. The most impressive one I have seen is allegedly from an attorney who was already rich but stumbled upon this letter and doubled his income in only a month. He is very convincing and again your brain starts thinking and planning how you are going to spend all this money people are sending you. All you have to do is put your name and address in the number one position of the letter and make copies. All you have to do is mail off $20.00 to the people on the letter you receive that are in the number one and number two positions. Purchase 100+ prospect labels from the company listed on the letter and place your name and address in the number one position, mail them off and wait for the money to flow in. I have been conned into this scam a few times, here is what really happens.
The Reality
If you are like most people you say to yourself why should I send the money off to the people in the one and two positions? Who would know anyway? I will just purchase the labels, mail my envelopes, and receive my money. Well guess what, everyone you send your letter to is thinking the same thing. An average response to mailings is 2% which is only 2 letters and I can promise you those two are not going to put a $20 bill in the mail to someone they don't know for no reason. But those 2 will purchase the labels for $25 to send out their mailings and wait for the riches to flow in. The only one making money here is the guy printing the labels off his computer and mailing them out. And now he has your address to add to the mailing list he is selling. I still love to get various chain letters and review them to figure out who is really making the money in the scam.
Multi-Level Marketing
Most of the time you are brought into this by a friend or relative who is telling you how great the product is, how well it sells and how much money you will make. The whole concept of Multi-Level Marketing is to grow people in your down line so you make more money. Without a down line, you don't get paid so they are going to do everything they can to sell you into joining. Usually you are asked to attend a meeting which has an excellent speaker and live people testifying how much money they have made since joining. You will see charts and graphs with large amounts of promised money if you just follow their simple plan. I have sold alarms and phone services but my favorite was diet pills. All I had to do is purchase and sell one case each month to qualify receiving my monthly check. I was told through training tapes that as long as I built my down line I didn't have to worry about trying to sell the pills. I could just chuck them into a lake and still get my monthly check for thousands of dollars. Sounded like a great rags to riches plan to me, so I signed up with a successful diet pill company.
The Reality
I purchased my first case of 12 bottles of diet pills and marketing materials for $276 and I was off. I ran an ad in the local newspaper, put out hundreds of brochures everywhere, and talked to my family and friends about my product. Sales began coming in but I found it hard to sell the 12 bottles that I had each month. And I had to purchase 12 a month to qualify to get paid. I got desperate and started handing out free trial samples which people were eager to try but they still didn't purchase the product. My first months check was for $12 so I thought I needed to buy more marketing materials from the company to grow my business. My next check was for $126 only because my mentor had placed two people in my down line. After three months I was $638 in the hole and it was a wake-up call. I really started noticing the people who were supposedly doing well selling the product and a lot of them were overweight and had illnesses.. Needless to say I didn't feel good about selling a product that didn't even work on the people who ran the company so I gave it up.
In Conclusion
I have showed you only a handful of the current scams going around. These people are real pros at finding new ways to take your money so be on the lookout. Others to watch out for are eBay wholesale lists and drop shippers, making money on Craigslist or with Google. I have read about some horrible stories about drop shipping. With the Craigslist and Google Scams they get you to do a trial offer for under $2 then bill your credit card for up to $100 and make it almost impossible to get your money back. So please always research any offer that sounds to good to be true or promises a lot of money in a little time because the only ones making money are the people that are scamming you.
The Real Deal
By now you must be wondering why I am sharing all of this information with you and upsetting a lot of scammers in the process. I too was once looking for a way to supplement my income while in College and later after becoming a Minister. After loosing a lot of money along with pain and suffering I was able to use what I learned and put it in a book. In my book is a list of real companies that pay real money to work form home. Yes, I personally sifted through all the work from home garbage online and found the real deal. I also include a brief description of the work from home job opportunities they offer and how to apply as I am currently working for several myself.
Check out my website to find out how you can get your copy today! [http://www.calvincarpenter.com/p2]
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