Ways to Avoid Scams Online – 5 Tips to Know the Difference

Many want the opportunity to make money from home. However you need to know the ways to avoid scams online. In this post I will tell you how to know the difference between the legitimate job from home and the scam. Though there are many online home jobs that are legit, there are just as many, if not more, that are scams.

Many scams look legitimate

When starting your journey in creating an online job that you can do from the comfort of your home, it is very important that you know how to avoid work at home scams. Many of these scams can appear to be quite legitimate and can easily fool many people of all educational backgrounds.

Do not fooled into thinking that you are too smart to be scammed. I know many college graduates who found themselves losing money in some sort of online scam. Fortunately for the most part, many of the scams have the same telltale signs that shine a spotlight on their less than honest practices.

Tips to Know the Difference

TIP #1 – Claims of what your Income can be: Many online work at home scams will make claims about what you can make per week or per month. That right there is a BIG RED FLAG! The only way any company can make a claim that is true of what you will make per week or month, would have to mean that you are getting paid by the hour or you are on a salary.

Online Job Scams will claim you can make hundreds

Just think about how their earning claims are totally bogus. How can they predict what you will make per week or per month if they are not paying you wages? It is impossible for them to make an accurate claim, because what you make depends solely on how hard and how much YOU work.

The Difference: The real work from home opportunities will not make financial claims and if they should mention the amount you “could” make, they will state that it is solely up to how much effort you put into working the program.

TIP #2 – The cost of getting started: This is another no-brainer clue that a work from home job offer is either a scam or less than honest. If you are asked to pay a membership fee upfront without first starting to see if the opportunity you are attempting is legitimate, then why would you risk your money?

Sure the job opportunity may offer a Money Back Guarantee, but how many jobs have you ever had that required you to pay them for you to start working? Now I know you are thinking that because there is a money back guarantee, that the opportunity must be legitimate, right?

NO! It is not! Many of these money back guarantees require you to try out the opportunity for a set amount of days. Normally this time frame is not enough time to seriously see if what you purchased will really work as proposed. Then if you should request a refund, it can take several weeks of you jumping through hoops just to get your money back, if you get it back at all.

The Difference: The legitimate work at home opportunities will allow you to start and operate their program on a trial basis. If you should have to pay money for any upgrades to services, it would always be after you had a chance to try out what they have to offer.

TIP #3 – Multiple Upsells: Whenever a work from home job opportunity offers you two or more upsells, this is another indication that what they are offering is more about them and less about you making money. I agree that some legitimate opportunities will have the basic plan and an upgraded premium plan, but when these scam programs offer multiple upsells and claim you will make your money back, that is too much of a risk to play with money you do not have.

I have written three different scam reviews on this website which showcase this exact practice by other so-called work at home job opportunities that are highly questionable. Can you see yourself spending anywhere from $19.95 to $100.00 per month plus other recommended one-time cost upgrades as high as several thousand dollars?

The Difference: The real home job opportunities will not ask you to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars just so you can earn more. That is not even a logical way of how to grow a business. Do the math! How can you make a profit if you are constantly paying hundreds and thousands of dollars every year, just for some information that claims it will make you rich?

TIP #4 – The presentation of the Job Opportunity: If the website of the work from home opportunity shows mountains of cash, large pay out checks, PayPal deposits, big fancy houses, expensive cars, people having a great time in exotic locations, and basically anything that makes you say, I want that to be me someday, then that is another sign of a scam.

Most of these scams will prey upon your desire for the easy life and will make it seem that if you participate in what they have to offer, that you will get to experience the good-life with very little work on your part. But in reality, that is not how anyone has become wealthy, unless they won the lottery.

You too can have a house like this

The Difference: The legitimate home opportunities will make it known that your success depends solely on how hard YOU work to achieve your goals. NONE of the successful and wealthy online business entrepreneurs, like Jeff Bezos of Amazon or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, became rich and famous within a year or in a short amount of time. They all had to work hard to get to where they are, but they are proof that it can happen when starting from scratch with their own website.

TIP #5 – The Fine Print, TOS, Privacy Policy, and Contact Information: Thankfully there are government laws that require companies selling their services online, to comply with certain regulations. This means that the online scams which are claiming in big bold flashy graphics on their home screen what you can make, will have to come clean in what you will truly make. It is here that you will get a better glimpse into the truth or misleading information that they claim.

For example, if you were to go to the My Online Business Empire website it is impossible to view the MOBE Income Disclosure. They bury it deep within their website. The only way to see this is to scroll all the way down to the very bottom of their very long presentation home page and click on the very small text link. They state the following, “Less than 1% of all participants will earn sufficient income…” And to make matters worse, they also state that they do not give refunds.

The same can be said for another scam I wrote about, the Empower Network scam review. And though my recent review on is DS Domination a scam, shows that their program is less than truthful, you still have to be careful with them too. For a more in depth explanation on why you should not get involved with any of these so-called work from home opportunities, click the links for each one above to read the full reviews.

The Difference: The real home job opportunities will have all of this information in plain view and the information will be clear and not contradict itself. So when it comes time to actually join one of these opportunities where you will be paying money, make sure you have a way to see all of their user agreements and a way that you can contact them for more information.

My Personal Recommendation

I have been working from home for many years and I have seen many scams come and go. I have also seen many come and stay, though change their tactics for survival. On this website I not only report on exposing these work at home online scams, but I also offer legitimate jobs from home as well as best practices in creating your own website.

It is that latter part that is the most important because once you have your own website you can make money with it in many different ways. Every successful online business entrepreneur started with their own website. Your personal website is the foundation to your future success of a work from anywhere online business.

Build your own website to make money online

Having your very own website that you can easily build yourself in a matter of minutes, and being able to grow it into something great, is one of the best ways to avoid scams online. Because now you have that foundation to build your own online business that you can work from anywhere. Once you have that website of your own, you will not need any of those scams to make yourself some money.

How to make money with your website

When you have your own website you can sell your own products, you can do affiliate marketing of any kind of product being sold on Amazon and elsewhere, you can create eBooks and other software for customers to download, you can offer website building services, you can create your own eBay style online store, basically you can make money in many different ways.

Out of all the different ways to make money online from home, the best way I have ever experienced in being able to carry them out was with my own website. To accomplish this both the education and resources to successfully operate a legitimate online business needed to be in one place. Wealthy Affiliate gives you all of that and more!

Like all of the other real online opportunities, Wealthy Affiliate offers a free starter membership that lets you try out their training by teaching you the basics of website design. Then they offer you only one upsell to a premium all-inclusive training program, that gives you everything you need to build and grow your own online business. For more on the college-style education that is offered, you can read The Wealthy Affiliate Review. If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.