Beware of Money Making Scams

Open any newspaper and you will find tons of classified ads about Work at Home Jobs and Make 1000s of Rupees at home and so on. But most of these opportunities are just scams.

Here is what they do - when you contact them, they ask you to send a deposit which may range from Rs. 250 to Rs. 3500. They say this is just to ensure that you are serious about working with them. Of course, this deposit is non-refundable, which means that if you don't like what they offer, you can't even get your money back.

Here are some of the Work at Home Opportunities you should stay away from:

Home Typists/Data Processors

This is one of the most common Work at Home opportunity advertised, but is always a scam. Think of this - with all the software available which can convert scanned documents into text, why would anyone want to pay someone to type it for them. Plus, even if they do ask you to type something, the pay would be peanuts - somewhere around Rs. 5 a page.

The Home Typist scam works in this way - Their site usually says that they have a database of a few hundred companies which pay you a few dollars or rupees per ad you type. To get the database, all you need to do is pay a entry fee to join their site. This entry fee can vary from Rs. 750 to Rs. 2500.

Once you make the payment, you are not given any list of companies. You are asked to type in the same ad which you saw before you joined and you are asked to post this ad on different sites. When someone sees your ad and gets scammed, you might probably get paid.

Paid Surveys

This is another most common Work at Home opportunity. These sites tell you that you will get paid anywhere between $25 to $75 just for filling out a few surveys. Doesn't that sound easy? You just spend 15-30 mins on a survey and you get paid $25. Unfortunately, it's not so easy.

 There are only a few valid sites which really pay you for filling out surveys. And none of these sites ask you to pay to be a member. So if you find any site which asks you to pay in order to access the survey links, you can be sure it's a scam.

But even if you find a good survey site, don't depend on it for a full time income. The good survey sites will match your profile with the survey before they ask you to participate. So you will get a survey probably once a month or maybe even once in three months. $25 in 3 months isn't exactly great money, is it?

Some Known Scam Websites

I haven't joined any of these websites, but I've heard from my friends who joined that these sites are nothing but scam. They ask you to pay $49 to $97 for info which is easily available. And once you pay, they just don't bother to reply to your emails. You may not become rich by joining these sites, but they surely do from all the money they are collecting from you. Here are the sites you should stay away from:

HomeTypers.com

DataEntryPro.com

GoogleJunction.com

HomeTypists.net

DataEntryWorkOnline.com

Please note: This list of sites has been compiled after my subscribers sent me complaints about these services. If anyone has proof that any of these sites are actually legitimate, I would love to hear from you and remove the website names from this page.