You know what I’m talking about - the ads you see posted on telephone poles or yard signs on the side of the road. In fact I even saw some listed at the bottom of the SDMB boards. No previous experience required. No special skills needed.
Anyway, from what I understand, 99 times out of 100 these turn to be some sort of scam or at the very least a less than savory line of work. But has anyone ever actually responded to one of these ads, or know someone who has? What was your experience? How much money can you realistically expect to make in whatever job they allegedly have lined up?
I don’t think you’ll find many people on this board who have replied. As far as I’m concerned, they have SCAM written all over them.
I’d imagine that those who do respond are the same people who buy miracle weight loss programs and breast and penis enlargers.
I responded to a similar type of ad, I had to ring a number that was just an automated message that didn’t give any new information, but I had the option of leaving my name and address after the tone, if I wanted to be sent a “free information pack”.
So I left my details, and the pack turned up. Basically, what they were promoting was a piece of software that could “beat the odds” at horse racing. You pay for the software, install it on your computer, and each day it will give you a list of horses to bet on for that day. Suffice to say, I took it no further.
I’ve checked some that direct you to a website. Invariably, when you go to the website they ask you to pay a “nominal fee” for the “start-up packet” to get you going.
I guess that doesn’t really count, but I’d be curious to hear what anyone who has paid for one of those “start-up packets” actually got.
I’m sure the packet will say: create a website and get enough suckers to send you $1000/week for a packet.
There’s some good info on one flavor of these on Rob Cockerham’s website. http://www.cockeyed.com/workfromhome/workfromhome_s.html
(BTW, there are multiple pages – I personally find the “continue to page X” links below the ads to be very easy to miss.)
“Lose weight now…ask me how!” Herbalife.
The classic, in the backs of magazines since the pulp fiction '40’s is the one that says “Earn money from home stuffing envelopes. Send $___ to PO Box ___”. What you get for your dough is an envelope with a single paragraph: “Rent a PO box. Take out an ad in several newspapers just the one you answered. Orders with money will pour in and you will reply with copies of this letter.” Of course most people who tried it quickly spent more in ads than they “earned”
Fascinating exposé. What’s really hilarious though is that the site has Google Ads, and those ads are for… you guessed it… Herbalife.
Saw an ad once that said “HOW TO GET 1 MILLION PEOPLE TO EACH SEND YOU A DOLLAR… send $1 for details…”
Reminds me of a classic scene from the Drew Carey Show. Kate is looking for a job and is sitting at Drew’s breakfast table reading the paper. She says to Drew “ooh—look—a thousand dollars a week licking envelopes at home!” Drew chuckles and says “if you’re making $1000 a week at home, it ain’t envelopes you’re licking.”
Out of wishful thinking, my wife printed a bunch of these kinds of ads a while back when she was frustrated with her job. To her credit, she didn’t actually respond to any of them, but instead asked for my opinion. My gut said they were all worthless or worse, but to simply dismiss them out of hand would mean insulting my wife’s judgement, and I know better than that ;). So I went and did some research on each of the particular claims.
Not surprisingly, most were just out-and-out ripoffs – a common scam is you pay $1.00 or some other nominal fee for an information packet (that turns out to be basically useless). They must figure people will say, “Oh, well, it’s just a dollar, big deal,” but buried in the thousands of words of small print is a clause that authorizes them to charge your credit card $80.00 a month for some ill-defined “fee”, and if you try to cancel you get recordings and runarounds.
A small handful led to legitimate ways to make a little money – but never the untold riches promised by the ads. Placing ads in google searches can net you a few pennies per click, for instance.
One single endeavor, which as I recall has something to do with matching real estate speculators with available properties and taking a fee if they buy, actually has the potential to earn real money. But it’s apparently extremely tedious work, and takes *a lot *of hours to make anything close to a living wage.
Happily, I was able to convince Mrs. Wheelz to give up on this particular fantasy.
Note: The above information is based on my memory of extensive searching on various consumer-watchdog type websites and message boards, which I’m not inclined to replicate here. All the info is out there if you want to find it.
You understand wrong. 100 out of 100 are a scam. Honest employers don’t solicit employees with ads illegally affixed to telephone poles.
Not so. Back in my college days I would get students to sign up for temporary help with my junk hauling sideline. The ads were vague because I thought people could be told the whole story better after they called.
Technically, the kiosk-posted signs were legal, although my temps would clone my whole operation and post anywhere, often on trees, which I found uncivilized. Before a couple of months went by my ex-temps had cut my market share and I had to get a “real job” in a gas station.
I didn’t answer an ad but stumbled on one of those question and answer sites. No kidding - I make about $1500 per month for a couple of hours per night telling people why thier washing machine won’t drain.
I love America.
Don’t know if this fits the OP, but Amazon’s Mechanical Turk lets you make money at home in you rspare time
Wait, uh what? Get back in here and 'splain!
I think a lot of these types of programs are borderline scams in that, I think a lot of them are based on commission or telemarketing/cold calling, and while it’s theoretically possible to make $1k/week, there’s no chance in hell you’ll do it. Furthermore, a lot of them are based on buying starter kits up front (which is where they make most of their money I’d be willing to bet).
Since you didn’t tell the rest of us, I’ll give the answer: Unbalanced load. Remove the tennis shoes or feather pillow and start it up again. Now it will drain. Send your $1500 to MrFloppy, I already got rich stuffing envelopes and now I concentrate on helping my fellow man do the same.
I got sucked into this one in college as well. The premise was you’d sell Cutco Knives- subsidiary of Alcoa Aluminum. They supposedly would supply the “leads” (people who entered their name to win a boat at the last home show) But you had to buy a full set of sample knives, a couple hundred dollars. But when I and the other suckers realized that people entering boat drawings had no interest in knives, we all bailed out and sold the samples to our long-suffering relatives.