OK, I’m a starving college student, and as a good little American consumer, I’m always lookin for ways to make money so I can put it back into the economy. Anyway, I’ve been lookin into all these ads that claim I can “Make millions from the comfort of your own home.” Anyway, most of them are just books that you can buy that tell you who to contact for these jobs. I am wary of spending money on any of these schemes, as I have no proof that they will provide any useful information. I haven’t looked to see if they have them at the local bookstores, and will probably do that this weekend. But until then, I thought I would look to the teeming millions to see if anyone has actually made any money as the resulf of the supposed opportunities listed in these books?
Buy a taxicab.
Remember the first rule of avoiding scams: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Answer this question: If you could earn millions from your own home, then why is the person who placed the ad trying to sell the method to you? S/he would be doing that rather than placing ads looking to share the wealth.
Zev Steinhardt
Actually, s/he is doing exactly that.
Most “work from home and make million$” schemes are MLMs–Supreme Court sanctioned pyramid schemes that rely on each person recruiting dozens of other people to recruit their dozens in turn.
Each recruiter takes a percentage of the next tier’s income (from either actual sales or the income derived from the lower tier’s even lower tier) with successively diminishing returns. Since each tier is “supervising” the lower tiers, and there is supposed to be an actual sale of an actual product at some point, the Supremes have ruled that this Multi-Level Management farce is not a pyramid scheme. This is the structure of Amway and Mary Kay and HerbaLife among others. Obviously, someone has to be actually selling product, or there would be no income for each Management Level to skim. However, there is almost no money to be made at the sales level, so to make money, one must constantly recruit and give emotional support to as many actual sellers as one can.
Some people really do make money at it. If one is a fairly energetic hustler with a good sales technique, it might work. The overwhelming number of participants rarely see enough money to cover the cost of doing business.
I once worked for a company that hired work-at-home employees. Let me describe how this worked.
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The company placed a want ad in the paper. The ad had the company’s name, a description of the job, and a list of job requirements. It also told the hourly wage - which was minimum wage. The ad asked potential applicants to call and make an appointment for an interview.
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People interested in a job were interviewed in person at the company’s office building. Only a few of the applicants were accepted. There was none of this “everyone is accepted” nonsense. We only wanted people who could do a good job.
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The people hired were asked to fill out tax papers and other such paperwork.
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When we needed a project done, we called one of the at-home workers. We provided them with all the materials. They didn’t pay for anything. We also told them how long they had to get the project finished. Everything had a deadline.
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We would have them bring the project in when it was partially done to make sure it looked all right. If it wasn’t turning out right, we would have them start over (they would still get paid for all the time spent on the part that didn’t work out). If a project was complicated, we might ask them to bring it in several times while they were working on it.
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When they finished a project, the company sent them a check. The check had federal tax, state tax, and social security tax taken out of it. The company sent the taxes in just like they would for any other employee.
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None of the workers had anything like a full-time job doing this. Sometimes we had projects for them to work on, sometimes we didn’t.
Now compare this to the typical “work at home” email you get. I think you’ll see quite a difference.
Ah, there’s the rub. Money flows from the employer/client to the worker, not the other way around. If they want you to pay them, run, run, run like hell.
I have worked at home as a freelance copyeditor for nearly seven years. Not once have I been required to send a client money. They pay me – as is only proper. I’m not making millions, but it’s a cool way to make a living.
General rule: if they want money from you to work for them, its a scam, not a job. Pretty much period. When was the last time you heard of someone getting rich from a multi-level marketing scheme? At the very least, you’ll piss off most people you try to recruit, because most people have heard the old song-and-dance a dozen times before. Is it really worth angering your friends and neighbors?
I completely agree with the above, but I would point out that some of these are legit. Typically if a big operation has some very labor-intensive project they need done and which requires essentially no skill, training, or supervision (stuffing envelopes for example). You’re not going to make gobs of money and if you find something it’s going to be mind-numbingly boring, but if you can make a few bucks and watch TV at the same time it sounds all right.
My advice would be to go ahead and call. But if you have to buy anything, skip it. Also, if they want to bring you in for an interview without telling you first what you’ll be doing, then that’s another good tip that this is an MLM outfit and you should say no thanks.
–Cliffy