The Typical Online Work-From-Home “opportunity”
We look into those online work-from-home opportunities that we come across from time to time, promising easy money for only a few hours of day working from part time from the comfort of your own home. Are these sites legitimate, or just scams?
Making good money working from home on the Internet may seem like a dream come true, and would certainly be wonderfully convenient for many, such as students, full time parents or the retired. No set hours, no commute and best of all – no boss. However, many of these opportunities that we see in our email inboxes and advertised with flashing banners are – in reality – nothing more than unscrupulous scams, designed to lure victims with the promise of good money working from the comfort of your own home. We explain how they work and how to spot them.
We, like many others, first came in contact with a work-from-home “opportunity” via an unsolicited email sent to us from some chap called Bob. Bob explained in his terribly worded email that he found a new system to become financially free. In the email was a link. Bob implored us to click that link, which we did.
We were forwarded to an apparent news article from “Consumer Career Trends” regarding a lady called Kelly Richards who was making hundreds of dollars a day working from home. The article appeared to be acting as some kind of journalistic interview with Kelly – the article claimed it was “featuring” her story in their jobs section, and there were multiple links to the sales page of the product Kelly was supposed to be using embedded in the “story”. The image below is a screenshot of the webpage.
The webpage of a typical fake news article site
News articles about working from home are not necessarily going to be news articles. Watch out for promotional pages masquerading as journalistic articles
However all is not as it seems. Actually, there is no site or online magazine called “Consumer Career Trends” and the entire webpage is faked. It is not a news article at all, and certainly not written by a journalist. In reality, the webpage is just a disguised promotional tool for a work-from-home scam. Work-from-home scammers have set up the site to make it appear that the work-at-home opportunity is legitimate under the reasoning that any opportunity that has been reviewed in a news article is going to be legitimate. The webpage above is designed purely to trick victims into believing the “opportunity” reviewed is both legitimate and works. The page will contain links to the sales page, so essentially induces the sale of the product. The information on the webpage is completely false. The story is based on a fictional person, using generic stocks photos, fake comments & testimonials and false claims. Essentially, nothing on the webpage could be considered accurate, including the assertion that the opportunity “was seen on” the BBC and CNN. For more information on fake news articles, click here.
Just because a site says it has been featured on popular media outlets like the BBC or CNN, does not mean that it has!
However, if one is fooled into thinking the webpage is a genuine journalistic article, then the next inevitable step is to click on the links that lead to the site of the actual work-from-home sales pitch. We clicked on one of the links, and were taken to the main website of the work-from-home opportunity, which claimed the opportunity was featured on the BBC, ITV, Sky News and CNN. The page also asked for our name and email so it could check availability. Here we have two popular red flags with work-from-home-scams – the “As Seen On…” method falsely asserts that the opportunity has been featured on popular media outlets like the BBC, ITV or CNN to lend credence to the website. However this is just pure fabrication. Additionally work-from-home scams may ask for your location or email address where it will claim to “check the availability” in your area. Inevitably, the site will claim there are a handful of “available spaces” in your area. This is just to make the victim believe they are fortunate that there are spaces available. It uses the psychological principle that if a person feels that they have somehow “qualified” to be able to join they are more likely to do so – so as to not waste the opportunity. Of course there are “spaces available” regardless of what information is entered. No actual check ever took place.
The top image shows a typical header for the sales page, first claiming there are spaces available and going on to claim people can earn hundreds of dollars a day with only a few minutes! The below image shows the front page asking for your details.
In the sales pitch, we noted the following red flags –
– The sales pitch went to great lengths to describe the advantages of having a well-paid work-from-home job, but does not go into any real detail about how the opportunity works or what is actually expected of people who sign up. This scheme ambiguously claims that those who sign up will be “posting links” or “processing links”.
– The site is full of unverifiable testimonials, that use stock photos (see image below)
– The site claims that those who sign up can make hundreds of dollars with only minimal effort – for example an hour a day. These are completely unrealistic projections.
– The site claims it was ranked the “#1 work at home program in UK” – a complete lie. The site goes on to claim that the person who owns the program, in this case a woman called Diana Thompson, is a certified work-from-home coach. Again, a complete lie. Diana Thompson does not even exist.
– The site uses an out of context NBC video story about work-from-home opportunities. We have seen many work-from-home scams use the same NBC video to add legitimacy to their stories.
– The site claims limited spaces are available and that the offer may close any minute. This is another lie designed to get victims to act hastily.
These testimonials that use stock photos and no verifiable information are simply not worth the pixels they take up on your monitor
These work-from-home scams are essentially selling information on affiliate marketing, but they do so in an entirely immoral and misleading way. The information they sell is relatively basic marketing information, sold under the false impression that it is a well-paid job involving posting or processing links, when this is not the case. The information that is sold will not be enough to allow anyone to make any significant money, if any money at all. The site is designed to confuse readers by describing the information in the most ambiguous and confusing terms possible, only very loosely based on the truth. The rest of the information on these websites is typically nothing but lies and misleading information.
Making money – even a full time income – from the Internet is entirely possible, but it does not come in the guise of work-from-home kits that assert lots of money for minimal effort. Any site or webpage that claims they have the information that will allow you to make hundreds of dollars a day working part time from you own home, providing you pay the registration fee, is lying to you. Such opportunities simply do not exist.
Money from the Internet, for beginners is generally made from legitimate survey taking programs which are easy enough to do but will not replace a full time income at all, despite what many sites claim. A good legitimate site is acop.com, though an expected income projection is only a handful of dollars a day.
For those serious about a possible future career on the Internet, Internet marketing may be the way to go, but instead of getting useless bundles of information which you get with these work-from-home scams, you need to teach yourself Internet marketing from the ground up, which takes time and effort, and despite what many work-from-scams or get-rich-quick schemes claim, will not result in someone making fortunes overnight. We recommend an excellent marketing tutor here for those who are interested in a possible cyberspace career.