I’ve been speaking with a gentleman who lives nearby in Maryland about the possibility of coaching him as he starts his own business. He first approached me with the thought that he would subscribe to an already-designed “work from home” program and work within that context. His reasoning was that such a “program” would give him the guidelines required to succeed, so that he could leave the planning and some of the strategy to others and work on the execution, i.e. - the actual work - himself. I was skeptical of all work from home opportunities in the first place, but since I’m not so familiar with these ubiquitous programs, I thought I’d keep an open mind and see if perhaps there is something out there that appears to be legitimate.

What I found was not good. Most work from home opportunities share some basic concepts in common:

• “Suggestions” (but never promises) that you can make up to $1000/day with very little work
• Web sites with pictures of people holding cash, driving nice cars, standing in front of their yachts, etc.
• A fee to join, with the most common number being $49 or $49.99 or something to that effect
• Long-winded web sites with lots of testimonials and advertising copy reminiscent of a carnival show barker

What I gathered from my limited research is that they’re all scams and that the only legitimate “work from home” opportunities are a) offered by real companies that actually want to pay you a wage (and not have YOU pay them) and b) a home-based business that you conceptualize and start yourself.

Now, the truly distressing thing that I found was a series of “Work from Home Review Sites”. These sites touted themselves as objective reviewers of online business opportunities, but the reality is that they are enrolled in the affiliate programs of every work from home opportunity that they review. What’s that mean? Well, in short, they’ll get paid a referral fee every time someone signs up for a program as a result of visiting the review site and clicking through to the “reviewed program”. I don’t know about you, but “objective” and “direct affiliation” seem like mutually exclusive propositions in this instance. In short…there is a conflict of interest with these review sites. A few tips:

• No legitimate opportunity will require you to pay to join
• “Money Back Guarantee” might be comforting, but in a program designed to fleece you of your money, no money is going to be returned (trust me on this one)
• You can’t make $20,000+ per year with a home-based business (much less $200,000 per year) without doing quite a bit of work
• If the program works so well, why even bother to sell it for $49 a pop? Why not just put the time/effort into the program? Let me answer this one - because selling the “program” IS the program.

In short, caveat emptor…but if you want my advice, just stay away from all work from home opportunities. They’ve been conceived as “opportunities” for the unsuspecting by “opportunists” who have nothing to sell but a promise that will be broken.

Tags: home based business, work from home

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