Yearn for a Successful Work from Home Business - Watch Out for Scams!

While most of us yearn to own a successful work from home business, the sad reality is that most of us will never actually see it happen. Globalization and free trade have helped generate more legitimate small business opportunities than ever but they have also helped pave the way for more scams as well. It seems like everywhere you turn these days there is some ad claiming to solve all of your financial problems with a work from home opportunity or other. In most cases, however, these programs tend to sell little more than hope and are in fact scams. Here are the top five scams being used by con artists and shady businesses in the work from home genre:Crafts Envelope StuffingComputer ScamsMedical BillingPyramid SchemesDo you love crafts, tinkering on things, or simply working with your hands? Then perhaps you have heard of these companies out there looking for people to build or make products in their homes to turn around and sell back to those same companies. Naturally the pitch will vary somewhat to make it sound more genuine, but this is pretty much the standard line used to promote the home assembly scam. The purpose of this scam is to get the investor in buy a bunch of equipment and materials "necessary" to produce the merchandise. Anyone who actually buys the equipment and builds the products will find it all but impossible to sell them to the company.  They wanted to sell you their overpriced equipment, not buy your over-priced products.Another very popular and effective scam out there is the envelope stuffing business. As simple as it is clever, the catch of this little scam is that you can't get your money back unless you become a scammer yourself! But investors will never recoup their money by stuffing envelopes, but rather by placing an ad of their own! Without investing money for advertising and bilking others out of their cash, there is no legitimate way for the investor to ever recoup their money.The fact is that with a computer, Internet connection, and the right business model, a person can create and operate a legitimate and profitable work from home business--and the scam artists know this! There is a lot of variation in computer-related scams, but the most common to be on the watch for are any relating to data entry, online surveys, or word processing. Of course a small fee is required, but you will supposedly earn that back in no time. With precious few exceptions, the information turns out to be generalized and too vague to be of any practical use to the buyer. Full of hype and big promises, these computer scams never amount to any legitimate work from home business and ultimately waste only time, money, and effot.Another type of work from home scam to avoid involves the health care industry-- one of the most popular scams out there today. These "programs" promise to teach investors how to start businesses in the medical billing, accounts receivable, and insurance claims processing fields. Appearing completely legitimate and even having a real customer service department, these programs can cost the investor thousands. The money would be well spent if the investor actually had a viable and profitable medical billing operation at the end of the program but this is very rarely the case. As far as finding paying clients, recouping their investment, or securing a sustained income, even the Federal Trade Commission has issued warnings to consumers about these home medical billing opportunities. Rather than invest their money in a program with such a low probability of success, an investor would be better served waiting for a better opportunity.The classic pyramid scheme remains the most popular home based business scams out there, with more variations than one can imagine. They are appealing because they promise to make you a distributor so that you earn commissions from your sales plus the sales of anyone you recruit for the company. For the investor, this appears like a chance to set their own pace while still flying under what appears to be a legitimate company banner. The office, products, and corporate props all exist to disguise the MLM and help convince investors that the company is a legitimate opportunity for them. The people who created the scam are the only ones really making any money while others starve on meager commissions.This article is hardly comprehensive and only covers the five most common small business scams. Hundreds of new scams appear every year, and investors really need to keep their eyes open in order to avoid getting scammed. We have never actually seen more scams and more legitimate work from home opportunities at any point in modern history. Success or failure will boil down to locating the real opportunities and then capitalizing on them.