,Avoid Getting Scammed Trying To Make Money Online
Gainfully working online since around 2003, I’ve seen just about every online scam there is to see. I’ll share a few critical tips with you here. Considering that COVID 19 is causing a massive interest in work from home jobs, my goal is to help you Avoid Getting Scammed Trying To Make Money Online.
I’ve spent a good deal of time checking out scam models and figuring out what makes them tick. Quite frankly I find it deplorable what these people do. I don’t like seeing people get ripped off. In fact, I hate seeing people get ripped off.
I’ve checked out a TON of “make money online” businesses and models and learned the in’s and out’s. So, I’m more than happy for the opportunity to share what I’ve learned with you here today, and hopefully save you a lot of time and effort for nothing!
I recommend following a few simple rules. Guidelines really. Know to look out for these, and know locations to steer clear of, and you are far less likely to get scammed when trying to find work from home.
I’ll also give you a list of some legitimate places to look for online and remote work, and some legitimate work from home ideas and other suggestions for those of you who are geared towards starting your own business.
Avoiding The Most Common Scams
First of all, let’s talk about avoiding the most common scams you will come across; pretty much ANY ad or any “program” touting “Make Money Online”. These so called “programs” often ask for money up front, and they also tend to make crazy claims about certain amounts of money you can make with their program.
To be clear, there is a LOT of money to be made online. It CAN be done. But legitimate online income is rarely ever “easy” or “fast”. So, a good first thing to avoid is people who make….
Sensationalist Claims Of Income
A good example of this would be “Make $200 A Day” or, “Make $1400 per Month” with their program, or list or “business opportunity” etc. Sometimes they say they are offering a job, for example, emailing people. Basically, this is just the new, online version of the old “Make Money Mailing Envelopes” scam.
The beauty of it is that they are only asking for a few dollars so, most people desperate to make money will bite because they don’t realize what’s going on. Pretty much, you copy the very same script they used to get you hooked in. Then you simply spam other people with it to get your own “sign ups”.
Avoid these types of “opportunities”, most ESPECIALLY when they are making claims about some dollar amount you can make, and claiming you can do it fast.
Pyramid Schemes
Then there are of course, the more legitimate, shady side of legal scams. My favorite here are pyramid scheme type businesses. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying you can’t make money at these. Just be advised, these “programs” are generally just aimed at making the top tier leaders money. And getting free advertising for their pyramid scheme and products from an army of unsuspecting people who pay to get in, and very rarely ever make much back.
And don’t think these companies haven’t gotten hit by the authorities for this either; it’s happened. The trouble is, these companies have so much money, and with legitimate products to sell, they just find a way around the new regulations the authorities put in place, and continue business as usual.
Now, I’m not going to name names lol for obvious reasons. All I’ll say is there are a very specific set of characteristics to look for and avoid. Do so and you’ll easily avoid these semi-scams. Beware when they:
- Ask for you to purchase a certain amount of product every month in order to enroll or join the “business opportunity”.
- Tout these big vacation party type gatherings, generally in some exotic, tropical location, promising that if you sell enough product, you’ll get to go to the party too.
- Suggest that you start out by trying to sell your family and friends on said product, and if you can, to get them into the pyramid scheme too.
- Give you a “free website” when you join, where you are supposed to send your so called customers to buy product. (These are mass produced, cloned sites that will NEVER garner any search results because there are thousands of them just like it. Always remember; duplicate content is BAD!)
- The person who you contact with be your “coach” or “mentor” or something like that; basically, the person who’s enrolled you, to help you out. This is the person who will get a commission for the products you purchase in order to join. (Hence, pyramid scheme.)
In the back end of these businesses, if ever you make it that far in your “training”, they will tell you as a “coach” or “mentor” of your sign ups to expect most people to pay for their product for around 6 – 9 months, and then drop off.
They call this “the life expectancy of a lead” or something similar, and the stats are that they will stick around for about 6-9 months because it’s just a fact that a lead will stay in on the average of that long before quitting because they aren’t making enough money to make it worthwhile. And the 9 months is how long you can, on average, expect to get commissions for the product your sign ups purchase from you.
The goal with pyramid schemes is use the “make your money back” plot, and the “free website” they give you, to entice you into using their product for as long as possible and get you to get your friends and family onboard as well. They know you will only stick around for “the life of the lead”, and that’s all they need to make tons of money off of you and your family and friends.
With new “leads” coming in all the time, the top earners know that their quota will be re-filled constantly.
Legitimate Make Money Online Opportunities
Okay so, enough of the scary scam stuff! Now that you have a good idea of what not to get involved in, let’s talk about what does work! There are a lot of real, legitimate ways to make a living working from home. And a lot of them can be very rewarding. The key here is to have a service, information, entertainment or a product that will help others fix some problem, or fulfill some need that they have.
Affiliates
Yes, affiliates are a real thing, and they do make real money, and it is a legit way to make money. However, this one is what I would call risky business. Because when you come across the inevitable “training course” or someone claiming to set you up with an affiliate business, it’s generally a scam. You are likely to just waste a lot of time and effort.
I say generally because there certainly are some legitimate training courses out there. And good ones; I’ve taken them. They will help you to understand the affiliate business and get the basics of how to make money as an affiliate. (Although, since you pay for the course, and they know most people won’t ever make much from this type of business, it’s debatable whether or not this is a scam.)
But I digress; the thing is, to make money as an affiliate you must have an audience to put your links in front of; people have to see your links and click on them if you want to make money, and more importantly, they generally have to buy something. This means you need a following, a sizable one; preferably on multiple venues.
Successful affiliates have blogs with massive followings. They have mailing lists with thousands, if not tens of thousands of subscribers, and generally sizable social media followings as well. They have positioned themselves as an authority in their niche, and it can take years to accumulate those kinds of numbers.
Otherwise, you’ll just wind up spamming people with links, which will get you subsequently kicked off of a lot of online venues. And social media outlets are wise to this by now; they will quickly ban your account for spamming your affiliate links. An example, newbies get kicked out of Facebook for this all the time.
Again, being an affiliate is a legit way to make money online, but honestly, it takes years to cultivate a large enough audience to make any real income. It’s a lot of hard work, time and effort. And you’ll need TONS of fresh, original content as well. It’s certainly not an income that folds out quickly.
But, if you are interesting in becoming an affiliate, try the Amazon affiliate program. Try Commission Junction, and any other legitimate affiliate platform. Start yourself a blog, set up social media, get ready to create a ton, and I mean a TON of content. Join some legit programs, and get to cracking! It can be quite lucrative for those with the dedication and perseverance to succeed!
Drop-shipping
Yes, drop shipping is a legitimate business model as well. I won’t cover this in detail here because I have a post for you with a LOT of information on this here on my blog. For the purposes of this post I’ll just say that it’s legit alright, and it can be quite worthwhile. Just know that, just like being an affiliate it takes a lot of dedication, time and effort in most cases to get enough traffic to your products to make a decent living.
Work From Home Jobs
There are a good number of work from home and “remote” jobs that are actually a job; i.e. someone hires you, and pays you do work that you can do online, from home. However, with so many people looking for this kind of work, even before COVID 19 it was tough to find a spot.
I’m not saying you can’t find work from home; word has it that a lot more companies will be looking for people to work from home now. (And for the sake of our carbon footprint, along with issues like Corona Virus, I certainly hope so. Because I feel it would be a sad waste of technology not to do so.) But, again, TONS of people will be on the lookout for them too. So be ready for some steep competition when you go in search of an online job.
Be sure to only look for work at legitimate places where real jobs are posted like Flexjobs, and indeed. Companies like this are doing everything they can to spread the word about legitimate online jobs so, be sure to take a look if you are in the market for one!
The other obviously legit way to make money online is to offer a service or product yourself. Better known as a business, some people just aren’t geared towards this sort of thing. But if you have a genuine product or service to sell, you can do quite well online.
Marketplaces
These are the quickest way to get started. Simply put, marketplaces offer the benefit of allowing you to list your products and/or services on their site. You can draw from their huge pools of customers and traffic to make money.
This way you don’t have to have your own website or blog with tons of traffic to sell your wares and services. Among other things, I do this. I have a number of shops on marketplaces like Etsy and others where I sell my digital art, among other things.
I also have training courses on places like Udemy. And it’s a great way to make money and help people at the same time, teaching something you know. I find it very fulfilling 😊
Your Own Business Online
By this I mean, driving traffic to your own website or blog. A place where your services, content or products are available for purchase. This includes affiliate income, as well as products and services you may have to offer.
I have lots of information about starting, maintaining and growing your own online business here on my blog. So I won’t go into detail in this post. Suffice to say, this is not the fast track to income online. However, I do believe it is the most stable way to go. In part, because you can set yourself up with…
Multiple Income Streams
Lastly, I want to talk about this topic. Why? Because having multiple sources of income makes your livelihood more stable. Put it this way; if you only have one website with one type of product, and anything goes wrong, you’re just sunk.
Yeah, it’s happened to me, way back. It happens to the best of us so, don’t feel bad if it’s happened to you. I had a nice little booming business going from a couple of my sites. Then, the “big boys” decided to mass market and sell similar products. All of my hard-earned traffic and income just fizzled over the course of a few months. I was forced to scramble for something else.
Ah, those were the days lol
Anyway, I HIGHLY recommend diversifying your income with multiple streams, essentially, multiple little businesses. Unrelated ones if at all possible; that makes things even more sturdy and reliable. Honestly, it’s much easier to get a few nice little businesses going that each make $1 or $2k a month.
It’s much harder to take one business and make your entire income. And again, it’s not as stable as say, 4 or 5 nice little $1k a month businesses. And again, if any one of those goes down, you can just start another to fill in the gap. This leaves you with the rest of your income stable 😉
My suggestion for a stable online income is to become, essentially, a Jack or Jill of all trades. Or at least 4 or 5, so you can delve a more stable income. And most people have more than few things they know well enough to make money from. So it’s a better bet than trying to take one single business through the roof.
I recommend something like a YouTube channel, a marketplace shop or two, a website with products. Start a blog where you promote affiliate links. And of course, the all important mailing list or two… or three lol … something like that. It’s certainly worked well for me!
Help, Support & Training For Your Online Income
Again, I have lots of tips and information about all of these here on my site. The information is free; all I want is for people to be able to enjoy making a living online and be happy!
Of course, you are always welcome to get in touch for a website or training if you like. I’m always available to help hard working people who are serious about working on their own online business. So if you need help with Branding or a logo, or want to learn how to create a blog or WordPress site, feel free to contact me.
But honestly lol I suggest looking up anything you need to learn on YouTube. You can pretty much self-learn anything you need these days for free. Just be sure it’s a credible source and you’ll be good to go!
Always happy to help out when I can, I’ll be sure to share any information I come across in the future with you as well. More helpful resources like this…
In the meantime, I’d recommend checking out this informative article on REAL opportunities to make money online; 27+ Best Work From Home Jobs In 2020
Okay, that’s about it for now. I hope the information I’ve provided here at least helps you know How To Avoid Getting Scammed Trying To Make Money Online. Hopefully, you’ll find your own little niches and be successful. Working from home, making a living online can be wonderful. Lol a lot of hard work, dedication, self-discipline and such are necessary but, I find it very rewarding. It can be done, and I wish you all the best in your endeavors!
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