Those with no special technical skills can make honest money writing short articles to help feed the insatiable demand for fresh material needed by webmasters to maintain search engine raking. Working as freelance contractors can pay about $2 for rewriting existing material and $4 to $10+ for original 450 word articles written order. Most people pick up work at freelance connection sites, like elance, or through article writing brokerages.

Essential skills include fast accurate typing skills, to make decent money you should be able to knock out a pack of 10 articles in a day. An ability to artfully incorporate specified key word phrases as well as producing engaging magazine quality copy will help secure the better paying contracts. A downside of working on the internet is you are a member of a world wide pool of competing talent, many residing in 3rd world countries with low costs of living.  Those with a 1st language mastery of American English grammar and culture should emphasize these advantages in their resume.

Here are a coupe of general writer resource sites that should help you get oriented:

PoWar Writing Career Center be sure to check out their Jobs Section.

The Burry Man Writers Center resources for a worldwide community of writers (with an international flair)

About Freelance Writing .com is a freelancer blog

Writing Job Brokers who will provide you assignments

Blog Posts for Sale is a small writing broker, any one have experience with them?

Here’s a review of 26 sites that pay for blog posts

One pitfall writers have to be aware of are bid requests that require sample material, these ban be bogus offers designed to collect dozens of samples for use without compensation. One broker who’s practices have been questioned is contentcurrent a broker claiming  a 1000+ writer force, requests a full 500 page article sample as part of the application process, this mini review and it’s comments criticize the operation.

The Paid to Forum Post community, a sister site of  contentcurrent, non-the-less may be worth a visit.

Freelance Connection Sites with a emphasis on writing

odesk is a major general freelance site with some 2000+ writing jobs

Get a Freelancer another general freelance site listing 1500+ writer jobs

Sunoasis Jobs for Writers, Editors, and Copywriters

Writing Careers ,com amasses some 1500+ freelance writer jobs from various sites.

FreelanceWriting.com a writing job news aggregator.

Other Methods to Write for Money

AssociatedContent pays about $4 for quality articles of your choice, there are residual benefits for popular articles.

DayTipper reportedly pays $3 for each published tip.

A way to create a little residual income is to create a revenue generating blog, there are numerous free hosts that split the advertising income, here are 30 Adsense Revenue Sharing Sites for Residual Income and Link Building.
If you make some headway doing freelance work, you might consider some course material…

One course I liked, the Freelance Article Writing Secrets Course by Kenneth Rearden containing  5 1/2 hours of recording showing how to build a business and multiply your returns, unfortunately seems to be out of print.

Some commercial writers resources

I’ll leave it to you to evaluate these more affordable selections (found on affiliate sites)

Overnight Writing Income - Hands Down The Best Guide For Beginners.

You Can Make Money Writing - Making Money Online With Simple Articles That Almost Anyone Can Write

Writing Rituals For Marketing Writers & Copywriters -  Teaching how to maintain a writers mindset.

Get Paid To Write On The Internet - How To Get Paid With Very Little Or No Experience!

Write Where The Money Is - Fire Up Your Income As A Freelance Writer

Other forms of competition article writes face include private label rights (PLR) packages of pre-written articles,  some of these web site start kits authored by writing crews in India, are very inexpensive, there are compilations of 80,000 articles sell for pennies an article. Unfortunately, these stock articles do little to improve a web site’s ranking, due to search engines devaluating these unoriginal  “duplicate content” pieces.

Solution to the duplicate content problem include hiring someone to rewrite the articles or automated text re-writer programs, referred to as article spinners. The output of these text manglers is often barely readable gibberish though the latest spinners  intelligent use if thesaurus and grammar rules make more passable text.

Making the Big Bucks

To make a real living one probably has to move beyond piecemeal article assembly. Kenneth Rearden describes making $125 an hour in his article writing business by setting his own site supplying quality customers with premium articles, article packages using labor saving style templates and outsourcing.

Creating your own blog may not provide immediate returns, taking perhaps a year of development and regular article writing to produce a blog that with luck will have a big following that merits decent advertising revenue, from that point you can collect passive income with a moderate upkeep effort.

Highly paid writers do copywriters for marketers, creating engaging persuasive copy for web site sales pages and emails, the big names make thousands for single sales letters that are part of million dollar marketing programs. Frank Kern & Yanik Silver are copywriters who teach their techniques, for a price.

The fake news pages with newspaper like titles report on individuals earning $25 for each posting they make for Google. (even in the golden age of internet money making it was never that easy) To get started one just has to “pay $1.97 or $2.95 for a home worker starter kit”. This low figure gets people to more readily give up their credit card number, only to find they have been billed a $50 to $79.90 monthly membership fee, for which they may get a DVD containing malevolent viruses or information that can be found at no cost on the web.  These scammers have made millions from people who were already facing hard times.  The fine print on the bottom of the sales page the fake news leads to states in part:

Results may vary.  This offer is not endorsed or sponsored by Google or any news organization shown herein.

This scheme employ the standard scam tactics: unrealistic earning claims, fake endorsements, tailored for the readers geographical local,  fake “seen on” news channel references, combined with an audacious mis-representation of Google’s business practices.

The large number of separate entities running slight variations of this scam has made it difficult fo class action lawsuits,  the FTC, or Google to stop. Usually a number of complaints about deceptive billing practices can result in the site’s Merchant Account, ad their ability to process credit cards canceled. Google is going after Pacific WebWorks, a card processing site along with 50 unspecified suspects.

It’s disheartening to see the most powerful company on the web, withe the directive: Do No Evil,  has been unable to stop this abuse of their name and reputation from continuing for more than 3 months.

Google’s blog is warning customers to be wary of the following work-from-home for Google programs with the names: Google Adwork, Google ATM, Google Biz Kit, Google Cash, Earn Google Cash Kit, Google Fortune, Google Marketing Kit, Google Profits, The Home Business Kit for Google, Google StartUp Kit, and Google Works.

Anyone can do business with Google starting with a $5 Adwords account start-up fee, but not as an employee, but as promoter buying advertising space on Google.  the payoff (if any) is typically a moderate percentage profit over the ad cost. The majority of new Adwords buyers loose money at first in this increasingly competitive arena.

A typical fake Work For Google news page

There seems to be an “old Boys Club” of elite internet marketing Gurus who got in the game early, the names John Reese, Frank Kern, Eben Pagan, Perry Marshall, Yanik Silver and Brad Anthony Jenkins-Fallon come to mind. Through joint ventures and mutual promotion they have  maintained a mystique surrounding their secret guruish knowledge for which they can charge a premium fee. You have to wonder, if they were not teaching moneymaking, but rather how make recreational web sites.  It’s been suggested in some of the discussion forums that one can learn enough to succeed with a book or 2 along with some time spent in online marketing forums.

One good source of internet business information, including a dizzying library of instructional material is  Stompernet. Their membership fee is, I believe $800/mo with additional conferences and coaching programs available at a higher price. Good news about StomperNet: their Stomper 999 promotion offers a membership for $199/mo that includes access to their library of 1400 training videos.  A couple of their newest products are excluded (SMARTS and Formula 5) and you can bet there are plenty of seminar/coaching opportunities. Check the offer when I checked it out about 10 days after the announcement one could still access 121 sample files from their library and the complete Stomp The Net II package for FREE some of the free files were 1 hour seminars promoting the stomper culture and describing the new tools added to the stomper package. Try the Stomper 999 link here.

Endorsement videos and conference videos I have suggest a large component of their clientele are online store/service operators. Established businesses might easily justify the membership cost, if it yields just a 1 or 2 percent profit improvement.  Stompernet has a stunning library of instructional material available as well as a growing faculty of recognized experts.  Low budget beginners in need of a well rounded education in the basics  can find membership training sites in the $50/month range that might be a worthwhile investment.

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While developing a web site business that naturally attracts traffic can be a slow, gradual building process, the get rich quick business most often taught is Pay Per Click driven Cost Per Action Affiliate Marketing; PPC-CPA. This business, particularly as taught by the immediately following course has the feel of stock trading with large amounts of money floated in the advertising buy and sell process. Three different courses all teaching the various skills and tricks involved in the PPC-CPA game are described below.

One  program created by a pair of non guru behind the scenes guys, that recently received some attention is the Arbitrage Conspiracy. Citing examples of 6 and 7 figure incomes. the possibilities are intriguing.  This 12 week training program originally started in January 2009 is available? in a canned recorded form for $1997.  I have seen a fair portion of this package and to the extent of my abilities  find it creatable, sharing more of the secrets of the high earners than some of other programs offer.

Wikipedia says; In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets.  The Arbitrage Conspiracy course, taught by a pair of energetic Egypt French Canadians?  Aymen and Emmanuel the course teaches the process of buying keyword targeted pay-per-click advertisements from Google, Yahoo and MSN, and selling the captured advertising leads to cost-per-action advertising networks, making offers requiring visitors to fill in contact information.  This process is more commonly referred by other authorities as PPC to CPA.

A successful campaign for the beginner yields a 10% to 100% return on investment with a 1 month turn around time , established operators with high traffic histories can ngotiate slightly better returns as well as 1 or 2 week payment turnaround times.

The key to making enormous profits in their system’s formula is testing the performance of large numbers of offers using streamlined techniques employing various labor saving tools , and of course a large amount of operating capitol or credit.  The lessons are geared to make students with virtually no technical background into experts in the fairly narrow set of skills the system requires. Their motto is Crank, Ramp and Bank.

The process to achieve their level of income involves trying all all CPA offers in a sort of random testing method. There’s no room in this system for being overly ethical, while not violating the law some of the offers they show as examples, like the Win a $500 gift certificate, just enter your email address offer,  has fine print also requires completing 12 marketing offers and referring a friend who also must also complete the offers.

Postscript:
It would be unrealistic to expect all of their students, including outright novice, would come out ahead in the high risk-high reward approach being taught.  Several complaints were posted on forums by members were were unable to get a refund which were limited to the first 30 days, the guarantee was your money back plus $500 if you were unable to make a profit.  At least one complainant had produced the due diligence records required by the guarantee terms.  Reportedly the membership forum’s “how much did you earn” survey showed 75% lost a considerable amount of money. The were some preliminary announcements of a new 12 week session to start in July 2009, couldn’t confirm this.  Here are a couple of critical discussions of the program: Warrior Forum Review, The Truth about Aymen, arbitrageconspiracysucks.com, arbitrageconspiracydiary.

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Another course teaching PPC to CPA technique is CPA Ninja (Matt likes to call it The Baddest Assed CPA Course EVER), created by Matt Trainer and Marty Rozmanith this product sells fo $997. ( It is a canned series of informal broad brush  lessons while the Arbitrage Conspiracy 12 week series was more of a class like setting with weekly assignments and live webinar sessions.) both of these programs suggest the option of testing cpa offers with direct ppc links, switching the winning offers to intermediate pages with higher google quality scores in order to lower ppc costs.  The plans differ in the landing page design.

• While Arbitrage Conspiracy discusses using copy-paste i-frame code, a violation of rules google seems to tolerate, CPA Ninja describes the use of WordPress Direct BLOGs to supply quality landing pages without programming.
• While Arbitrage Conspiracy almost exclusively talks about using ppc traffic, CPA Ninja considers ppc the least desirable of 3 traffic sources, Matt citing Google in particular as a nightmare.  User installed adware (evil stuff) providing url targeting cpv/ppv popup ads are Matt’s 2nd favorite source, his favorite traffic source are media buys “an unlimited traffic source”  including banners, adsense like text insertions and offline TV, Radio and Print ads. Media buys start at $5000 but more commonly bought in $10,000 blocks.   That calls for a steady hand.

}———-{

Annother, more sober look at the heady world of PPC marketing is provided by Gauher Chaudhry’s Pay Per Click Formula 2. He’s another Canadian, but sounds like a regular guy. In his more professional instructional style, he gives a thorough overview of the major PPC providers, as well as a quick look at a dozen other paid advertising providers, with insightful comments on each  of them. This pachage covers a broader range of subjects than the previous packages described, he describes the various free traffic techniques in addition to PPC and other paid traffic,  as well as describing a larger number of tools. While some of the others mentioned here as well as Gauher consider SpyFu an essential tool for quickly becoming competitive, Gauher’s magic bullet is TrafficRegenerator, a software service that carries the exit popup strategies to a new level, sending visitors to additional offers when it’s anticipated they are about to leave, this process can be repeated more than once, wringing out the maximum profit from each paid visit. His 18 modules containing close to 200 videos and ongoing webinars provide a solid foundation as well as advanced training in select areas. Produced roughly at the same time as the Arbitrage Conspiracy, Gauher contrasts his point of view to ‘others’ in the field more than once. His more conservative approach to CPA offer discovery suggests that 3 out of 10 offers tested will turn out to be winners.

}———-{

Eben Pagan who made his first internet fortune with his dating strategy courses taught by his psudonyme David De Angelo, offers seminars and coaching priced in $5k to $10k range, he recently made aviailable The Guru Mastermind Home Study Course, a set of live seminar recordings covering information product marketing selling for $2000. This program is now closed, but you can get a feel for his style and have a look at some lengthy program excerpt videos he has retained in the blog.

]]> http://workhomebusiness.org/high-end-training-for-the-well-funded-career-change/feed/ http://workhomebusiness.org/comission-blueprint-down-to-earth-education/ http://workhomebusiness.org/comission-blueprint-down-to-earth-education/#comments Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:00:00 +0000 admin http://workhomebusiness.org/?p=46 The single most useful resource for those new to adwords driven affiliate sites that I have encountered is Commission Blueprint, a video, ebook and template package made in 2008, selling for $97 that's more useful than some >$1000 packages. A real time saver and confidence builder...]]> I just noticed that the original Commission Blueprint course this article talked about has been pulled from the market, presumeable to clear the road for Commission Blueprint II, a new more expensive cousse that’s really complementary to the firsrt version, relies on SEO techniques to secure free traffic, while the original course taught the management of PPC paid traffic.

A bit of background for those new to it. Google pay-Per-Click Adwords advertisement of Affiliate marketed products is the biggest single discussed online business approach, there are 1000 eBooks and tutorial packages on the subject, often written as the first information product of an adwords marketer expanding into new territory. Several factors have made adwords marketing a much tougher undertaking than it was 5 years ago. A careful, systamic approach explained by seasoned professionals is more than ever an essential for profitable marketing.

The single most useful resource for those new to adwords driven affiliate sites that I have encountered is Commission Blueprint, a video, ebook and template package made in 2008,  selling for $97 that’s more useful than some >$1000 packages. Many find the ” looking over the expert’s shoulder” style of video tutorials, a real time saver and confidence builder.   Offering detailed sober advice on the steps and numbers involved in making a working PPC-affiliate marketing business. No short lived get rich quick tricks, or blackhat stuff here. One demonstration included is a test case he sets up  that loses money in a rather un-magical way, until fine tuning is applied. Besides the detailed keyword acquisition and tracking talk, he also gives some guidelines criteria for deciding whether to bail out of a campaign or keep on plugging, he also offers some basic advice on money management.

Commission Blueprint Sample Screen

The main thrust of the package is the careful tracking and analysis of keyword selections. You will learn that adwords advertising is not all about creatively writing 12 word ads., but rather is a demanding process requiring careful spread sheet numbers analysis.  (If you could not bear balancing your checkbook several times a day, this adwords thing might not be your cup of tea.)

This package consists of:

• 17 bite sized videos, totaling 4 hours 40 minutes.
• 45 pages of supplemental pdf text pages
• 4 pre-made web page templates

Leaving the the basic education on adwords, site design and affiliates to other sources, he does briefly demonstrate the use of (in order of importance): marketsamurai.com, speedppc.com, Adwords editor, nameboy.com, Sedo.com, deleteddomains.com

An aside: The authors suggest that their biggest competition are the endless parade of adwords novices who try the game for a few weeks, lose their shirt, and move on to something easier.

——————-

Pay per click marketing seems to be these guys’ core skill.  I have viewed 2 other products they have producted in much the same style:

SEM Blueprint A guide to becoming a Pay Per Click Management and Search Engine Marketing consultant. Building on the skills aquired in Commission Blueprint. He suggests the possibility of earning $10k per client, helping local brick and mortar businesses with their marketing efforts. Priced at $197, this 3 Hr., 10 Min. of video and supplemental material is not as great a value as Commission Blueprint,  some new material on keywords, link building, etc is provided by a guest contributor Mike Hamby?. I suppose price is proportioned to the degree of specialization. The specific advice on finding clients, selling and pricing services and the example proposal and contract included are not commonplace information.

Niche Blueprint Their 3rd? product, is a from the ground up guide to creating and operating an ecommerce store. Instructional modules include Selecting a market, finding drop-shippers/wholesales, pricing, store site setup and operation. Source code for a an ecommerce site is included with the 5 1/2 hours of instructional videos and pdf documents. I have viewed most of the pachage it looks like a solid starter guide. Dave Hermonson contributes his ecommerce expertise to this product.  Interoduced in Jan 2009, Niche Blueprint was re-released in March and is currently Sold Out again, you can go to the product page and sign up for re-release news.

Those with established ecommerce businesses or high volume brick and mortar store might benefit from advanced training programs, such as those offered by Stompernet. Their membership fee is, I believe $800/mo with additional conference and coaching costs. A 1 or 2 percent profit improvement may justify this training cost for established major players.  Stompernet has a stunning library of instructional material available as well as a growing faculty of recognized experts.

You won’t get rich, but if your 13 years or older, with no special skills, you can make a little recreation money in exchange for sharing your contact information with marketing companies.  Always hungry to find new potential customers, companies offer a bounty for new customer leads, some paid “find new customer” services will share their bounty with you, the new customer. One of the better known services is CashCrate.com.  For starters they will pay you $1 for filling in your detailed profile. Even the under 18 crowd limited to only free offers and surveys can exceed the minimum $20 monthly payout,  doing surveys for 50 cents a pop.  If you are at a point where every dollar counts, it may be worth giving up some anonymity to the marketeers.

One precaution you have to take before joining CashCrate.com, get a ‘disposable’ email address to which you will have the various advertisements (junk mail) will be sent to.  DO NOT give out your primary email address.  Google gmail is a popular free email service. Here’s a review of the top 18 free email services.

Although most solicitations will come thouugh email, t’s also best to give out a secondary disposable phone number, if you have one.  Register your phone number with the National Do Not Call Registry to stop most telemarketers.

The pay to install toolbars etc., that you are asked to download may not be worthwhile. While not doing anything illegal, some just collect usage statistics, others may add popup window advertisements…most annoying.

GPT (Get Paid To…) sites like CashCrate.com present various activities such as survey taking, game testing or product evaluation as the chores your being paid to perform, while the reality is in most cases, your personal contact information is being collected for a marketing company, with Cash Crate and you sharing the commission for bring them a new prospect.

CashCrate.com also had promotional deals with about 20 major online stores, for example Cash Crate for example members save 5% on your their online Walmart purchases.

For Credit Card Owners Who Want to Spend Some to Make Some to Make Some

In addition to the simple lead collection offers, various product trials or sales are offered 18 and over CashCrate.com members who have a credit card.  Some of these offers can turn out to be a good deal. Products offered in TV infomercials are sold on the internet as well, in place of paying for TV air time, web site operators are pain a commission for finding new customers

Does the Shamwow guy have you considering a purchase? buy a set of ShamWow towels through CashCrate.com and you will receive a $6 rebate from Cash Crate. (bear in mind that like the typical infomercial product, the $19.95 (+S&H) product actually ends up totaling  $32.90 ($19.95 + $7.95 + $5.00 for separate handling of purchase and bonus)

Asleep at the wheel exploits: Like the mail in rebates that have become popular with the retail stores, many of the offers you will encounter have a an initial low trial/sample charge that will be followed by higher charges later, if like the rebates, human nature has causes you to forget to mail in the rebate or cancel the product trial.  The marketers come out ahead by playing the odds that many customers will slip up, DON’T be one of them. Keep good records, mark those trial end deadlines on your calendar.

You can get the same Video Professor, sample DVD for a $6.95 shipping fee offered in te infomercials, and receive a $25 kick back from Cash Crate, who is getting a finders fee considerably larger than the $6.95 you are paying for the sample. Bear in mind that like the old Columbia Record Club offers, this sample is setting you up for a continuity program in which your failing to decline the automatic followup charges will result in your being charged full price for the sample DVD,  followed by a larger DVD bundle.

Read the fine print in each offer, particularly if a credit card purchase is involved.

The most tricky complicated deals are the various gift offer involving products or gift cards worth $100 to $2000. Before providing them any information, be sure to examine the bottom of the page, most offers detail your requirements to collect the gift there. They all require multiple product offers commitments, some ‘free’ trials some purchases or subscriptions that might add up in the long run. The larger offers require you refer 1 or 2 other households to also complete the offers before you can collect your reward. I don’t know the percentage of applicants that manage to complete all the required offers without getting disqualified for some technicality. I believe some do, be sure to read the small print at the bottom and click the information links there before committing to one of these combination offers.

Those promoting CashCrate with a more optimistic tone, exhibiting big payout checks are getting a piece of CashCrate’s income from every new productive member they recruit. They are’t earning the big checks doing surveys.

Like the amazing 18th century chess playing machine “The Turk” that won nearly every match, but turned to have a hidden human operator, the instructions you issue to the Amazon Mechanical Turk are executed by humans the “Artificial-Artificial Intelligence” behind the Turk.

The Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)  provides human workers to perform micro tasks. The most common tasks pay 1 to 10 cents, some better paying HITs at the moment include: Write a quick 110 word response to a web page article for $0.30,  Create a 9 minute audio to text transcription for $0.79, Re- Write An Article Of At Least 500 Words for $1.00.

While most of this work is done by people in the 3rd world, some middle class Americans tackle these chores like a crossword puzzle, perhaps collecting a stunning 45 cents for an hours labor.

To have a look, go to Amazon Mechanical Turk, click the link:  View Them Now.
If you want to learn more about how turking is done, spend time on The Turk Nation Forum.

Here’s a more detailed description of Turking provided by ,chickenmeister a member of the forum

Mechanical Turk is a service that Amazon provides, where requesters can post tasks (called HITs - Human Intelligence Tasks) that workers can do. These tasks are usually things that an automated system wouldn’t be able to do well or efficiently.

There are a wide range of HITs. Here’s a short list/summary of the types of tasks:
- audio transcription
- gathering data off websites
- writing articles
- fill out surveys
- tagging images
- transcribing data from images
- posting comments on blogs/youtube videos/forums
- bookmark sites with social bookmarking sites (i.e. Digg, etc)
- answering questions for answer/question services/websites
- pretty much anything you can imagine

I generally categorize HITs into two categories — the quick and easy, and the long and tedious. The quick ones pay a lot less (typically 0.01 to 0.10), but you can do them much more quickly, and there’s generally several thousand of these available. The more difficult ones pay more, but they can take hours to do. Doing either of these will generally work out to be about the same, pay/time-wise.

The process generally goes like this:
- requesters post the tasks
- you browse the list of tasks, and find one you would like to do
- you can preview the hit before doing it
- if you like what you see, press the “Accept” button
- you can perform the task
- there is a time limit assigned to all tasks, but usually there is plenty of time
- once finished you submit the HIT
- the requester will review your work and accept or reject it
- if accepted, you get paid

The payments are transferred to your Amazon Payments account, from which you can transfer to either your bank account or an Amazon.com gift certificate.

I generally average about $10 per day, but it’s been kind of slow lately, so it’s probably less right now. I started in late June, and I’ve accumulated $325+ so far.

Reported on TV

Dateline’s work at home scam investigation aired in early April, (the full program available online), examines more cases of fake jobs obtained over the internet from what appeared to be major legitimate companies, like like Staples, Compac Computers and Goldman Sachs.  One of an endless various scams perpetrated by Nigerians that all capitalize on banks adding to the depositor’s account, prior to the funds from the counterfeit checks “clearing” .  Never wire a “surplus” or “fee” payment via Western Union until the check’s funds have transferred. (I would never wire money to strangers, under any circumstances)

For more info, check out the FTCs guide: Giving the Bounce to Counterfeit Check Scams

The Dateline program revealed a more sophisticated addition to the scam, hiring “payroll clerks”, individuals who use standard check creation software to unknowingly produce counterfeit checks, using bank account numbers provided by the scammers, one woman had sent out hundreds of checks totaling over $750,000 before realizing she was a puppet.

Fraud is said to be one of the top 5 sources of income in Nigeria, Dateline played an excerpt from a popular song:  I go chop your dollar

“Oyinbo man I go chop your dollar,
I go take your money and disappear
419 is just a game, you are the loser I am the winner”

Reported on TV

On Friday, March 6th, 20/20 reported on the runaway fraud in the  Work At Home industry,  with a growing number of “Victims” supplied by the economic downturn.  One expert reports “54 out of 55 work at home offerings are scams“.

Interviews included the victim of an unsophisticated envelop stuffing offer with a $37.94 setup price, that simple takes the money without delivering anything, the operator of one of these scams was shown being arrested.  [The lesson learned, if it sounds too good to be true, like earning $12 per envelope stuffed, it's probably not true.]

Another classic case profiled involved a more sophisticated, secret shopper scam.  The participant is sent a check for $3990 with the instructions to deposit it, then immediately go to Walmart to evaluate their moneygram service by sending $3500 back to the secret shopper service, keeping the $490 balance as payment. By the time the check is discovered to be counterfeit, the victim is out $3500, with a ruined credit rating. [ Always wait for funds transfer to be completed before drawing from a questionable check, no mstter how official it looks, clearing alone is not a gurantee the check will be good.  The same bad check scheme is used by endless scams, including the classic Nigerian prince email scam]

The 3rd scam detailed was a rebate processing service bait and switch scheme, in which the rebate actually applies only to sales of impossible to market products.

Some Basics:

• Most legitimate jobs don’t require you to pay “application
  processing fees”,etc. up front.
• Protect your personal info SS#, etc. as well as your money until you confirm the employer legitimacy.
• Find work that utilizes your skills, be skeptical of employers that don’t ask for qualifications.
• If you have a passionate interest but no clearly marketable skills, consider capitalizing on your knowledge Blogging about and e-marketing in your hobby/recreation area.
• Pay attention to your common sense. If it sounds too good to be true…

Finally the FTC caught up with the operators of 6 sites, imposing a $4.9 million judgment: they charged consumers from $47 to $129 to access their “members only” Web sites with their “money-making secrets.” Their advertised programs either did not exist as represented or did not offer quick and easy money with little time or effort as promised. here’s the complete FTC story.

One site shat should be helpful workathomenoscams.com exposes some scams. The site may not be totally up to date.

Our friend at Work At Home Careers .com produced this video tutorial on techniques for researching a company.

The Work At Home Careers guy ironically advises Not googling for opportunities, using the search phrase “work at home” it’s too much of a magnet for scammers, your better off searching for more specific work such as Telecommute, Virtual Work, Home Office, Flex Work or Remote Work.

Besides hanging onto your wallet, you also have to protect your ethics, some people are recruited into conspiring in fradulent activities, like the pay to click jobs in which you are assigned to click on advertisement links. Clicking advertisements with no intention of buying is defrauding the pay per click advertising clients, to generating undeserved income for the hosting web site, or to exhust the advertising budget of a competetor with fruitless visits. These activities do pay in some cases, but it may get you blacklisted, hurting future business persuits.

Draft 0.0

To get the attention of big name e-marketeers your venture must have already developed some value in the for of either targeted mailing lists, or products your willing to bundle with others’ products. If you do have the prerequisite assets, the next step may be to get some mentoring from someone who’s already ‘been there’ if your not in a position to share a dinner with a JV pro, this package might be a fair alternative.

Clickbank Inner Circle is a training package that focuses on developing the reputation and building the relationships essential for successful joint ventures. I found it insightful, and realistic enough to clarify that it’s not for rookies. The package includes a couple of videos, 4 eBooklets 17, 36, 64 and 105 pages long, and interviews with Alex Goad, Chris X from Day Job Killer, Eric Rockefeller and Rob Benwell in text or audio.

Joint Venture Process Map summarizing the steps laid out in the package.

clickbank-inner-circle-process-map obfuscated for the author's sake.

Clickbank Inner Circle was created by Chris Freville.