by Steven Gomez

Created on: January 08, 2011   Last Updated: January 26, 2012

The easiest way to avoid work-at-home scams is to outright avoid trying to find work-at-home opportunities, which honestly are few and far between as few legitimate jobs can be done at home.  Even if you can procure all needed equipment, most workplaces require some face to face correspondence.  Most of those who work at home do so having started their own business from scratch.  Few people can slide into a work at home opportunity without a significant investment of time and resources to either start up a business, or working in a brick-and-mortar workplace before securing such an opportunity.  Many who work at home, in fact, still do need to report to a workplace some of the time.  True full-wage work at home opportunities that can pay the bills without you leaving the home don't come easy.  If you really want to work at home, you'd probably be better off starting your own business, or working as a freelancer for hire.

Now that said, if you still want to seek out work at home opportunities through employers, keep in mind the following details.

Beware of work at home offers that claim you need no skills or require little work, and that are vague about the details. his goes back to the truism that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You don't ever get something for nothing: If a work at home offer claims you can, you're often going to get nothing... especially if they claim you have to send them something....

Ignore "opportunities" that ask for an upfront payment, and ignore unsolicited e-mail and internet offers.  Pretty much all of these will take your money and run, if not send you something lame, like instructions to further an envelope stuffing pyramid scheme, or a set of papers posing as "materials".  Don't let scammers get that far.  Don't blindly send a work at home company money.  In fact:

Vet any possible work at home employer.  Research the company online for information on others' experiences.  Try to find references of people who actually work with the company that you can contact to verify the experience.  And of course contact the company directly to get as much specific information you can about the process, what would be expected of you, what you can expect from them, how exactly payment is determined and handled and so on.

If you research a company that requires payment and still decide they're worth working with, pay for items with a credit card. This way, if

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