Making Money Online Scams You Should Avoid

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Online money making scams. They're clever, dangerous and can lead to an embarrassing and painful experience. And if you're not careful, they can easily cause financial problems for you. Familiarize yourself with scams offering to help you make money online. Here are some of the top cons you should know about:

Pyramid schemes
Pyramid schemes have ruined many well-meaning MLM businesses. They resemble MLMs somewhat but their true purpose is really to allow scammers to earn money while their victims do all the work. Pyramid schemes, unlike legitimate MLMs, encourage recruitment over actual selling. It is through recruitment, not the selling of products or services, that pyramid members (especially scammers) earn.

Work-at-home scams
Certainly, there are work-at-home jobs that are legitimate and have in fact helped (and are still helping) people earn money. But there are many that are quite simply scams involving online money making.

The trick of the trade can vary in style but they usually involve jobs such as craft assembly and envelope stuffing. If the job seems deceptively simple, it's because it is. The scam happens when you're asked to either pay for non-existent or useless training or materials or perform tasks that you don't get paid for because the quality of your work is not 'up to standards'.

Scams making money online involving your computer and the Internet
These are quite popular and can vary in scheme. A few you ought to be wary about:

Chain e-mails
You receive an email message with a list of names. The scam requires you to forward a specific email message to a number of your friends while sending a specific amount of money to the people whose names are found on top of the list. The promise is that someday, by simply forwarding the email to people you know and encouraging them to forward the emails to others, you'll find your name on top of the list and will receive money. This will never happen.

Home typist
You pay the scammer to send you information so you can start earning money as a home typist. What you get is a brochure and a CD that shows you how to use their trick to scam other people in the same manner.