Things They Don't Tell You

I am becoming convinced that, short of one or two tutoring companies I have found, there is no substantive, legitimate telecommuting work available on the entire worldwide web. Every work-at-home or survey site I have responded to ends up being one of very few types of scams or dead-ends. People I know have referred to SPAM as an acronym standing for stuff posing as meat and folks online refer to SPAM as stuff posing as mail. I prefer to think of these sites as SPAW, stuff posing as work. These sites are set up to do one thing and one thing only. They exist to sell the unwary job applicant garbage he or she can ill afford. We will begin at the beginning.

1. Job ads on (fill in your favorite job search site) As often as not there are dozens of these ads set up to trap the unwary. They usually promise outstanding pay. There seems to be no other rhyme or reason to them, however. I have found them on craigslist and other job search sites under General Labor, Writing, Admin, Customer Service, Nonprofit, Marketing and Web. Some are as obvious as the home improvement firm that is supposedly looking for appointment setters. They receive your resume` and respond that you need to fill out one simple form for which they provide a link. The link sends you to a form that allows you to sign up for their home improvement service, as a customer.

Most of these ads will send you an email for your inquiry. The email includes a statement saying you have been approved. I have never been turned down, by the way. There is also a link to go to their site to check out what they do. That's when they start to become a little different.

2. Check out the Terms Of Service carefully! Very few of the sites you end up at will make it clear that you are signing up for a free trial. To get to that nugget, you must dig through the Terms of Service file which is written by lawyers with one purpose in mind. These "Terms" are labyrinths designed to keep those with little time to waste or no legal training from discovering how short is the free period and how high is the price of missing out on that period. The subscription after the trial, some of which are as short as 7 days, can be $69.95 per month or more! For this they provide you with links to either surveys or offers you can complete. Oh, joy! This is another point of differentiation.

3. Offer sites These insidious dens of vipers should be illegal. Consider, they offer you a nominal sum, say $10 to sign up for some "offer" that will cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars over the next year to 3 years. Talk about a Pigeon Drop! And the ONLY way you can get the nominal sum is to commit to the costly contract. These people aren't even honest to the people they are shilling for, because they tell you in the intro literature that you can cancel the offers right away and they will still pay you. They probably know what I know. I used to work for a mobile phone company and I am painfully aware of how hard it is to cancel most of these free trial "offers".

4. Survey sites Some of these also try to suck you into a free trial. They all go through the same start up. They start you out with surveys that extract every bit of demographic information they can get about you. They tell you that this is so they can match you with the surveys that will best fit you. Then the other surveys begin to arrive and you start to notice something. You can spend anywhere from 2 to 20 minutes filling out a survey only to be told something like, "We are sorry but you are not qualified for this survey". After all the demographic info they gather at the outset, how do they not know which surveys you are qualified to complete?

5. Secret Shopper programs So here's the deal! You sign up for their program and then you get to go buy some of their product. Then you write up a report of what you thought of the product and the service and submit it and the register tape for reimbursement and to get paid for your time. This might be nice if you had a steady job to allow you to buy the products in the first place. I put this under that same old rule for applying for work. Never pay to work!

Do you still want to go into a work-at-home scheme? I wish you luck, sincerely. You are going to need it and another good job before you're through!