If you've been earning online for longer than a year, you've been there. You find a new opportunity that you are excited about, but since its your first time hearing about it, you want to make sure that this won't be a waste of time and/or especially money, so you Google the name along with "Review"...and all the air is let out of your balloon when you get results claiming this great new opportunity is indeed, a scam. So its time to throw that so-called opportunity away, right? While many do exactly that, they may be throwing away the perfect opportunity for them! Just because a website/business has bad review results, even if they are many and on the first page, doesn't mean that it is indeed a scam. Here are some things to look out for when investigating fraud and scam claims. For the rest of this article I will use a recent opportunity I found; Rent Your Account. In short it pays daily to rent out your FaceBook Ad account to advertisers, paying you for that use as well as bringing others on board to do the same. I searched the name of the company, and sure enough I found a post claiming that this company was stealing information, and the first thing any person must scrutinize when looking into scam and fraud claims. Who is making the claim? When checking claims for validity, you definitely want to find out who is making the claim of it being a fraud. Is it a person who was directly scammed by the company, or someone on the outside looking in; posting on what they assume or even an outright lie? In my case, it was an anonymous person referencing a post on Reddit about a year ago...a post that no longer existed, I might add. What actually happened? What is the actual fraud that is going on? Are they taking money? Information? Also did the person actually follow the steps that the site laid out? Oftentimes you can run into someone saying that an opportunity is a fraud, but through explanation you find that the person didn't complete what was necessary to receive payment for one reason or another. In the case of the claim I found against Rent Your Account; the person posting was going completely off of the post found on Reddit, and had no personal experience (red flag that the claim isn't legitimate). The post referenced only states that they filled out information in order to get the device necessary to rent the account, connected it to a monitor, and it immediately began "requesting information from a remote server", which they found highly suspicious. However, the site itself explains directly that the hardware is sent in order for them to "place ads through your FaceBook Ad Account through your Internet connection, as to not alert Facebook securities"....this would require such a device to connect to a remote server, and receive those instructions. Furthermore the device connects to your modem, and not your computer, so it would not be able to see any information without some sort of wireless capability, which it doesn't have. What is the response to the claim? In most forums where you can post fraud company claims, they allow for a response thread below their post. You should always read what people are saying about the claim made. Are there people who collaborate the claim, saying things have happened to them; or are they disputing the claim, stating an error in the poster's actions or that the entire claim is false? Going back to my investigation of Rent Your Account, when I looked below there were a great many responders stating that not only were they members of Rent Your Account, but have been paid several times and no information compromised. There were a few dissenters that commented as well, but all were speculation of what could happen and negativity, rather than people disputing with fact. Are the claims found in your search actually different, or are they copies of the same claim? This one is pretty much self-explanatory. There are people in the world who are negative enough not only to post a false claim about an income opportunity, but will go as far as to post it several times across the internet in an effort to bring it down and make their claims truth. I encountered this as well. While I can't say that its the same person posting it around, each scam claim I found about Rent Your Account seemed to be exactly the same as the last. Some person referencing the same Reddit post that no longer exists; followed by a number of people having success with the same site. I figured out that this may not be such a bad opportunity to join after all. So two months later I've earned over two hundred dollars in an opportunity that I may have missed had I not had a discerning eye when it comes to fraud claims. I hope these steps will help you as well
I do a lot of little jobs on the internet to pay some expenses. My advice for determining if it is a scam. 1. If they ask you for money upfront - There are a million legit opportunities that do not cost anything. There is never a reason to send someone money just to get started. 2. Always be careful of the payout threshold. A lot of ´scam´ work opportunities involve setting a threshold that is so high that most of their workers will never be able to cash out. Be weary of sites that have $50 or $100 cash-outs. More than likely you will stop working for them with a balance way below that.
That is not necesarily true...It actually depends on what you are getting into. For example. Arise.com hires Independent Contractors for work at home call center work. Being an independent contractor, not only are your materials your responsibility, but you are also responsible for paying for your training. The trade off is that you are paid a straight pay for your engagements with companies, without taxes being taken out. Also, if you are joining an affiliate marketing business, where you are provided a commission for promoting sales for a pre-made product/service; depending on what the company is providing you as an affiliate (website and promotion tools, leads, free product/discount, training, etc) a fee to join would be appropriate. You do want to make sure that the cost for joining is justified by what you will get. In short, just wanted to say while there are a great number of free opportunities online, it doesn't mean that if you run across an opportunity that has a cost it's automatically a scam.
