Perhaps one of the most common shared aspirations for people working for others is the idea of one day starting a work from home business of their own. More small business opportunities or ideas exist today than at any other point in recent memory.  By the same token, there have never been more scams floating out there which makes it hard to find the legitimate opportunities.

The Internet, television, radio, and even the newspapers these days are filled with ad after ad promising to show you how to make thousands each week while working from home. Most of these ads are promising the moon but the majority of them fail to deliver. Multi-level marketing schemes are the most common scams in the work from home genre, but other common scams to avoid include: 

Envelope Stuffing;
Data Entry/Word Processing Ventures;
Billing/Accounts Receivable and other Medical-Related Jobs;
and Making Shirts, Clothes, and Other Products From Home.

Do you enjoy fixing things, sewing, or other craft-like activities? Then you are in luck because there are literally small business opportunities out there where you can produce goods out of your very own home and then sell them for big profits! Naturally the pitch will vary somewhat to make it sound more genuine, but this is pretty much the standard line used to promote the home assembly scam. When it is all said and done, this scam just wants the investor to purchase over-priced equipment and materials. Anyone who actually buys the equipment and builds the products will find it all but impossible to sell them to the company.  They wanted to sell you their overpriced equipment, not buy your over-priced products.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of websites and ads all want to teach you how make a living by stuffing envelopes. Most are stunned when they realize the catch in this classic small business scam. In a few days, you will most likely get a letter in the mail telling you to turn around and place the same "envelope stuffing" ad in newspapers, online classifieds, and other marketing venues. So unless you are willing to con other people out of their money by investing even more cash in advertising, there is no way to recoup your investment.

Con artists have also created a lot of scams to try and capitalize on the fact that so many people now have a computer and Internet connection. The two most common computer-related work from home schemes involve either data entry or word processing. Of course a small fee is required, but you will supposedly earn that back in no time. With precious few exceptions, the information turns out to be generalized and too vague to be of any practical use to the buyer. In spite of there being legitimate computer-based small business opportunties, the vast majority of ads send you in a big circle of empty promises and false hopes.

The legitimate health care worker shortage is being exploited by con artists as they create fake business opportunities supposedly designed to fill this void and make big money for people like you. These scams claim to show investors how to create a work from home medical billing service, which in theory would fill a legitimate market need while providing a high-paying opportunity. But the price for these programs can be in the thousands and require financing! And while the investment should be wise and ultimately net the investor a profitable work from home medical billing business, this is rarely the case for the majority of people. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) already warns consumers about these home billing opportunities, telling them they almost never find paying clients or recoup their initial investment. Despite true opportunities and some success stories, the odds of making any money are so small, these medical billing programs amount to little more than scams.

Essentially involving quasi-legitimate opportunities to sell products or services for a particular company, the classic pyramid scheme is the most common scam out there. They are appealing because they promise to make you a distributor so that you earn commissions from your sales plus the sales of anyone you recruit for the company. These scams are all presented as opportunities for the investor to both set their own schedule and determine their own level of success. While pyramid and MLM schems all appear like a great opportunity for the investor to get in on the ground floor of an expanding operation, even the products themselves are worthless. The people who created the scam are the only ones really making any money while others starve on meager commissions.

Make no mistake, these are not the only scams you need to avoid in the home based business genre. There seems no end to the number of variations and new scams that appear daily on the market. While there has never really been a greater time to start your own business, there has also never been so many scams to watch out for, either! The trick is avoiding the scams while identifying the good ones!

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