Advice for Working from home

I can’t tell you the number of scams I got into without realizing it at the time. Not everything you come across is going to be a scam, but there are other factors that may be built in which will keep you from reaching financial success.

1. Surveys, lotto, surf for pay, typing at home, or other FREE stuff to make money, here is what happens: you end up spending countless hours wasting valuable time and making pennies on the dollar, if anything at all. Now if you only want to make anywhere from $10.00 to a couple of hundred a month or if being entered into a prize pool is enough, go for it. More than likely you will make nothing even though everyone who advertises these things will swear you will make LOTS OF MONEY. Lots of money is a relative term; for some it is $10 extra a month, for others it may be in the thousands.

2. Before signing up, do some due diligence… there are all sorts of sites that report on scams. Investigate the company, investigate the owners. Go to Google and do a search. example using XYZ as the company name:

XYZ [scam]

Read through articles you find. Scammers are getting smarter and actually put the word ‘scam’ in their article and may actually be advertisement for the ‘opp’. Others may lead you to information you REALLY need to know. Whois.net is a great place to identify the people behind the web site, then google them. Play like a detective if you are not sure. Yes, it’s work, but isn’t your money and peace of mind worth a little?

Look at the website. Is there contact information located somewhere besides an email fill in form, a phone number? Is there a location of the business? DO you have to pay for information about the company? Can you tell from the main page what the opp is or do you have to submit a form for someone to contact you first? If you can’t find this information on the site, then how can you contact them when there is a problem later? Email? People delete unwanted email all the time.

If you register for the newsletters from www.mlmwatchdog.com you will get reports on problems within companies, sometimes long before the people promoting those companies ever find out about it.

3. Reconsider signing up for anything unless you can actually talk to the person wanting you to join their “opp”. Working from home is NOT a ‘just you’ proposition… We can’t do it alone… not and make the money a month like a lot of these ads claim.

Ask what kind of training you will receive, if you don’t get a comfortable feeling answer, then I doubt you are going to feel comfortable after you sign on either. If you sign on and don’t get good guidance and regular mentoring, you are going to end up being an orphan like I was.

4. Read the compensation plan and the Policies and Procedures before joining. If you can’t get access to those two documents without signing up, DON’T do it. Many policies and procedures have statements in them such as “we have the right to terminate you for any cause”. I know several people who were in what they thought were great companies and when they started making the big money, the company canceled them, taking their people and commissions. IT HAPPENS every day.

NOTE: see my blog on Policies and Procedures

5. Beware of compensation plans that change. I have only heard of a couple of companies that changed the comp plan to benefit the marketers, in most cases the changes benefit the company.

6. Forget what YOU are passionate about. Find out what other people are passionate about… whether it be health/wellness, travel, insurance, legal things, beauty…. you will have an easier time promoting something that others are passionate about than something that just you are passionate about.

7. Be prepared to learn the skills you need whether it is while you are starting or before you get started. Maybe you’re not a doctor, but if you are, I hope you got skills before you started practicing. However, the beauty of network marketing is that you can learn skills as you go along, AS long as there is good training and mentoring.

Find a mentor. I will be glad to help you, regardless of what business you want to start. AND if you have already gotten started but things just don’t seem to be working out, give me a shout.

8. “Pre-launch” opportunities. Being the new kid on the block is not always the best thing. Many of these companies fail in the first two years.  If it’s a good opportunity, it will still be in a few years.  Besides all the top positions are typically taken before pre-launch is announced anyway, so no matter what someone promises you, you aren’t going to get in at the top unless you buy your way in.

9. Joining a company who is listed on the stock exchanges does not give you any extra advantages over one that isn’t. Those companies have shareholders who are taking a portion of your commissions. Shareholders expect returns on their investments and will not hesitate to vote your compensation out in lieu of more returns for them.

10. Being an old, long standing company DOES not give you any more guarantees than a company that has only been around 3-4 years.  The latest company to go down with age was The Weekenders, founded in 1984. They filed bankruptcy in June of 2008.

Some companies have been around so long that the market is already saturated with reps. One company has over 5 million reps world wide…  If you are thinking about getting into a company who has been around, let’s say 15+ years, do something I didn’t do before you join. Ask people you know or meet “Hey, I heard about this company, have you ever heard of them?”

11. If the company does not have a product or service, or you pay only through pay-pal or some other type of cash exchange service, or mailing CASH (of all things). BEWARE! As soon as the FTC finds out about them and you, somebody is going to jail, and it might just be you, the innocent victim.

Any program where you collect the payment and then send the company a portion of through pay-pal or services like that, BEWARE! More than likely the company is hiding their profits through paypal and if your customer is not satisfied, files a dispute, don’t think whoever you sent part of your earnings to is going to give their share back… and this is illegal BIG TIME.

12. Some people get sucked into thinking that if you pay more, you’re getting a better program or opportunity.  NONSENSE! I’d RUN if you’re asked to spend more than $500 to start.  Many states have a law that prevents an opportunity from costing more than $500 to join.

13. Understand that creating “multiple streams of income” does NOT really mean joining multiple biz opps. Not many people can maintain more than one marriage… much less more than one ‘biz opp’. If you can’t get some income generated from joining just one company, don’t think you need to just join some more. We call this multiple streams of ‘out-go’. Multiple streams of income really means, make your money, then invest that money in other areas, real estate, stocks, IRA’s, Money Markets, etc…. it’s like not putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.

We can’t put ourselves into a point of such desperation to find that ‘real’ deal that we let all common sense go out the window or feed ourselves endless numbers of TUMS to get rid of the bad feeling we have in our gut. If it doesn’t sound right, if it sounds too good to be true, please just move on. Trust me, there will be another opportunity right around the corner, regardless of the fear of loss tactics they might be trying to use on you….

I am sure there are other things I should mention, but can’t think of them right now. Creating additional income from home is possible, but truly, it doesn’t happen over night. Learning this stuff did not happen over night either….and I don’t profess to know everything, never will. That is why I too, have mentors.

There are companies out there with good products and services and there are bad companies with good products and services.  Get educated FIRST so you can tell the difference.

~Jennifer
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