If you're like me you probably think working online from home sounds like your ultimate dream job. I mean what's not to like? No more slave master bosses cracking the whip on you, no more long commutes and being stuck in traffic for an hour every day, no more unpleasant co-workers that you have to pretend to like, and no more paying someone else to watch your kids while you're at work. This is an extremely attractive scenario for many people. I know it sure is for me. Well the very fact that it is so attractive makes it a very easy field for con artists and people with low morals to ply their trade. In my quest to learn how to make a living online I've found that you have to be very careful before you hand over hard earned cash to someone promising a work from home business opportunity. I've studied up on this subject and unfortunately have been taken in by a few of them myself. I'm going to outline a few of them here in the hopes that you may be able to avoid the same fate.

"Data Entry" Scams: These offers seem to be everywhere you look. They give you a little teaser about working from home entering data online for businesses. It seems very simple and legit right? What they don't tell you is you'll actually be doing affiliate marketing for them. Basically this entails writing pay-per-click ads for products that they are affiliated with and from which they make a commission. You also have to pay for these ads yourself. It's actually a lot more involved than simple "data entry" and the way they market it is very misleading. Affiliate marketing itself is not a scam ? it's a legitimate industry. But the way that certain unscrupulous people advertise for it certainly is a scam. Recently Clickbank and Google have both removed these ads and products from their listings. Clickbank was making big money off these programs but they don't want to be associated with these deceptive practices.

"Paid Surveys" And "Get Paid To Shop" Scams: These two are fairly similar. They want you to purchase a list of companies that will pay you to take online surveys or that will pay to be a "mystery shopper" at their stores and report back to them. First of all you shouldn't have to pay anyone in order to take paid surveys. The whole idea is kind of ridiculous if you think about it. You should be able to find these companies online yourself fairly easily for free. But a lot of people still fall for it. Now, paid surveys do exist but they're really not the goldmine some people would lead you to believe. You're not going to get rich from taking paid surveys. For most surveys the companies require that you fulfill very specific criteria as far as age, sex, ethnicity, educational background etc.. because they want to be sure you fit the profile of the type of people who are interested in their products. Only makes sense right? And you'll have to fill out an awful lot of surveys to make even a moderate amount of cash.

The "mystery shopper" scam involves buying a list of companies who will pay you to shop at their stores and evaluate the experience. Again, why would you pay someone to be paid to be a mystery shopper? There are companies who will reimburse you for the purchases you make and pay you a small fee for reporting back to them. But you won't have companies knocking down your door so they can get in line to pay you to eat out or shop. You may, however, find that you get a lot of unwanted spam and tire of it quickly.

So my message here is simply: be careful. There is money to be made online ? you've just got to do your homework. Remember: If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.