It's unfortunate that the Internet, which seems to be the source of endless opportunity, is also the source of an even double (or triple) number of scams. Why? It's much easier to formulate a scam that is “supposed” to give you some amazing benefit, but ends up stripping people of money and in fact giving the victim the complete opposite—nothing, than it is to make a good product that can really benefit a multitude of people.

Today I'm going to look at a certain type of scam. The kind that people can legally get away with. Empty promises that leave people empty handed in the end. I'm talking about “Online Business Opportunities” that are nothing more than a regular scam because they rob people of their money, and don't allow them to make the money that they promised. Are all “online business opportunities” scams? No. There are plenty that are very legitimate and can end up making you a lot of money. The problem is, many of the sales letters and advertisements for scams and legit companies are nearly identical. I'll outline some methods you can use to weed out some of the scams out there. For now, we'll focus on Internet Marketing Business Opportunities.

#1 – Customer Support

Does the opportunity website have a way to contact someone for “more information” or help/questions? If so, send them a message and see what the response is like. If it is professional, informative, and they answered your question without beating around the bush, or trying to sell you something else, then chances are it is a good company, because if it was a true scam, they wouldn't make it so easy for people to contact them. I've only seen a few programs that feature this, but if they provide live support, then you know the company is really serious about making its members happy. And although there are even fewer business opportunities that feature this, 24/7 live support is the best.

#2 – Product(s) to promote

If you have to pay to be a member, and then the only point in the business is to recruit more people, and there is no product or service being offered (just a membership), that is a typical pyramid scheme and should be avoided. What good is a company that doesn't provide anything? Does it really make sense to pay for NOTHING and then recruit people and convince them to pay for NOTHING? If it does work, only the people at the very top ever make anything, and the systems usually don't last very long until they fall apart. Once again—stay away from pyramid schemes. Now, don't get NOTHING confused with a product that is in development, and you are selling a pre-order of the product/service. There is nothing wrong with pre-ordering...people do it all the time with movies, games, etc. If a product is on pre-order, then there is in fact a PRODUCT and it is not just a pyramid scheme. The quality of that particular product, however, is subjective.

#3 – Do some research

Many times, online business opportunities have a company name, but are really just sub-companies to a bigger one. If at all possible, try to find out who owns your company and do a WHOIS search. You can type 'WHOIS ' into Google and you should find more information on that domain. Has the domain been registered for very long? Remember, don't always go by the company's URL if they are owned by a larger organization. Do a WHOIS on the larger organization, and if they are an established company, then there's a good chance it isn't a scam. For example, the business I am involved with, Free1Up, is owned by Giant Pay. Doing a WHOIS on shows me that the company has been around for at least 8 solid years (at the time of this writing). That's a good thing, because any company that is 4 years or older is normally reputable because most new businesses formed die within their first 3 years of existence.

While those methods of identifying an online scam are nowhere near conclusive, it should give you a good idea on which Internet Marketing Business to invest in, if you are planning on making an income from home.