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Work At Home - Home Based BusinessesThe dream of many people is to break free of the rat race, quit their job, and find a way to have their own business or work at home. There is an entire industry that targets this work at home segment, offering franchise opportunities and home-based businesses that require little capital to get started. Entrepreneur.com has a listing of the top home-based franchises, with things like Jani-king (commercial janitorial and cleaning, more than 9000 franchisees), ServiceMaster Clean (Residential and commercial heavy cleaning and disaster restoration services - more than 2500 franchisees), Snap-on Tools, Jazzercise (dance fitness programs, 5000+ franchisees), and ServPro Industries (Residential and commercial cleaning services). These businesses require work and dedication, and are not some get rich quick schemes. When investigating home based businesses and work at home careers, you need to be able to distinguish between the hype and the reality that work at home promoters put out there.
Work at Home Schemes - What to watch out for..The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has a section on their website warning about work-at-home schemes. "Earn thousands of dollars a month from your home..", "Get Paid to Stuff Envelopes", and so on. You see ads like this on telephone poles, in newspapers, and of course there are a million internet businesses now promoting work at home plans and programs. One catch is that many of these schemes require you to pay money up front for supplies, or training or marketing materials, or tutorial software, and then the promised lucrative money making work never materializes. They highlight some examples like processing medical claims. People are lured into "investing" thousand of dollars in software, technical support and such, only to find that the market for processing medical claims is run by several large companies and it is very difficult for an independent contractor to earn a living filing these forms. Often the references these promoters provide are false. If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is!Then they talk about the envelope stuffing business opportunity. For a small fee, the promoter will tell you how to make money stuffing envelopes. Now in a world of machines and robot-run factories and 500 million peasants in India and China, do you really think there is a market of high-paying jobs for unemployed and uneducated Americans to sit and home and make a bunch of money sitting in front of the TV stuffing envelopes??! The fact is, you will be sent a "business plan" that tells you how to place ads and hopefully mail out more of these get rich quick schemes to others, in an endless chain. Not what it was supposed to be. The problem is that many people will spend their $20 or $75 or whatever for these materials, lose the money and then not report it.
The last money making venture they talk about is assembly work. You are talked into buying some equipment, inventory, or machines to build some products. Then you find they will not purchase the products once you build them (not up to quality, or something). They can turn the same trick millions of times, and they have. The FTC also provides a list of questions you should ask before proceeding in any work at home program:
If you have complaints or problems with a work at home opportunity, you are instructed to call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357) or log on to www.ftc.gov to file a complaint. So be cautious. If your goal is really to be independent and work at home, keep in mind that any successful business requires WORK. If you see something promising you easy money, ask yourself why everyone else is not already doing it. Legitimate businesses have nothing to hide and do not make baseless promises.
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