Signs of a Scam

When you are searching for an Internet job, or an Internet business to join, you have to be extremely careful. There are so many crooks out there waiting in the wings to take advantage of you and make a withdrawal on your hard earned money. Fortunately, many of these crooks continue to use the same strategies time after time, which will help you spot them right away.

First, no online job will ever ask you for a dime. Jobs are jobs whether they are online or offline. So if you see an ad for someone in need of a medical transcriptionist and they want to charge you a “one time fee” to get unlimited work, run the other way. This won’t be true of Internet businesses, however. Almost all business require a start-up fee, so this warning simply applies to online jobs.

Second, don’t give away any free samples. I have answered numerous ads that have requested free samples to evaluate whether I would be a good candidate for their position only to find out they used the free sample all over the web (after telling me the sample was no good and I was not being offered the job). On rare occasions a legit company will do this, but I have yet to get a job with one. Legitimate companies will accept links to your previous work in order to evaluate your abilities.

Third, don’t reply to ads that are not professionally written. Most legitimate companies will submit an ad that is free of grammatical and spelling errors. Broken English is often a sign of someone trying to pull a scam. Also, if the ad looks professional, but then you receive an email from someone claiming to be with the company that is sloppily written, a red flag should go off in your head.

Just using a little common sense can keep you from getting scammed. Try searching the company’s name with the BBB, and in Google’s search engine. Often times you can find out that the company, or individual has scammed other people this way. Then you’ll know to stay away from them.