We've all seen the ads. They make it sound so easy, make thousands of dollars every day, and work only four hours a week. How they made $94k in 24 hrs, while they slept. Ads like, how I made $10,000 a week, working an hour a day. Statements like these lead many people to sign up with program offers every day. Not all of these are deceitful, but many of them make outrageous claims of easy profits. The thing they don’t talk about is the low success rates of many of their clients, and the amount of time and effort it takes to make serious money. After many of the clients realize that there's no easy money to be made, they end up dropping out. What happened is that they accepted a business proposal that couldn't deliver what it promised.

Scams on the internet are not that difficult to avoid. Thousands of people find safe and profitable ventures and make a really good living working online. By learning what to look for and what to avoid you can avoid rip-offs and con-artists, and focus on real internet businesses, that will allow you to reach your goals.

Just check the search engine results for "internet business opportunities"; you will see that the search results come back crammed with almost any kind of offer you can imagine. Many of them sound very tempting, offering "Fast and Easy Money" and "With Very Little Effort". There may be another side to the story and, often times the only person really making money is the site owner.

Many of these types of sites require you to pay a monthly fee for access to the information. There may be a large up-front fee just to begin. Or, the more advanced information will cost you extra. And, sometimes the only way to make money with these companies is by selling the program to others, some of these plans end up being pyramid schemes, with no real product or service. Some offerings are legitimate, offering very good advice on how to be a blogger, keyword selection, search engine optimization, and site monetization.

Scammers are really good at making their sites look legitimate. They especially, target retirees, the elderly, stay at home moms, people who are ill, and those who want to set their own hours and be their own boss. The marketing will mainly be focused on work from home offers. You can find plenty of these ads in the back of magazines. So, how can you tell which offers are safe, and which ones are not?

Doing a keyword search on internet opportunity scams will return lots of results. But, after reading the reviews, it's plain to see that even these sites are set in place to lead you into the same types of schemes from other internet businesses. Often on these sites, there will be a review of various internet programs. They will be reviewing the sites according to their own best interests, and placing links to the sites they are affiliated with. It's a way for the site owner to make money, because they get a commission when one of their click thru links results in a sale. This makes it hard for you to tell if the recommendation is any good, or not.

If you are considering an online business partnership with another company, you can take a few steps that will help you avoid many pit falls. You will need to do some home work by asking for all the details, find some people already doing the same thing and ask them how they feel about the company in question. A legitimate company will volunteer all the information you need to make a decision before signing up. Chances are, the longer an internet company has been around; the more likely that web site is successful and able to support its partners.

Doing your homework also means knowing if the people running the business are easy to contact if you have a question. What kind of support do they offer you if you join their business? You don't want to be left alone to figure it all out yourself, after investing time and money. Will they offer you a money back guarantee, if you are not satisfied? This type of research of a company will help to eliminate some of the less than honest businesses.

A great place to start is checking with the Better Business Bureau and making sure that they are a member of the Direct Sellers Association and the US Chamber of Commerce. You can find these associations by simply using your search engine and finding their links.

Some of the same rules that you'd use to protect your personal finances also apply to internet business. Only after you have done your due diligence should you give out any personal information. Try to limit the amount of information you give out to your mailing address and phone number. You should not need to send a check; this has been mostly replaced by Paypal, or other Secure Server financial services. If you sign up with any affiliate programs, you'll be required to fill out you tax information before they'll issue you your first check. But, it can wait until then; if that makes you more comfortable. Trust your instincts, often the best test is you gut-feeling.

There are many different types of work at home scams. I'm going to try and group them down into just the most common types. The first one is companies that claim to be medical billing companies that offering to put you into a medical billing position for an upfront fee. Remember, a business takes time, and you should never pay for a job. Medical billing scams provide you some software and a list of potential clients. What they don't tell you is that medical billing is handled either by individual medical clinics, or one of several large companies. It would be very difficult to break in to this industry as an unknown individual.

Data Entry from home sounds very appealing to internet users, I know. What they do is, for an upfront fee they offer to send you some software with instructions on what to start typing. What they don't tell you is the typing they want you to do; which is placing more ads out on the internet to get more people to do the very same thing you just did. Which is, pay a fee, get some instructions and continue the cycle all over again. E-mail processing also falls into this same category. It seems to have replaced the old envelope stuffing scam. Which is just sending out offers, just like the original. Since there is not a product or service being offered this is a pyramid scheme, and you could face criminal charges for participation.

If you get started in internet business, surely you will be facing the need to protect yourself when taking payments for your products or services.  It doesn't matter if you are using eBay or your own web site; Paypal is one of the safest methods to receive payments.  Paypal will accept credit cards or they allow customers to set up through a bank account.  And getting set up is easy, by simply going to the Paypal web site.  Accepting payment with a check is the most risky way to go.  So, if you do accept a check, let the customer know that they'll need to wait until after the check clears, about 10 days.  And, especially don't accept checks written against a foreign bank account.
 
Also, you should be wary of any responses to items that you are selling, if the dialog of the response seems suspicious.  For example, they may keep referring to the doll collection you're selling as "the item" for sale.   Anything that just sounds unnatural should be handled with extra care, especially if the offer is too good to be true.  If you feel you have been ripped off, you can feel free to report the incident to www.fraud.org.  Also, you can file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).  As long as you take the time to increase your awareness, you can protect yourself and prevent most of them from happening.
 
A good place to learn more about protecting yourself online is on the IC3 web site, and www.fraud.org.