Work at Home and Easy Money Scams

We've set our Google alerts to send us daily information on working from home. Mostly, this floods our inbox with junk. Which is really not cool, but comes with the territory. I tend to burn the midnight oil when doing work for LittleWhiteEbook, so usually, around the time the clock strikes midnight, my inbox starts to flood.

"Make 5000 a week working from home"... "Work from home for just five minutes a day!" - these are the typical ads that get delivered to me. Mostly, the claims of easy money come with an earnings disclaimer - saying basically, if you're not smart/a hard worker/ dedicated, they can't guarantee you'll make anything. That's in the very find print at the bottom of a sales ad. That's so, if you buy their system, you'll feel bad/undedicated/or basically like a failure. (And they're betting on this so that you don't ask for a refund.)

Is there a such thing as easy money? Really?

Here's my take on it.

I live near the DMV here in Washington DC, and in the summer, a lot of men and women go up to the Giant grocery store, buy a cold 24 pack of water, and stake out a spot on a median strip. This is usually when they go sell it in the 90-some degree weather. Technically, you could call that easy money. But you still have to weather the heat and deal with the police if you don't have a vendor's license. The need is immediate, though, so these minipreneurs make some quick, easy cash, and then go home. They pay about 5.00 for each crate of water and then sell the water at two bucks a pop.

On the web, however, people take their time making decisions. Nobody will buy from you simply on request. You can't get website traffic without some sort of effort - either time or money. And in the end, you still have to offer something of value.

Nobody is going to pay you $5000.00 a week to "type simple ads". If they did, I would be typing for them right now instead of typing this blog. And so would the guys who write those sales letters. Trust me on this. Usually, these kinds of scams are Adwords and Adsense-related "systems" - but they don't tell you that until you've paid them some big bucks. Suddenly, that "work from home job" has become an Adwords "scheme".

There's no such thing as "easy money" - there's always some sort of work involved. Easy money can be had sitting in place, selling water - but you still have to buy the water, find a spot, and weather the heat. You probably have to defend your territory on that, too.

You can set up an online store but you (or somebody) still has to work at getting you some traffic.

Work always comes before money. That's a good thing to remember when you're searching for legitimate jobs online.