Business Opportunity From Home

Most of the business opportunities described as "data entry" are not at all what any normal person would think of as data entry (which would be entering information off paper forms into a computer database, or something similar).

What they actually are, is placing pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google Adwords or other services, to advertise products on marketplaces such as Clickbank, and get paid a commission when someone buys the product from your ad. You have to pay for every person who clicks on your ad, whether they buy something or not. This can add up very fast - it's fatally easy to blow through hundreds, even thousands of dollars on PPC without making a dime back if you don't know what you're doing.

While people can and do make money from doing this, it's not at all simple. First, you need to choose and advertise products that people want to buy. Then, you need to know how to write PPC ads. You also need to know how to handle your ads so you'll have to pay the least possible charge per click. You have to deal with Google's rules about affiliate PPC ads (affiliate sales is the term for this kind of sales on commission), which may mean your ads never appear at all if you don't get it right, or you get charged as much as $5 for each click!

To add insult to injury, when you sign up for one of these programs you have to pay for the privilege of being given very basic instructions and lists of products which are all available for free elsewhere on the net.

If you want to do affiliate marketing via PPC (and other, cheaper or free methods), then learn how to do that. Don't fall for scams miscalling it "data entry" when it's not.

Here's another "business opportunity" which usually costs you more than you can make. Firstly, yes, there are companies paying people to take surveys. However, most surveys nowadays are paid for in "points" or 'rewards", or you're paid by being entered in a draw. I don't know about you, but none of those sounds like reliable income to me! Again, if you fall for one of the scams, you end up paying for a list of survey companies which turns out to be full of outdated listings, and the ones that do still exist don't pay out enough to be really useful. When there are so many people on the net willing to take surveys for a draw entry or some other worthless bribe, why should companies pay out hard cash?

This one seems to be completely and totally a scam - I haven't been able to find anyone who signed up and found themselves actually processing rebates (whatever that would consist of). It usually turns out to be either another PPC->Clickbank system, or one where you have to build a website and get people to try out multiple free or cheap offers in order to get something valuable (a laptop, Xbox, etc). Of course, by the time this all becomes clear, you've paid good money to find out. Are we starting to see a pattern here?

This dates back to well before the internet, and it can be a real opportunity to earn money - or not. The two main ways it can go wrong are -
1) the products take so long to assemble, and the pay rate for each is so low, that you end up making well below minimum wage.
2) You pay for the materials as a kit, and the company says it will buy back the finished items off you - but it turns out they don't, because your finished items are not up to their standards (and never could be, as they set the standards impossibly high and make the decision).

Most web pages which cover scams like this one does would now link to so-called "legitimate" opportunities, which they get paid a commission for when you sign up. I'm not going to do that, because I don't think any of these is a good business opportunity.

Here's my plug: I help people learn to come up with their own home business ideas that are genuinely workable, both from a business and a personal point of view. Right now you can visit my other home business lenses (see the right sidebar for a list) and I've now launched a very affordable 3-month training program which will help YOU create the very best business ideas for YOU. Check it out here!