Is this you? You’re broke, eating 2 minute noodles for 3 meals a day and suffering under an avalanche of assingments due next week? Congratulations, you are the perfect sucker for a scam. Our guest contributor today discusses one common work from home scam that targets people just like you – data entry.
Data entry is a very prolific sector for online activities, and therefore, lots of people are attracted by the simplicity of the tasks and the easy money its is supposed to bring. Advertisers for these jobs are not that picky about the people they hire, they claim that you can be a complete computer newbie, type just ten words per minute and have not skills whatsoever, and you’d still qualify for their job offer. Well, behind such plethora of programs, hundreds of data entry scams lurk; yet, one has to admit that plenty of companies get a wrong or incorrect classification because of a misleading form of advertising. Many of the freelancers working online have difficulties in discerning scams from real jobs.
First of all, in order to make it clear what we could refer to by data entry scams, we need to admit that the concept can be used in relative contexts and pretty subjectively. For instance, lots of people think that data entry requires typing a few words here and there, and money will instantly start flowing into their pockets. When they realize a superior amount of work is required, they reevaluate the money-vs.-work situation and feel disappointed and even duped. This is one situation when the term scam is used loosely for situations that are not at all tricky.
From this perspective, data entry scams could be misleading. Lots of freelancers get discouraged and avoid contacting a certain company because of the ads formulation that seems to give the service a pretty bad look. A good idea to avoid such issues is to turn to programs that are totally dedicated to the data entry field of activity, as it is the case with the Survey Scout. Otherwise, the largest number of so-called data entry scams are connected with affiliate marketing. While some job advertisements hide scams others are really serious business offers. Only a closer investigation into the matter will tell the difference!
Here is one example from the many data entry scams you may encounter on the Internet. You read a common job ad for a typing position; no experience or skills are required. All you have to do is pay a $20 non-refundable fee in order to get a package with instructions; after document download you find out that you have to copy and paste the same ad onto all sorts of online board jobs and ask people to pay you $20 to get the document, and so on and so forth. This is surely a scam and you ought to know better than fall for it. Furthermore, the line between being scammed and becoming a scammer gets pretty thin under such circumstances!