There are large numbers of people who work at home as writers, consultants, Marketing, IT, sales, translators etc. but there is also a big demand for part time jobs that can be done at home without needing such specialised skills and knowledge.

These can include work such as article writing, cold calling, proof-reading, Internet research,  customer service, data entry, social media and SEO, dog walking and thousands of other opportunities.

But, the problem is the spam messages that are so abundant offering amazing work at home opportunities.

Figures suggest that 95% of such emails offering work from home are scams.

Often there is little detail on what’s involved and no way to contact the ‘seller’ – just a signup process.

Think carefully before signing up and do try to check the truth of the ‘offer’ before signing up. You can usually check these things on the Internet – try searching on the name of the offer plus the word review or scam.

If there are contact details – then ask questions, get more details to help your decision. If they won’t provide more details then might be best to avoid it.

There is a lot of information available on the Internet – but always ask yourself why someone has posted this information as it may tell you how trustworthy it is.

One site that helps is www.workingmums.co.uk/home-working-jobs/  and of course the reputable recruitment websites have a lot of work at home opportunities.

It’s the spam messages that are the problem. There isn’t a guaranteed way to identify these scam messages, but they generally have the following characteristics

• Little or no description of what the work actually is
• A video clip of the ‘seller’ describing their wonderful lifestyle of Caribbean islands, fast cars and top hotels etc.
• Something such as a time limit to get you to act before you have time to think.
• Local based. i.e. the message is tailored to list the opportunities as being based somewhere close to where you live (this is easy to fake as most websites can now identify your location)
• Incredible testimonials from people who were in a bad financial situation and now have the jet-set lifestyle thanks to this ‘opportunity’
• No company name for you to check out – just a brand name. No company address etc.

Check as much as you can before signing up – once they have your card details you’re in their hands.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.