Disadvantages of Working at Home - part 4

As I’ve said in this post a topic such as advantages and disadvantages of anything is a very subjective one. What might be an advantage for me, might be a disadvatages for you and the other way around. And while there are certain advantages and disadvantages I have in mind, there might be others I haven’t really realized existed or they just do not affect me. This is actually my way of asking you to bring your contributions to the topic.

If you have followed all the posts in this serie you have probably realized that the accent falls on issues that can affect your chances of succeeding with a work at home business. Because that’s the greatest disadvantage for me: the high risk of not succeeding.

Now that I’ve taken that off my mind, it’s time we talk about another thing that could negatively influence your chances of succeeding.

Many work at home entrepreneurs have their own product or service to sell (on their own or through affiliates). However, this is actually a minority. The vast majority try their luck at making a living from home through affiliate programs and affiliate marketing.

Among these, there are plenty successful ones who earn a living solely from affiliate programs. Unfortunately, most of affiliate marketing start ups are dead on attempt. Very few recover, learn the lessons and start all over again (and succeed) while the rest just give up.

Why is all of this happening?

First of all, there are many affiliate programs out there, selling a wide variety of products. Some of them are real and honest and affiliates who really do their share of work will succeed.

Others, while honest, for various reasons, just can’t keep up with the market and become unprofitable. Needless to say, eventually they will dissapear. If you’ve been working for a while at one of these affiliate programs, you’ll see your whole effort just go down the drain.

Then we have scams - affiliate programs or any other type of home based business opportunity that have one purpose and one purpose only: making their owners rich by lying, deceiving and actually stealing from folks. They persuade you to join them, become a paid member and sell their products (in the fortunate case they actually sell something) with promisses of making you rich over night. Being an unexperienced entrepreneur wanna-be you join, thinking that you have finally found the solution to your problems. The scenarios and possiblities from now on are quite wide (from those who will never pay you a dime to those who will, for a while, just to spread the word and get as many more affiliates as possible only to completely dissapear from the face of the earth when they think their pockets are big enough). Bottom line is that you will work at these programs as hard as you can. Yet, in the end you’ll gain nothing. A big fat zero.

As a result, there’s a high chance you’ll end up broke (maybe in a worse situation than you were when you started). What I see to be an even bigger problem is that many who fall victims to scams will never find the strength to start all over again. They will look at such an experience as a dark chapter of their lives convinced there’s no such thing as achieving one’s dreams. They end up stuck in a dead end job for the rest of their lives.

I will soon have another series of posts on how exactly you can protect yourself against scams. It all comes down to the following:

  • Do your research, find out as much as you can about the business opportunity you are about to join;
  • If it’s too good to be true it most likely is;
  • Understand from the very beginning there’s no such thing as getting rich over night.

If you follow these 3 basic points you should have a better chance at spotting scams and staying away from them.

Here are a few websites that could help you protect yourself against scams and scammers:

Next: the need for stress

Posted in Scams, Work at Home |

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