How To Avoid Scams Online

Lots of people are interested in home businesses to make a little extra cash, to help pay the monthly bills, or to create financial freedom and security.

Either way, internet businesses can help you. The trick is to find a good one; don't waste time or money chasing empty promises or pipe dreams.

I used the following model to select my internet marketing business - a similar process should work for you as well.

Step 1: Identify Home Business Opportunities

You can easily surf the Net to identify interesting opportunities and obtain their basic information. Use this checklist to help you narrow down the possibilities.

Step 2: Evaluate Selected Business Opportunities

1. Legal?

Don't be fooled by opportunities that sound too good to be true - they probably are.

2. Desireable Product?

Would you buy this product? Would your friends or family members? Is the product limited to a small niche market? Will that be sufficient to make you money.

What we want is a large, hungry, market that will buy from us now; and buy additional products later as well.

3. High Profits?

Expenses will eat away at your profit margin - be sure to consider them? Remember to consider the impact of advertising and start-up expenses.

4. Reasonable Competition?

Make sure you can compete effectively on price.

Similarly, it is very difficult to make a sale if you can't even get your potential customer's attention.

5. Generous Commissions?

How much will you make on each sale? How many sales will be required for you to make a profit? Is that realistic?

Is the proposed commission reasonable? Will you do most of the work, but receive little of the commission?

6. Time Consuming?

Personally, I'm looking for a business opportunity that doesn't require very much of my own time and effort. I'm ready to "semi-retire"; I want a business that will be largely independent of my personal time and energy.

The best home businesses I've seen have systems and processes that will work for you 7x24x365 - whether you're spending the day at the beach with your kids, laid up in the hospital, or sailing around the world.

7. Targeted Traffic?

Businesses need lots of qualified prospects to succeed. For online businesses, the key is targeted traffic.

Will your up line help send you quality traffic?

8. Training?

Don't be afraid to ask - research your product and marketing methods. You could muddle along on your own, but such an approach is more likely to fail than succeed.

So, another key is to make sure that your sponsor provides adequate training.

9. Expert Technical Support?

Computers are necessary for today's businesses. For online businesses, that computer will likely be yours.

For internet marketing businesses, a lot of the technical support will be needed up-front, getting your system set up before you can even start doing the business. Technical support, or the lack thereof, can make a huge difference in your ability to get your business off the ground, keep it running, and become profitable.

10. Customer / Sales Support

Regardless of the product you end up selling, there may be problems, returns, changes, upgrades, etc. involved. Be sure that you have adequate back office support from your up line so that you can deal effectively with any problem that might come up with your customer's use of the product(s) you've sold them.

Look for businesses that also include customer and sales support. Any help I can get from my upline to close the sales will increase my profits.

Step 3: Take Action

Winners act; losers don't. Evaluate the opportunity against this checklist. Winners act; losers don't - be a winner and take action.