6 Things To Look Out For When Starting A Work From Home Franchise
6 Things To Look Out For When Starting A Work From Home Franchise
1. Assembly Work-At-Home
This is a popular scam where you are asked to invest money to purchase instructions and materials, assemble the products in your home and then re-sell the assembled items to a company that has already agreed to purchase them. Once you spend several hours of your time assembling the goods, the company will usually decide that your work doesn’t “meet their standards” and you will be out several hundreds if not thousands of dollars having wasted several hours of your life assembling these products that will be very difficult to sell to anyone.
2. Chain Letters
Usually a chain letter scam will consist of you making copies of a letter and sending them to the names on a mailing list. This is an old scam and while most people generally will be able to spot this as a scam from a mile away, people are getting craftier and will intimidate you to send the letters by either threatening bad luck or even involving religion. There are really no legitimate businesses that use a model of sending cash to people through the mail, so whenever you see something that remotely resembles this, steer clear of it.
3. Envelope Stuffing
These types of scams involve promises of making at least $350 per week by stuffing envelopes. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service states that envelope stuffing has become a mechanized operation such that there’s no real profit to be made by stuffing envelopes, so why are people claiming you can make money stuffing envelopes? Once you sign up for this scam, you’ll start receiving tons of advertisements requesting money to provide you with money-making plans, but even if you follow through and purchase these plans, you will just be instructed to send similar ads to other people.
4. Multi-Level Marketing
This is basically the classic pyramid scheme where you sell products and recruit others to sell the products while you retain a percentage of their sales and the one who recruited you retains a percentage of your sales. While there are some legitimate multi-level marketing systems which rely on direct sales to sell good products rather than mass marketing and big budget advertising, there are still plenty of scams that closely resemble the legitimate ones. The easiest way to spot the difference is that with a scam MLM, there will be a huge emphasis on recruiting more and more people whereas the legitimate businesses will place the emphasis on selling their product.
5. Online Business
While there are plenty of trustworthy online businesses such as Air Advantage which provides high speed internet to rural areas or Adventures in Advertising which specializes in internet based advertising, you need to keep an eye out for the online businesses that sound too good to be true. These scams will usually tell you that you can make thousands of dollars each week and all you need is a computer. What actually happens is you end up paying for a disk or cd-rom with information about several scams of all different varieties, all of which will require money from you up front and will rarely make you any profit at all.
6. Processing Medical Insurance Claims
This is a particularly slimy scam that promises to make you $800-$1000 per week while you process medical insurance claims on your home computer. You will typically be pressured into buying software and computers at exorbitantly high prices and often times you will have no way to generate leads or to even turn in and process the finished work if you do find any clients.
There are a lot of scammers out there, but when you know what to look for you have a much better chance of avoiding these fraudulent businesses. A work from home franchise is a great way to insulate yourself from fraud as you will be working with a well-known company that has earned a good reputation by doing honest business. You can also make sure that the franchise you choose to go with is legit by contacting some of their franchisees and asking them about their experience, if the company is an honest one, the franchisees will most likely give them a glowing recommendation. Of course, the best thing is to avoid scams in the first place, but if you have been victimized, the best thing to do is to ask the company for a refund and tell them that you plan to contact the police and the BBB if they do not comply.
6 Things To Look Out For When Starting A Work From Home Franchise - To learn more about this author, visit Candice Clem's Website.
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You’ve probably heard the commercials on late at night promising to make you several thousand dollars per week with no cost to you and without lifting a finger, and if you haven’t figured it out yet, when it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. While there are a lot of legitimate work at home businesses (like WSI which offers internet marketing to small and medium sized companies), if you’re new to the business world it can be difficult to sort the good from the bad. One good rule of thumb is to go with a name that you can trust. While getrichnow44.com may promise heaps of cash for little to no work, a home business franchise will be a safer, more stable way to earn a steady stream of income for honest work, and when you go with an established franchise, you know that you’ll be starting a real home based business and not just being tricked into buying a set of books or training tapes. While there are plenty of trustworthy work from home franchises, there are still some who will try to take advantage of the unsuspecting consumer, so here are a few of the things to look out for when starting a work from home franchise, courtesy of the Better Business Bureau.
1. Assembly Work-At-Home
This is a popular scam where you are asked to invest money to purchase instructions and materials, assemble the products in your home and then re-sell the assembled items to a company that has already agreed to purchase them. Once you spend several hours of your time assembling the goods, the company will usually decide that your work doesn’t “meet their standards” and you will be out several hundreds if not thousands of dollars having wasted several hours of your life assembling these products that will be very difficult to sell to anyone.
2. Chain Letters
Usually a chain letter scam will consist of you making copies of a letter and sending them to the names on a mailing list. This is an old scam and while most people generally will be able to spot this as a scam from a mile away, people are getting craftier and will intimidate you to send the letters by either threatening bad luck or even involving religion. There are really no legitimate businesses that use a model of sending cash to people through the mail, so whenever you see something that remotely resembles this, steer clear of it.
3. Envelope Stuffing
These types of scams involve promises of making at least $350 per week by stuffing envelopes. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service states that envelope stuffing has become a mechanized operation such that there’s no real profit to be made by stuffing envelopes, so why are people claiming you can make money stuffing envelopes? Once you sign up for this scam, you’ll start receiving tons of advertisements requesting money to provide you with money-making plans, but even if you follow through and purchase these plans, you will just be instructed to send similar ads to other people.
4. Multi-Level Marketing
This is basically the classic pyramid scheme where you sell products and recruit others to sell the products while you retain a percentage of their sales and the one who recruited you retains a percentage of your sales. While there are some legitimate multi-level marketing systems which rely on direct sales to sell good products rather than mass marketing and big budget advertising, there are still plenty of scams that closely resemble the legitimate ones. The easiest way to spot the difference is that with a scam MLM, there will be a huge emphasis on recruiting more and more people whereas the legitimate businesses will place the emphasis on selling their product.
5. Online Business
While there are plenty of trustworthy online businesses such as Air Advantage which provides high speed internet to rural areas or Adventures in Advertising which specializes in internet based advertising, you need to keep an eye out for the online businesses that sound too good to be true. These scams will usually tell you that you can make thousands of dollars each week and all you need is a computer. What actually happens is you end up paying for a disk or cd-rom with information about several scams of all different varieties, all of which will require money from you up front and will rarely make you any profit at all.
6. Processing Medical Insurance Claims
This is a particularly slimy scam that promises to make you $800-$1000 per week while you process medical insurance claims on your home computer. You will typically be pressured into buying software and computers at exorbitantly high prices and often times you will have no way to generate leads or to even turn in and process the finished work if you do find any clients.
There are a lot of scammers out there, but when you know what to look for you have a much better chance of avoiding these fraudulent businesses. A work from home franchise is a great way to insulate yourself from fraud as you will be working with a well-known company that has earned a good reputation by doing honest business. You can also make sure that the franchise you choose to go with is legit by contacting some of their franchisees and asking them about their experience, if the company is an honest one, the franchisees will most likely give them a glowing recommendation. Of course, the best thing is to avoid scams in the first place, but if you have been victimized, the best thing to do is to ask the company for a refund and tell them that you plan to contact the police and the BBB if they do not comply.
6 Things To Look Out For When Starting A Work From Home Franchise - To learn more about this author, visit Candice Clem's Website.
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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Joe DagerJoe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as Lean Six Sigma Marketing and organized referral marketing. What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe’s ability to combine his expertise with “out of the box” thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with.” - James R. If you want to learn more about Business901, start a conversation with us. We can be found @ Web/Blog: Business901.com Web/Blog: FundingYourNonprofit.com LinkedIn Profile Follow me on Twitter - Visit Joe Dager's Website |
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