Last night I found myself in a room in a nice little hotel on the edge of Hyde Park. As is quite usual when I’m away from home, I found it difficult to get to sleep, so at around 1am I was surfing some of my favourite websites and forums (fora?). I wasn’t looking for scams (trying not to work…) but we all know that you’re most likely to find something when you’re not looking for it.

So it was when I stumbled across an advert stating “Absolutely scam free work from home opportunity…. click here for unlimited income guaranteed….”

That was it – my Scam Detective hat firmly on, I clicked on the link and had a look around.

Now, I’m not going to name the site, simply because I don’t know the law in the country in which the site operates, so I can’t completely denounce it as a scam. HOWEVER, by advertising it in the UK, they were certainly breaking the law.

BASIC JOB REQUIREMENTS

Male, female required for data entry jobs.
No age limit required.
You do not have to sell or buy any thing.
You do not have to communicate any one.
You must have computer basic knowledge.
Must have computer with internet excess.
Internet basic’s awareness.
Earn thousands of $$$$s every month

What’s the job?

It’s “Just a simple form filling ad posting job.”

Thousands of dollars every month just for posting ads? Sounds good, doesn’t it?

So what’s the catch?

In return for a registration and training fee of $210 (£132) per annum you will receive training in posting ads online and you are guaranteed to earn $000′s EVERY MONTH.

In the words of our American cousins – let’s do the math…

So, your annual fee is $210 (£132) so you have to post 48 adverts every day simply to recoup your annual fee.

Oh, they’ll also take a processing fee of $5 and a transaction fee of $10 (total £9.42) out of each paycheck, so that’s another 4 ads a day

Let’s aim for a modest $1,000 (£628) a month as a salary after expenses. That’s 83,333 ads every month, or 2,777 a day

So, we’re up to 2,829 ads a day to clear expenses and make $1,000 a month

That’s 84,870 adverts posted every month, assuming that none of your ads are deleted as spam.

AND, according to the site’s terms and conditions “If we found any duplicated work, company will deduct payment of 10 ads as a penalty.” so every ad has to be completely unique (no cutting and pasting)

Let’s be generous here and assume that you’re a super fast typist and can navigate to a new blog, post a unique comment, get past captcha (those squiggly letters and numbers you have to put in to prove you’re human) and hit “submit” all in 30 seconds. That’s going to take you 23 hours, 34 and 1/2 minutes, leaving you 25 and 1/2 minutes to eat, sleep, go to the loo, shower, change clothes and everything else that goes with, well, being a human being.

Your earnings for this marathon of “advert” posting? $33.33 (£20.93) per day.

That’s about $1.43 (90p) an hour

How exactly are you going to earn $’000s? Cloning?

The message is simple. You have more chance of finding a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, being guarded by leprechauns riding unicorns whilst trying not to step on the fairies at the bottom of your garden than making any money with this “Scam free work from home opportunity”.

It’s illegal in the UK for anyone to charge a fee in return for giving you work. If you see ANY advertisement or website that asks for such a fee, or an employment agent wants to charge you for circulating your details to prospective employers, walk away. Quickly.

We’ve talked about employment scams on Scam Detectives before. Scammers prey on the need to find a job quickly and offer great sounding promises of employment, but only if you pay upfront for certification, expenses or placement fees. The US Federal Trade Commission has put together a great video to warn people about these scams.

It’s very much aimed at US citizens, but the message is Global.

Remember:
NEVER pay anybody to find you work. Employers pay agencies to find staff for them and a legitimate job offer never comes with a price tag