Work at home moms are the target of a lot of scams. Unfortunately, because we tend to be rather desperate to earn some cash, scam artists pull out a load of amazing offers to woo mothers who need to stay home and work. However, jumping on a scam will only cause you to lose time and money when you could be working on something far more productive.
Personally, I encourage moms who want to work at home to start their own business, but that isn´t always possible and sometimes you need to earn some money faster than you can by starting a business. In that case, you may be looking for jobs online and I can guarantee some of them are going to be scams. So, how do you spot work at home scams?
- Money is required. If at any point, you are asked for a payment to start a job, back away! There are some job listings, directories, etc. that require a fee and may be worth it, but if an actual job requires you to pay them, that´s almost always a scam.
- Read the fine print. You know those “Assemble Crafts At Home” deals? Well, you have to pay for the kit (see my first point) and if you read the fine print, they aren´t required to buy back anything that they think is unacceptable . . . and guess what? It´s all going to be unacceptable.
- Look for reviews without links. There are often plenty of reviews of a business that offers job opportunities, but if there is a link involved, particularly one with something like this at the end: ?2321414232, you´ll be getting a biased review. That link means that you click on it and if you buy something or upgrade, the person who referred you will be earning money. That doesn´t mean that affiliate links are a bad thing, it´s a great way to support someone you trust, but it does mean that the review may be biased and for the purposes of job research, you will want to look for unbiased reviews.
- Trust your instincts. If you aren´t sure and feel kind of weird about the job opportunity, listen to your gut. Amazingly, we are born with instincts to help protect us, but too many women ignore these and end up in trouble.
Work at home scams can really wreck your perception of the online work world, so please be careful.
Many of you who have tried to visit At Home Mom in the past week have found that it appeared to be non-existent. I´m very sorry. Here´s the short story of what was going on.
1. A hacker broke into my Godaddy account and took over my domain names.
2. GoDaddy told me to deal with it myself.
3. I wrote the hacker and threatened him with legal action if he didn´t return my domain account.
4. Meanwhile, I reported the hacker´s information on WhoIs as invalid, since he wasn´t the rightful owner on these domains. One of the domains I reported was this one.
5. The hacker returned my account.
6. I thought everything was fine until GoDaddy put a hold on the four domains that I had reported and told me the information was invalid.
Over the past 7 days, I have been locked in an email and phone battle, trying to recover my domain names. I rewrote my WhoIs information dozens of times, submitted a restore request over and over and was consistently told that my information was still invalid. In the end, I just put my dad´s address in Canada and they returned one domain. So I tried it again and finally recovered this domain, At Home Mom, late last night. As of this morning, two of my domains are still on hold, but this is the most important one. I´m glad to be back.
A week of not being able to write has really clarified what I want to do with this blog. I´m not content to just let it sit here and rot, I want every work at home mom and every mom who is thinking of becoming a wahm to know about this blog. That´s what I´m going to start working on from now on.
Thank you for coming back and thank you for being patient while I sorted out all these issues. 
It´s good to be back!
In case you´re wondering why I didn´t do a year´s round up post, it´s because I wrote it elsewhere! Head on over to Middle Zone Musings to find out which of At Home Mom´s posts were the best from 2007.
While you´re there, if you have your own blog, enter in the Blogapalooza yourself! All the details are on MZM.
Last week, I held a contest to give away one year full listing in my soon-to-be-launched At Home Mom Business Directory. The contest ended on Dec. 1, but thanks to some technical issues, the winners weren´t chosen until last night. Since there were only 12 entries in the contest, that means that just two were left out. Here are the lucky winners.
Hjordi
Loralea - no, the contest had nothing to do with the interview.
And, unfortunately, Anne Maybus didn´t win, but I would like to send a little link love her way because she has the coolest soaps I´ve ever seen.
I would also like to say thanks to everyone who blogged about the contest:
Don´t miss the launch of the At Home Mom Business Directory! Subscribe now to get daily work at home updates.
Just wanted to remind everyone that today is the final day to enter the free business directory listing contest. It ends at midnight Pacific time, so you still have quite a few hours to stop by the contest post and leave a comment. There aren´t many entries yet, so the chances of winning are extremely high!
Winners will be drawn at random and announced tomorrow morning. The ten winners will also be contacted by email and sent a form to fill out for their free full listing.
