Don't give up your day job

• Rosemarie Milsom
• 24 June 2009
• Page 1 of 2 : single page

Four years ago Lee Clarke and her husband Troy were on holidays with good friends Christine and Craig Parker when the foursome hatched a business idea. While enjoying the break from their various jobs, they decided that they wanted to create a part-time business that would make enough money to cover their future holiday plans. Four years later, they are enjoying the fruits of that plan.

“The original idea was to create a greeting card range that promoted gratitude, specifically for business owners,” says Clarke, who at the time was national sales manager for a lifestyle magazine. “We were keen to make it an online venture so we could operate from anywhere anytime. We wanted the flexibility of working from home.”

Launched in February 2006 after detailed research and an “enormous amount” of time spent building the website and reaching out to contacts built up through their full-time jobs, customerlove.com.au is a success.

“We have a loyal customer base and have steadily expanded on what we offer, but we are essentially focused on promoting business relationships that are built on the idea of appreciating clients and showing gratitude,” says Clarke, who is based on the Central Coast of New South Wales and has stepped down from her former job to be mum to her two small children.

“We are all very passionate about it and while the money we earn is only enough to be supplementary income, I’m able to be at home and only need to spend about 10 hours a week on the business.”

The convenience of working from home at a time that suits you is one of the most attractive aspects of doing business online.

For Clarke and her partners, the internet has enabled them to structure operations around their other demands such as family and full-time work. And the recent relocation of the Parkers to Jindabyne has done little to alter the day-to-day running of the business.

“It reinforces that you can be anywhere,” says Clarke. “We’ve got set things we do and because we had to learn to do this ourselves, we’ve all developed new skills. We can all step in and help.”

Beware of ‘easy money’

While establishing your own online business is one way to earn extra income, the internet is also bursting with advertisements for ‘job opportunities’ – everything from data entry to medical bill processing.

Unlike running your own business, which demands passion, determination and a solid skill base, online jobs are sold as an easy way to earn extra cash without new skills or a business plan.

And the area is booming right now thanks to the economic downturn.

“At a time like this, people are looking for alternative forms of income,” says Christopher Zinn, spokesperson for consumer advocacy group Choice. “Unfortunately, they can be taken advantage of by very clever and effective scams.”

Zinn estimates that about 90% of job offer sites are misleading in that they inflate the financial gain – if there is in fact any to be made at all – and disguise the demand for upfront payment from interested applicants.

According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), common examples of work-from-home scams include:

• Medical billing. In this scam you pay a fee for everything you need to start your own medical billing service at home. What you’re not told is that most medical clinics process their own bills.
• Envelope stuffing. There are several variations, but essentially you are promised to be paid a fee for every envelope you stuff. All you have to do is send money and you’re guaranteed “up to 1000 envelopes a week that you can stuff... with postage and address already affixed!”
  
• Multi-level marketing. Companies such as Amway are legitimate multi-level marketing businesses based on agents selling products or services where people at all levels of the scheme have the opportunity to make a profit. But if the multi-level marketing business opportunity is all about finding new recruits rather than selling products or services, it may be a pyramid scheme where all the profits are funnelled to the top.
  

• Paid surveys. “Earn $100 per hour filling out simple surveys.” In this scam, people are asked to pay a fee to gain access to a list of companies that offer paid surveys. The surveying companies themselves do not charge people for taking surveys, rather they pay participants who complete their surveys subject to certain requirements such as age, demographics and gender. Many, if not most, paid survey offers do not deliver the rewards they promise.
  

 And while the scams listed seem obvious enough, their ploys are often cleverly masked by an attractive message: make easy money.

“Often there’s lots of verbal encouragement,” says Zinn. “It all seems quite personal and can include a rags-to-riches story that we want to believe.

“We laugh at scams, but statistically there are always people who are drawn in. People are desperate for a way to boost their income.”

Scammers are getting tricky

Demonstrating how hard it is to tell the fake sites from the legitimate ones, while researching this feature, I was had. Having viewed more than 30 websites all claiming to offer fantastic opportunities, I was beginning to think that there weren’t any legitimate programs. Then I came across something claiming to be an independent consumer guide, proconsumerguides.org. It looked real enough: there were even photographs of staff. The site said it had conducted a test drive of 37 work-from-home programs and found the majority failed to make any money or the methods were not easy to use.

The site singled out two programs that it said were proven successful: Profit Lance, an online course designed to give members a thorough working knowledge of internet marketing, and Legit Online Jobs, another marketing program that also offers avenues of making money such as paid surveys.

The fact that it only pointed to and reviewed two programs should have been a giveaway that it was an elaborate hoax designed to give credibility to these two online scams. Within a week of my research, the site disappeared from the web and was being included in sites listing scams.

Judging credibility

Zinn recommends that before registering with any online program check the contact details listed and complete a search of the name using the ACCC’s SCAMwatch site.