While making money from home is definitely real, unfortunately, there are scams that claim you can work from home or make free money from home. I’ll look over them in this article about online work from home scams.
Now scams should be nothing new to you. During the Great Depression when computers weren’t even a thing, scammers would use the envelope stuffing scheme to trick people into thinking they could earn money filling envelopes. No doubt scammers still exist to this day, but many of them are now on the Internet.
I wrote an article about how you can identify online scams, so you might want to check that out if you have no idea what’s legit and what’s a scam.
But, in this article, I will go over the five common types of work from home scams that I often see hanging around the Internet. I will show you how they work and some real money-making alternatives to these scams.
Without further ado, let’s dive right in to these work from home scams exposed!
1. PayPal money generator
You may have come across this from time to time, especially if you see a comment on YouTube saying “I got free PayPal money thanks to this website! [link here]” Many people are easily attracted by the idea of free money, so this is a scam that has trapped a lot of people. So let’s dive into this scam.
How Does It Work?
Basically, the PayPal generator starts by showing you a code blanked out or by showing a “generator” where you can pick how much money you want and, at the click of a button, it “generates” the money. After that, typically, they will require you to complete an offer before the PayPal money is unlocked.
The problem is that the offer you need to complete will actually cost you money! The offer might tell you to sign up for a pricey monthly subscription or purchase $50 worth of groceries. By buying and completing the offer, the person luring you with the generator makes money and, in most cases, you earn nothing. And, even if you do earn money, there is no point because you’re spending more money than you’re earning.
Also, why would you “choose” how much money you want? Doesn’t everyone want to earn as much money as they possibly can? Lastly, PayPal doesn’t have a place to redeem your code, so why would this generator show you a “code” in order to redeem PayPal money? SCAM.
What Can I Do Instead?
If you’d like to earn legit PayPal money, the best recommendation I have for you is to either take online surveys or find online jobs you can work at. There are many websites where you can start taking surveys or working from home. Here are some articles to help you get started:
- Learn ways you can make money online as a teen.
- Find the best ways to work from home online.
- Check out 20+ good online survey sites.
Many of these work-from-home opportunities have the ability to cash out your earnings into free legit PayPal money.
2. Free gift cards
How would you like to have a free gift card code generator for Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Walmart, Roblox, you name it! As it turns out, there seems to be a way to get free gift cards! The question is: does it work?
How Does It Work?
Very similar to the PayPal free money scheme, except instead of free PayPal money, you can have free gift card codes generated for you. The site “generates” a gift card code for you and then you need to complete an offer by paying out of your own pocket in order to earn the “free” gift card. Again, it’s a lure to tempt you to spend and, ultimately, the scammer makes more money off of you.
When these scammers set up websites like these, what’s funny is that they never take into consideration the number of digits in the different gift card codes. One may have 12 digits, another may have 9, and another may have 18. But, in every gift card code generator that I’ve seen, the code is 16 digits split up into four parts. Not every code follows the same pattern. Now you see why it’s a SCAM?
What Can I Do Instead?
Earning gift cards is actually easier than you think. You can actually redeem legit free gift cards by completing online surveys! When I started taking online surveys, I earned my first $10 and redeemed it as an Amazon gift card code. I didn’t even have a bank account at the time, so I was able to purchase a few trinkets from Amazon essentially for free, all because I took online surveys.
You too can take online surveys and redeem awesome gift cards. My favorite online survey website is ySense, where they have a LOT of gift card choices to choose from! You might also want to check out my ySense review and see how cool this site is. If you’d like other ideas for the best online survey sites, I’ve made an article for that.
3. Captcha jobs
FYI, a captcha is a security feature on a website where you need to prove that you are a human being and not an automated robot. This was originally done by typing out the letters or numbers that are hidden inside an image.
Now, this is a scam I have almost fallen victim to. There are certain captcha and data entry jobs that claim you can earn money by typing very simple words or characters. This is an easy scam to fall for, so I want you to know that, if you see a site saying you can make money completing captchas, stay away. I was part of a “captcha job” and now let me share my experience with it.
How Does It Work?
Basically, the concept is simple: do a captcha and earn a few cents for doing it. That means, if you do 100 captchas, you can earn around $3, right? Well, the problem is, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
I was part of a captcha job site called Captcha Club. After creating a Captcha Club account, I was able to complete captchas and earn money. But then, after spending an evening doing captchas, I was stopped with a daily limit. According to the site, the limit is 100 captchas per day. That basically means you can only earn up to $3 per day. If someone didn’t want the daily limit, they would have to pay for a subscription package! Outrageous.
If you think things couldn’t get any worse, think again! When you do accumulate money in your account and you want to withdraw it, you need to pay a one-time payment of $50! Basically, you pay money to redeem money you earned. Absolutely absurd. And it also makes you wonder: if you give them their money, will they even withdraw your earnings? Not very promising if you ask me.
To this day, the Captcha Club site was revamped and so the account I made, along with the money in it, is basically no more. Now, when I try to access links on Captcha Club, my browser always alerts me that it could be malicious. Why do you think my browser alerted me? It must be a SCAM.
What Can I Do Instead?
While I’m afraid there are no websites out there where you can legitly make money filling out captchas, there are certain websites that have micro-jobs. These are very simple jobs that you can accomplish for other companies, such as tracing shapes, finding items inside of a picture, describing what you’re seeing inside a picture, etc.
Remotasks, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and Microworkers.com are a few websites where you can start working on micro-jobs to earn a little bit of extra money.
If you’re interested in writing down stuff to make money, you might want to consider online transcription. I have ideas for good online transcription sites where you can get started. Or, if you’d like to write about a topic you enjoy and make money that way, I recommend you start a blog and make money passively.
4. “Take Surveys for Cash”
This is a particular paid website that has always puzzled me from the moment I first knew about it. While I have never paid to use “Take Surveys for Cash” before, I think I already know this is not going to be as great as it seems.
How Does It Work?
The website TakeSurveysforCash.com is a pay-to-use website that claims to show you how you can make upwards of hundreds of dollars taking online surveys. Obviously, online surveys are a legit way to earn some extra money on the Internet, but the problem here is that the product claims to have secrets where you can earn $3500 per month just by taking surveys (doing the math, that would be at least $100 per day!)
I don’t see how this one website, in particular, would have the ability to show you surveys that would allow you to make at least $100 per day. Companies pay you fairly for taking their surveys, so I can’t understand how or why a company would be willing to pay you more than $10 per survey. Not only that, but a high-paying survey can take hours to complete.
If you’re still not convinced, I’ve seen people giving bad reviews of this website, where many of them said that the website never gave them the secrets that they paid to learn. Even if the website did help them, those people who paid would not go on to earn $100 per day online just from surveys. The fishy nature of this website convinces me to believe it’s a SCAM.
What Can I Do Instead?
The good news is that online surveys are real and you can actually make money from them, but nowhere near what this website claims you can make. However, if you commit yourself to the surveys every single day, you might be able to easily earn $10 per day.
I have a few high-paying survey websites that you might be interested in checking out. My number-one recommendation is ySense. It’s a great site that always has surveys for you to take and can help you earn a good chunk of extra money. If you’d like, you can check out my in-depth ySense review.
Finally, if you’re really looking to make at least $100 per day online, here are some ideas to consider:
- Becoming a freelancer
- Selling stuff in your own online store
- Doing affiliate marketing
- Starting your own money-making blog
5. Crack the egg
I think this is one of the most ridiculous work-from-home scams ever, even though I did attempt to use this kind of app in the past, out of sheer curiosity. The app has a very simple yet tedious concept: in order to make money or claim free rewards, you need to “crack the egg” one million times!
How Does It Work?
“Crack the egg” apps are what I like to call those apps that claim you can get free PayPal money or gift cards by simply tapping on something inside the app for a ridiculously huge number of times (usually 1 million times). But, if you think about it, why would anyone in their right mind pay you to tap inside the app an outrageous number of times?
When I didn’t know any better, I gave one of these “crack the egg” apps a try. And, to save me time and stress, I used an app that could tap repeatedly on the screen automatically just to see what would happen. It took hours but the auto tapping app eventually gave the app 1 million taps. At that point, it asked for my email so they could send the free PayPal money, so I put my email in. The app claimed I would get something in my email inbox in a matter of days. But, to my dismay, it NEVER came. So all I can say is SCAM.
What Can I Do Instead?
If you’re trying to find a way to make money just by tapping, I’m sorry, but no one would want to pay anybody anything just for tapping an X number of times. However, you can legitly earn money by doing micro-jobs.
As I said earlier, these are very simple jobs that you can accomplish for other companies, such as tracing shapes, finding items inside of a picture, describing what you’re seeing inside a picture, etc.
Remotasks, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and Microworkers.com are a few websites where you can start working on micro-jobs to earn a little bit of extra money.
Conclusion
So that’ll do it for my list of five common online work-from-home scams and exposing their ugly truth. I hope you enjoyed this article just as much as I did making it and hope this helped you better understand what online work-from-home scams actually look like.
And if you’d like to see how you can figure out if a work-from-home opportunity is legit or a scam, be sure to read my article on how to detect online scams.
Now go out there, enjoy making money online from home, but always keep an eye out for those sneaky scams!