There is a massive amount of home-based business offers that can be found online, in newspaper ads or magazine advertisements. Some of these work at home-based business opportunities are legitimate and others are not. One way to find out if they are a legitimate business opportunity is to research them well. If in doubt, get in touch with the Better Business Bureau or the Federal Trade Commission. They usually have a list of complaints on these so-called opportunities and do follow up on them.

One of the ever so popular ads in every Sunday paper across the nation is the envelope stuffing opportunity. With today's technology, there is absolutely no need for an individual to hand stuff envelopes. It is just not reality. Most of these ads are responded to by asking the individual for a small investment. What that person receives for their investment is usually instructions to place their own ad and scam the next individual that falls for it. This scam works thousands of times per year. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book, yet we still have people falling into the trap.

Another opportunity that you see mostly in magazine advertisements is the "assembling products opportunity". This one too, has been around for a long time. What typically happens in this "home based opportunity" is that the individual is required to pay a small deposit for their unassembled products. After they complete the assembly of the products they find out that they are on their own to sell the product.

There is another home-based business opportunity out there that is fairly new to the scam world. It claims to pay an individual money to do the paperwork on government tax refunds. This is your first red flag. The government has their own employees doing this called the IRS. After you call a toll free number, a message comes on and asks you to send a small amount of money to cover the cost of shipping and handling to a post office box. This is your second red flag. After you send the money, you never hear from them again and there really is no way to find out who, why or what happened to you shipping and handling money.

For every negative work at home business opportunity out there, there are several legitimate work at home based business opportunities as well. A person just needs to use common sense and good judgment when responding to these home based business opportunity advertisements.