Whether you are looking for a way to stay home with your children or trying to find a way to make some extra cash, making money online can be a wonderful thing. It can also be dangerous to your finances. Any time you are about to embark on some type of online money making plan, make sure you know what you are getting into before you start.
Gambling
Everyone knows, or should know, how gambling works. The house always wins. If you are playing games against other players, you may be able to get ahead at times, but unless you are very good or very lucky, you will not be able to make a living at it. Online bingo may seem harmless enough, but it is also very addicting. You do not realize how much you are spending when you just keep buying cards to play. It is only a few dollars, how can it hurt? It all adds up. If you like to play poker or the slots or online bingo, do it as a form of entertainment, do not try to turn it into your livelihood.
Demos and Free Trials
You see the offers all the time, you sign up for a free trial for something and only pay the shipping. Then, you get a bunch of other people to take the free offer, and you get a cash prize or some big gift you can then sell. The danger here is getting too many trials and gifts to keep track of when you need to cancel. All these trials will continue to ship you product, and charge your credit card, until you cancel. Many times it takes a few months and a lot of money before you actually get cancelled. You may have gotten six people to sign up under you and gotten $250 for it, but you spent more than that by the time you were able to stop the shipments.
Get Rich Quick Schemes
It is amazing how many people have a website that tells you how you can make a lot of money every month and never have to do anything but send a fee to them and then start up your own website. In many cases, you will end up sending in the money to get started and then have to pay more each month to be a part of the group, pay more money to get leads, and then pay more money to have your own website. Once you have paid all this money, you may get a few people who buy into it from you but in most cases, they are going to cancel before the guarantee time is up and you will have to send them back their money.
Surveys
There are some very good survey sites out there that will pay you for every survey you complete. Most survey sites are not that good though. You will spend a lot of time clicking buttons and answering questions to receive points. These points can be spent on gifts from the site. While they might be very nice gifts, they are not worth all the time you spent to get them. Another trick some sites have is to not allow you to take out your money until you reach a pretty high amount and have a number of people you recommended reaching a specific amount too. You can spend a lot of time and get nowhere with this type of survey payment plan.
Receiving and Sending Money
While this is most often done through the mail, there are some people trying to get you to do it with your PayPal account or bank account online. Never accept money from someone looking for you to transfer it elsewhere and keep a percentage as your pay. You will end up facing criminal charges when the money sent to you is found to be obtained illegally.
In general, if you want to make money online, go for it but plan on spending a lot of time and hard work at it. It can be great to be at home for your children when they need you, but you need to teach them that just because you are home does not mean you can spend all your time doing for them. If an opportunity sounds too good to be true, it almost always is, check it out with work from home forums or the BBB before you get involved.
