**Envelope stuffing**

This is a very common home business you see advertised in many places. And it sounds very simple. All you have to do is stuff and mail envelopes. Then sit back and collect your money. And you have to pay anything for materials or to join. But is it really this simple? No!

Yes, you'll receive a bunch of flyers and envelopes to mail. And you'll get mailing labels too. Problems with is home business include:

a) Names and address being rejected, which means you won't collect money on them

b) The company saying you didn't stuff them in time. In other words, you took too long to stuff and mail them, so they won't pay

c) The company saying you didn't stuff them properly. In other words, you folded things the wrong way, dicn't fully seal the envelopes, etc.

So while there are some legitimate offers out there, there are plenty of others that will try to scam you in the ways I've described. So I say to be leery of envelope stuffing!

**Assemble products**

Here's another very common home business opportunity. A company will send you everything you need to assemble their products for sale. So what's the problem?

a) The company may say you didn't follow instructions or specifications (specs)

b) The company may claim you didn't build them well--shoddy work

c) The company may claim you used outside materials to build them, such as other glues, etc.

d) The company may say you didn't pack them properly when shipping and they arrived in poor shape or broken

In other words, they'll find a reason not to pay you! Are there legitimate ones that won't scam you? Yes. But there are plenty of others that will pull stunts like the ones I've described. So once again, beware!

**Secret or mystery shopper**

Another common home business you could start is doing secret shopping. These are people who are paid to pretend they're customers and evaluate the service they received. And yes, many large businesses do use secret shoppers to help evaluate their customer service and identify problems in service.

So what's the problem? Well some will:

a) Make you pay an upfront fee to become a mystery shopper

b) Give you a listing of companies that offer secret shopping for a fee

c) Make you spend your own money, with the promise to reimburse you later. Except, they won't reimburse you the full amount or sometimes not at all!

So beware of companies that make you pay anything upfront. Or those who say to pay a fee to receive a listing of companies hiring mystery shoppers.

**Network marketing**

This is nothing more than MLM or multi-level marketing. They essentially changed the name after the rash of scandals involving MLM companies. But network marketing basically works the exact same way, so I say to consider them one and the same thing.

Here's how it works:

You pay a fee to join and/or buy products or services for resale. But you can make more money by hiring distributors to sell them for you. You collect a percentage of what they make. And those distributors can do the same thing.

So what's the problem? The problem is that everybody is simply reslling the product or service to another salesperson. In other words, there are no real customers who actually use the product or service. They're only bought to entice others into reselling them.

Are there legitimate companies selling through network marketing? Yes. Are they just small companies? No. The fact is that many legitimate large and small network marketing companies do actually have real customers who use their products or services. But there are a whole bunch of others who provide nothing more than constant reselling of their product or service.

So how can you tell who's legit and who isn't? Well you could check with the FTC--the Federal Trade Commission--www.ftc.gov. They have a wealth of information to help you out.

Another thing to be careful of how they advertise. You'll sometimes see them advertised under job hunting sections like sales. And the address will be somebody's house or apartment. You probably won't realize this until you walk in the door.

But does this mean they're not legit? Not necessarily, but many of them will be nothing more than reselling to other salespeople. If you decide to stick around for their sales pitch, then I strongly suggest you not buy or signup for anything right then and there! You can easily check with the FTC to find out if the company they're selling products for is legitimate or shady.