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Spotting Work From Home Scams

By on November 1, 2011 in Entrepreneurs and Work From Home

Being a work-from-home professional, anything that advertises, discusses, talks about, directs me to or in any way points people towards working from home, I am completely attentive. With that being said, I’m also attentive when it comes to my favorite talk shows promoting said opportunities. Do you know what I’m talking about? I’ll bet you do!

Every morning when I sit down to start work, I listen to the Steve Harvey Morning Show. There are many mornings where I’m more annoyed than anything with their antics. There are also some mornings where I’m inspired and motivated by the advice he gives to the listeners. And then there are some mornings where I cringe when they play this certain commercial advertising the work-from-home opportunity.

Why do I cringe?

Well, for starters, it’s not clear on what the “opportunity” is or what it involves. There’s a lot of hype talk about “working from home,” and “being your own boss,” or “making good money.” Now, I’m all for those things, for sure, but what I’m NOT for is blindly going into something without first knowing what all it entails. I feel very strong about protecting the work at home community because I’ve been a part of it for so long. I want people to be aware, fully aware of what’s going on ‘out there’ as it involves legitimate business opportunities, scams and the like. I’m not insinuating that the Steve Harvey morning show is in any way promoting a scam. But what I am saying is sometimes just because a famous person’s name is on something or because they say that something is good, we tend to take it face value and stop right there. Don’t do that! Let me give you a few quick tips on how to do your due diligence and avoid getting taken:

  1. Research the opportunity. Go online and do a search for the topic or the work from home opportunity. See what people are saying in forums and in social networking circles. Be objective and look at both sides of the equation before making a decision.
  2. Get in contact with people who have actually done the work for the company or know about the opportunity. It’s really not hard to do, especially in this age of social networking awareness. You can connect with someone and get information almost instantly. Do it. You’ll be glad you asked.
  3. Look at the red flags. No company is going to ask you to PAY to work for them. Doesn’t that sound crazy? It’s also a red flag when you can’t readily tell what the job or opportunity is right away. If it’s too evasive, stay away.
  4. Don’t share your information so quickly. You know, when they ask for your email address or cell phone number so they can “send you more information.” This is usually going to be a place where your info. ends up being sold, and then you’ll be harassed by numerous other companies. Trust me, I know about this all too well. That’s another day, another blog post…

On my journey to find work-at-home freedom, I have tried many, MANY things that have resulted in being scammed, fooled, taken and ultimately broke. When you want something bad, you tend to have a naive outlook, hoping that it will work. Don’t be that way. Do your homework. Ask questions. Get references. And as grandma would say, “don’t take any wooden nickels.”

Peace!

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Insights from My LinkedIn Event at the Wright Institute

By on May 9, 2011 in Blogging, Business, Entrepreneurs and Work From Home, facebook, General Interest, LinkedIn, social media

If you ever get the opportunity to attend anything sponsored by the Wright Leadership Institute  don’t ask questions just go and take plenty of cards with you. I went to the Connect to Success with LinkedIn Networks and Training Event at their headquarters in downtown Chicago on Thursday May 5th and received a wealth of information.
 
The evening began with about a half hour of networking before the presentations. Mine actually started in the elevator bay on the way up to the event. I met a good handful of interesting people in that time and in fact that was one of the questions we were asked when the formal meeting began. How many of you met a few new people in the back of the room before the presentations started? That was the key to building our network “hubness”.
 
Dean DeLisle is well known in the social media realm especially on LinkedIn and he gave the first presentation. He is also the social media coach for the Wright Institute. Dean gave great pointers on how to maximize our LinkedIn profiles. His keys points for me were:
 

  • When prioritizing which social media platforms to use LinkedIn should be your first focus. Here’s why. It’s the one that most fully rounded profile of you as a person and professional. From there you can cut and paste details to Facebook, Twitter and any others you belong to. That makes your social media presence consistent throughout.
  • Also search your name online to verify the thoroughness of your profiles. Your social media profiles are always the first to appear on search lists.
  • Use LinkedIn for the 2nd and 3rd degrees of separation. It’s not just 6 degrees of separation as in the popular literature but only 3 the LinkedIn way. Any updates to your profile (information edits, blog post feeds, updates you type in under your profile picture, connections) go to the feeds of your 1st, 2nd and 3rd level connections

On average 4% of your network (Those 1st, 2nd and 3rds mentioned above) sees what you post so the more connections you make the more people will see and will potentially want to connect with you.
 
Here’s an example of LinkedIn hubness showing the primary connections and 2nd and 3rd degree connections that extend from them. Still don’t think it’s important to have a LinkedIn profile? Fill in the gaps in yours and grow your indirect connections (4% of 13 million is 1,690,000) by millions.

Dr. Bob Wright , cofounder of the Wright Leadership Institute gave the second half of the presentation. Cranes Chicago calls him a top executive coach so these tips come from a guy who knows what he’s doing.
Some of Bob’s major pointers for me were:
 

  • One of the New Laws of Networks is that You Must Give to Get. In other words you must be a net giver. Give more than you want. It’s known as the “host strategy”.
  • One of the keys to ultimate success is knowing Network Science. You want to go from being a Node (individual) to a Hub (a major connection source). LinkedIn can help improve your “hubness”.
  • Here’s a question to ask your clients. “What are your five major challenges?” If you want to know how to help them just ask.

There were lots of other good pointers but you’re going to have to check out their upcoming free events and determine what value you can apply from the experience.

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Blogging While Brown 2010 The Business of Blogging

By on July 8, 2010 in Blogging, Entrepreneurs and Work From Home

The subtitle of the Business of Blogging panel was “Beyond Add Networks” and these guys got my juices flowing with their creative ideas on generating online income via methods other than adds and pay-per-click adds.

Donna Maria Coles Johnson of the Indie Business Blog, Nichelle Stephens of Cupcakes Take the Cake and Navarrow Wright of Global Grind shared their expertise with us and I got bunch of useful take aways.

Donna Maria gave us a couple of good tools to consider. Ever wonder where those online surveys come from? Good chance that one of them is SurveyMonkey . Not only does it create surveys though, but the site also generates charts for your survey data so you can get a statistical feel for what your responders think.

If you’re considering podcasting Donna Maria uses CinchCast as her platform. It also has a number of other useful features to help you optimize your account so check it out and install a podcast on your site.

Another of  her suggestions for an extra income stream is one many of us have heard over the years. Blogging for hire. Follow and contact companies on their blog sites and offer your blogging services for their team. Donna Maria’s efforts show that initiative online can pay off just as in the physical world.

Nichelle contributed some great ideas as well. In fact she was representing two enterprises. Her own Cupcakes Take the Cake is about everything cupcakes. If you enjoy home baking or are a lover of deserts you’ll enjoy this site. She also had a table for Pepsi We Inspire which she edits. It’s a site for women to uplift and entertain each other with encouraging expressions. You ladies should definitely look into Pepsi We Inspire.

Two online resources that Nichelle recommended were new to me. Quantcast helps you to identify your audience to improve your marketing efforts. Having trouble nailing down your target demographic? Quantcast is worth looking into.

Another site helps you to compare your site to others. Compete uses a variety of analytics metrics on other web sites to see how your competition is performing. It’s a great competitive intelligence tool.

Nichelle is quite the enterprising lady and I really appreciate the tools she informed us about.

Although Navorrow is best known for the Global Grind blogsite he suggested excercising more technical expertise for profitable blogging. Specifically, create something useful for others. He told us to create technical products that are needed like apps and widgets. Considering all the Facebook games and feed apps that regularly come on the scene this shouldn’t be too difficult an idea for the programmers among us to take to heart.

Navorrow is well respected in online world and if any one knows about tools that work it’s him. His personal consultancy Maximum Leverage Solutions is proof enough of that. He knows the value of providing good tools so all you coders, get those great ideas online and in circulation right away.

I really enjoyed this panel because of the practicality of information given by the presenters. There was something for everyone and no doubt if you’re serious about your blogging and social media pursuits there’s something here for you too. If it’s been in the back of your mind today is a good day to create “top of mind awareness” for yourself and get more serious about the business of blogging.

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