If you turn on the T.V, or open up a newspaper you are likely to find an ad for a work at home company. These schemes are on the rise and you can find them almost anywhere, from the telephone pole flyers, to television commercials. These advertisements promise anything from a few bucks made on the side, to instant wealth and quick cash. But one has to ask the obvious question: Do these companies really deliver on their promises?

Caution should be exerted when looking into one of these advertisements. Most of these get rich quick plots, and work from home companies are just con artists looking to scam you out of your money. Most of the time you notice too late what has happened, and that these ads have left out some very important facts. They may have left out the fact that you will have to work many many hours to get the job done, and with out pay sometimes too. Some even charge fees which they do not disclose beforehand in their ads. Lying by omission is how most scams get into the business to begin with.

An unperceived number of work at home companies require their applicants to spend their own money to place newspaper ads, make photocopies, or buy envelopes, paper, stamps, and other supplies or equipment which they will need in order to perform their jobs. Sometimes, these work at home companies may even demand that you pay an additional amount for the instructions or "tutorial" software for training so you will be able to do your job properly. What they fail to say however is that this "training" or "instructions" that they speak of is actually available elsewhere, free of charge. Many consumers who have been deceived by the ads ran by these work at home companies have lost thousands of dollars. What's more, all their time and effort that they invested on the schemes went down the drain.

Some classic schemes to look out for are things like:

Medical Billing: Companies pitch that there is a crisis in health care. The ads will say that in order to save money, doctors are looking for outside people to take care of paper work and billing over the internet. Such a job promises easy case, and lots of it, but what they will fail to mention is that you have to start the business on your own, gathering clients, advertising and generating revenues all on your own.

Envelope Stuffing: Work at home companies will ask you for a fee so that they will be able to send you "instructions" that tell you how to stuff envelopes and make money. But you will later realize that these instructions are actually the same ad you have received that they will tell you to send out in order to draw more people into the scam.