Many online data entry programs are scams designed to get your money.
Affiliate programs are similar to commissioned sales jobs. As an affiliate marketer, you are an independent contractor running your own business. Your job is to advertise products and services; sales made due to your advertising efforts earn you commissions. Unfortunately, there are some shady opportunities advertised online, and a common one is for data entry affiliate programs. Be cautious about paying for these types of programs.
Refunds and Rebates
This data entry scheme involves several variations. In some cases an advertisement claims that for a small start-up fee that covers your materials and training, you will be paid for each rebate you process. According to the FTC, you're not likely to hear from the "employer" once you've paid your start-up fee, and you'll never see anything that resembles a rebate processing request. Another tactic is for foreign companies to ask you to accept payments for them, then forward a percentage of the payment to them and keep the remaining amount as your payment. This type of data processing typically involves the original payment bouncing months after you have sent the company its portion, and your bank account is now liable for the entire amount.
Search Engine Data Entry
This data entry affiliate program scheme wants you to pay a small cost to purchase a book, course or ongoing membership and promises that you will earn money by simply entering data and filling out forms on search engines such as Google and Yahoo! What they neglect to tell you is that you will need to sign up for regular affiliate programs, sign up for advertising accounts with the search engines, and then create sales ads to place on the search engines. They also neglect to tell you that placing these advertisements cost money, and there is no guarantee you will ever earn income from placing the ads. The company does not pay you directly for placing the advertisements -- it simply tells you place your own ads as an affiliate marketer.
Surveys
Online surveys actually exist and are a common analysis tool many big corporations use. Many data entry affiliate programs advertise that you can make money by simply filling out surveys all day -- and that is very misleading. Online survey data entry programs want you to pay an ongoing fee to access their database. In the database they list companies that pay people to take surveys. Payment is sometimes in the form of discounts or coupons, and sometimes in cash. What the data entry companies neglect to mention, however, is that surveys are available to a limited number of targeted people. A parenting survey will not be made available to a single person, for example, and a men's cologne survey is not made available to women. In reality, most people who sign up to these survey sites may only receive survey invitations once or twice each month.
Placing Advertisements
Placing advertisements is similar to the search engine data entry opportunities advertised. This particular approach also frequently involves you signing up to affiliate programs and finding products to promote, but instead of placing paid advertisements on search engines you are instructed to place advertisements on free classified websites, or you are told to write an article or a press release and distribute it in various places online. The data entry company you paid to get started does not pay you anything. You only earn money if you make sales from your affiliate products, just as with standard affiliate programs.
