Tips For Researching Work at Home Jobs on Forums

I want to preface this post by saying (and really it goes without saying) that nothing you read on a public forum should ever be taken as gospel! That said, forums can be a very, very valuable resource for researching some of these work at home jobs. Why? Because sometimes you really do need the feedback of others to determine whether or not something is worthwhile. I always browse forums (usually WAHM and Work Place Like Home) before deciding to review an opportunity here because I like to know what others are saying about a particular job and what kind of experiences they had if they’ve done work for a company.

In addition to browsing forums, you should also do Google searches, typing in the name of the company followed by the word “scam” to see what else comes up. It’s also a good idea to check the BBB, Scam.com, and Rip Off Report to see if there are any negative reports. All of those things are very important to do when researching work at home, but this post is going to focus on how to search forums and analyze the feedback you find.

Searching the Forum

This is the easy part. Almost all forums have a “search” feature. Simply type in the name of the company you’re interested in finding out about into the search box and see what comes up. Then, click on as many posts as you can to see what people are saying.

Analyzing the Results

If it’s a popular job, you’re probably going to find pages and pages of posts. If the job isn’t so popular, you might find very little. Carefully read over everything you find. Chances are good that you’ll find happy campers and not-so-happy campers with just about every work at home opportunity. It’s important to note that just because a work at home opportunity has some people complaining does not mean it’s a scam! You have to read why the workers are complaining. If they are unhappy because they don’t like the level of communication or they were treated in an unprofessional manner by the people they work for, that doesn’t equal scam. It might equal a sort of crappy company and maybe not something to bother with, but not a scam.

Red Flags For Scams

Your “scam alert” should go off if you see people talking about not getting paid or actually being charged to work for a company. It’s also important to notice if people are talking about being asked for too much personal information up front before even being hired, like their social security numbers or banking information. But if someone is griping about their boss or the job in general, that doesn’t mean it’s a scam. However, it could mean it’s something you don’t want to bother with depending on how many others are saying the same thing.

Watch Out For Company Defenders

When a company is getting a lot of complaints for whatever reason on a forum, you might occasionally see a few people jump to the defense of the company. Sometimes this is for real and these are people who actually work for the company and had a good experience, but then other times these are people who either actually own the company or are affiliated with it in some way and are desperately trying to clean up their reputation. If an MLM company is getting seriously ragged on, people who are involved in the company or selling that product themselves are usually quick to jump to the defense of the company because they are worried about their downline/sales being damaged.

So How Can You Tell the Difference?

First off, look at how many posts the “company defenders” have made. On most forums, there will be a number somewhere around a person’s user names displaying how many times they’ve posted on the forum in the past. If it looks like this defender has only ever posted once or twice, there’s a very, very good chance that they are actually affiliated with the company in question and have simply made an account for no other reason than to defend that company. If the person has lots of posts under their belt, like up in the hundreds, then this may genuinely just be somebody who really did have a good experience with the company and wants to defend them. But still, you’ve got to check and make sure.

Check the “Defender’s” User Profile

You can click a person’s user name on a forum and read through other threads they’ve responded to and see what other posts they’ve made on that particular forum. I *almost* got tripped up on a work at home opportunity before because I nearly didn’t bother to look through a person’s posts. I saw that they had made hundreds of posts and figured they were telling the truth and maybe this company wasn’t so bad after all. Fortunately, I did check this person’s posts, and I’m glad I did. I won’t go into details on what opportunity this was other than to say it was an MLM opportunity (Multi-Level Marketing), but after checking a “defenders” hundreds and hundreds of posts, I saw that the only thing they had ever posted were advertisements for their “business” — the very one that was the topic of discussion and being ragged on. This person had not ever really participated on the forum other than to either advertise this business opportunity or to defend it. And yes, they had made hundreds of posts advertising the business. They had not participated in any of the discussions on the forum apart from that.

I knew then that this person had an ulterior motive for defending this opportunity and that I should not trust what they said. It was something they were selling and trying to build up a downline for, so of course that’s most likely why they were defending it when everyone else was ragging on it. There were a couple others who also chimed in to defend this company, and a quick search of their posts showed me the same thing — they were very closely affiliated with this company and had not participated at all apart from posts regarding that opportunity.

Determining Legitimate Praise

Again, I want to stress that you really should take everything you read on a public forum with a grain of salt because anyone can log on and say anything they want. However, it’s likely that praise being given to a company is legit if the person praising the company is an active forum participant with hundreds of posts made that are not all about one specific opportunity. If, after reading through the person’s posts, it looks like they have participated in the forum in several different areas, been helpful, and have discussed several different things and would not have anything to gain from defending an opportunity, it’s probably a little safer to assume they’re giving honest feedback.

You should also sort of check the person’s reputation on the forum. If you can tell by looking through their past posts that they are a bit of a trouble-maker or a forum troll, then you might need to seriously disregard their comments. Some people just like to make trouble on the forum for the sake of making trouble. They might decide to praise or put down a work at home company when they see that everyone else is doing the opposite just to get a rise out of people. I honestly have no idea why some people get kicks out of doing things like this, but some do. Maybe they just have too much time on their hands.

To Summarize

Sorry this has gotten so long, but I know that many of you sometimes browse Work Place Like Home and WAHM forums (among others) to help determine a company’s legitimacy. These places can be valuable for this purpose, but you should keep the things I’ve stated above in mind first as well as checking other, more reputable, sites for feedback. I bet most of you already do these things, but just in case you don’t:

• General company complaints do not equal a scam, but might mean you should steer clear anyway depending on how many others are saying the same things
• Claims of not getting paid, being charged to do work/get hired, or being asked for extremely personal info upfront should raise a definite red flag for scammy opportunities
• Always check the number of posts a person has made before you decide to trust what they’re saying
• Take it a step further and read through the person’s past posts just in case they’ve only ever posted about this company in order to defend it

And I cannot stress this last part enough — always trust your gut. No matter what you read on a forum or anywhere else, if something does not feel right to you or makes you uneasy for any reason, just do not apply. You can’t ever be too careful.