Maybe. Maybe not.

You have seen offers to “make money by typing at home” or doing “data entry” literally all over the internet. They are o­n home business sites, o­n search engine results, and o­n hate sites. You’ve read testimonials about money that has been made, and you’ve read rants about being ripped off. So who is right? How do you know?

Virtually all of the “make money by typing at home” or “data entry” offers feature essentially the same type of work. If you carefully examine their sales landing page, you will see that the forms you will be filling out look very much like the forms you fill out when you place ads o­n the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You will also notice the screenshots of earnings look like Clickbank. There is a good reason for this. If you sign up for these programs you will be submitting ads to the search engines for companies who use Clickbank as a payment processor, and you will be receiving your checks from Clickbank.

The companies who sell this information range from very ethical to rather questionable. Some give you a great deal of training, both written and video, to show you what to do, how to do it, and helpful tips to get you off to a good start. Some offer extras and bonuses so you can diversify. Some offer support.

Some just give you a page to read and that’s about it. You’re kind of o­n your own to make heads or tails out of it.

Your potential for income is sky high, but I do need to advise you that if you decide to try your hand at this, sign up for an e-mail address through Google’s gmail. The reason I say this is many e-mail providers block messages both to and from these companies, which means your won’t be able to get help or a refund or anything else. With gmail, if you put an address into your contacts, gmail will deliver the messages from that address. Many of the cries of “scam” and “fraud” have been because of blocked messages causing people to incorrectly believe their requests were being ignored.

Now some of you may be thinking that you don’t want to get creative and write ads using your own words, talents and abilities. That was not at all what you had in mind when you read the words “make money by typing at home” or “data entry.” You just want somebody to provide you with info that you input. In almost 4 years of working o­n the internet, I have encountered o­nly two (2) such companies. Both of them pay piece work, which means you might make more than minimum wage but not much. They both have a waiting list ranging from several months to a year or more. One of them requires you to qualify by passing a test. Both of them offer work 24/7, but it can be seasonal, which means at times there will not be any work for you to do and during those times you will not make any money. Also, when the work is posted, it is first come, first served, which means others may log in and scoop up all the work. It is possible but not likely that you will be able to just work away all day as long as you want.

So is that “make money by typing at home” or “data entry” offer a scam? Probably not. Is it what you had in mind? Perhaps not, but that does not make it a scam. The sales pages I have seen explain quite clearly what you will be doing. People I have talked to, whether they actually use the program or not, felt they got a good value for the money they spent, just because they learned so much about affiliate marketing from the information they bought. In the end, the final decision is up to you. I hope I have helped you to make an informed decision.