One of the first things you notice when visiting a site is it's design/appearance. Well established businesses have unique, clean professional looking sites, while the more questionable companies tend to look like they are either from the 90s, or assault your sense with many colors and use clipart for images.

Now it is possible that the person offer the advice/information is not very computer savvy so this is not a good sign to wether a site is a scam or not. I would hope that someone who's advice includes starting websites would have a clean, well organized site, otherwise it just looks like they are lying, or just managed to luck out.

Let us take the FlowIncome.com website for example; this site is clean, simple and easy to navigate. The menu is easy to find at the top and lists all the available sections. The site is also easy to navigate and has bold headings for each section for easier reading and skimming. I also try to write to the point and try my best not to confuse or mislead you.

Now I am looking at a good example of a shady site, though I do not want to mention the url as I want to keep this 'friendly'. This site has huge lettering, all the text looks bolded, many clipart pictures of american currency, side menu looks like old windows style buttons, and they make use of a lot of colors when highlighting text.

This may not be as apparent to some, but the domain name can make a site look more or less professional. Most professional websites have short domain names so you can easily remeber them, write them down, or tell a friend. Some less professional websites will contain a whole phrase in their domain name. For instance, a domain name such as work-from-home-making-lots-of-money-for-little-work.com is shady, but FlowIncome.com is not. (I did register the first example and pointed it to this site incase someone thought it could be used as free advertising)

Another sign of a shady site is when they have many copies of the site, but with different names, all selling the same thing. This may be harder to notice, as you may not be lucky enough to find the other copies.

After noticing those things, I tend to start reading the site to see what they are offering, and while reading, I try to answer these questions (and in the next section, I will answer these same questions, but for this site):

• What are they selling exactly? (real hard to impossible to answer on the more shaddy sites)
• Are they charging for their service and how much?
• Why are they sharing this information with everyone if it is just so great?!
• What risk is involved?
• Is what they claim too good to be true?
• Why isn't everyone doing this?

Here is an example/typical answers I end up with when looking at a scam site:

• What are they selling exactly? (real hard to impossible to answer on the more shaddy sites)
  Information/connections to a product I can resell (maybe resell this exact information?)
  
  
• Are they charging for their service and how much?
  Yes they are, anywhere from $19.95-$99.95 (can vary more)
  
  
• Why are they sharing this information with everyone if it is just so great?!
  The idea really is not that great, but they make alot more money selling it to you.
  
  
• What risk is involved?
  The initial investment and possibly hidden charges later on.
  
  
• Is what they claim too good to be true?
  YES!
  
  
• Why isn't everyone doing this?
  They know or have a feeling it is a scam.

When still in doubt wether it is a scam, why not Google It!, check some newsgroups for posts, or you can also check the Better Business Bureau (BBB). When checking Google or newsgroups, search for the name of the site, business name and/or the domain name without the '.com' part.

Here are the results on Google for the search term: FlowIncome

Lastly, there is no such thing as making money for doing nothing to begin with. For instance, I will be trying to make money off this site, and I had to write all the content and information.

Please note, even though I have found scams that advertised the following, that does not mean that everything in that field has to be a scam.

• Stuffing envelopes
  Why don't they just hire people for minimum wage to do this then and keep the extra profits? Or do they want you to pay for the envelopes and stamps? Do they include these fees in the amount you could earn?
  
  
• Data Entry for medical businesses requiring no training
  Would these businesses really trust a stranger with sensitive data? If so, tell me which so I don't go to that doctor or hospital.
  
  
• Vending Machiness
  Probably require you to buy their vending machine, and really, how much money can you make from 25cent candies? How often do you buy peanuts from one? Maybe it is a lot harder than they make it out to be?
  
  
• Reselling trinkets or other misc products
  If the product is so great and sells easily, why isn't a chain of stores like Walmart not just buying truckloads? If they are why do they need you and how can you really compete without a large start up capital.
  
  
• Selling a book on how to resell the same book your reading
  Obviously they would not tell you this, I am just trying to be funny.

Here are some articles I found interesting on the internet for those who want to read further:

• Federal Trade Commission: Work-at-Home Schemes

Here are those same sections again, remeber: you do not have to read them in order.

• Introduction / Homepage
• About the author (me) / Background information
• Things to look out for when looking for a work-at-home job
• Legitimate 'work-at-home' jobs
• How this site will attempt to make money (Business Plan)
• Forums