One of first things you should do is go through site of program you are interested in and determine who is running it, where they are located and what their contact information is. Know who you are dealing with. If you can't find any of that, that should bring up a red flag!

If you were referred to program by someone, email them or call them and find out what they know about program, who runs it, how long they have been involved and are they making money. If they can't give answers, ask them for their sponsor's name and email. Maybe they have information from being able to access program's member pages, from a welcome email they received upon joining or maybe from checks/statements that they might have received. If they don't have any information or are reluctant to tell you, they may be promoting it in dark.

If they have some company information, i.e., telephone number, address or email addresses, contact company and ask questions about how many people they have in program, how long they have been in operation, do they have any business references you could talk to and whatever else you want to ask. If you email them and they don't get back to you timely or at all, pop up another red flag. This may be an indication of type support you are going to get.

If you can't find any information on them through above avenues and you still want to do some research take URL (web site address) i.e., www.theirname.com and go to one of major search engines and enter address (theirname.com) or name of company.

The other day I searched on a company that has been around for a number of years. I entered name of company in quotes at Iwon.com and got a list of almost 25,000 sites. By doing this you can then check out some of sites that you find for contact information or at least find other members who you could contact.

We're prime targets. We know our way around a computer keyboard, and we love to spend time with our kids, so we're marked for every home-business opportunity in book.

And it's true: a lot of us would love nothing more than to make money and stay at home. That's why even though we know we can smell a rat a mile away, we're sometimes tempted...even by those less-than-reputable (and less-than-ethical) companies that rely on SPAM to get word out.

Here are a few tips to avoiding scams and finding right home-based business opportunity for you.

IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE... It probably is. If you find an opportunity for which you can make a lot of money without spending any time working, move on to next opportunity.

VAGUE HEADLINES "Tammy made $4,000 in her first month. So can you." First of all, who is Tammy? Testimonials that are difficult to verify may not be legitimate. If ad only gives first names and photographs of people holding scads of cash, be careful. If Tammy is a legitimate home-working entrepreneur, it's possible that she made that $4,000 in her first month...and significantly less after that time period.