You've no doubt seen the spam emails and websites by now, you know the ones. The ones that go something like this:
"Make millions selling products on eBay with no shipping or handling of product required! You simply list the items, make the sale, and make thousands of dollars while the products sell themselves!"
Sure, you can find a work at home job selling on eBay, but it sure as heck won't happen like that. And you need to be REALLY careful when you do find one. Too many people get you to list items on eBay for them, and once you sell the merchandise, you collect payment. Then you send money to the company/person you're working for, and they ship the items. Right? Not always.
I personally was a victim of this scam because of my naiivety when I first began working from home. My thought process was the same as everyone else's: I can have a work at home job selling on eBay? I don't have to ship anything? Cool! I sold car audio accessories to about twenty unsuspecting people. I collected their money, sent it in minus my cut (which was measley, of course), and waited for the feedback to come rolling in. And it did. After about two weeks, the shipper was saying he shipped the items, but people weren't recieving them. I demanded a full refund from him, but of course that didn't happen. I had only sent in one batch of auction winnings, so I immediately refunded the money and explained the situation to all the people that thought they were getting car audio items. The first ten people had to wait until I came up with the money, but I refunded all of their money, too. Still, my eBay reputation was trashed. I had to close my eBay account and start a new one.
So the next time you see an ad offering a work at home job selling on eBay, make sure that you investigate everything before you sign up or agree to do anything. There are LEGITIMATE wholesalers out there who need help listing items and are willing to pay for it. However, finding them among the scam artists is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
Just be careful. The anonymous nature of the internet makes it a dangerous place to be sometimes, including when it comes to working at home. If you truly want to work at home, you'll invest the time and effort into your job search to make sure you're not getting screwed over or scammed out of your hard earned money.