Of late there has been a surge of mails in my yahoo bulk mail folder and many of them were related to the Rebate Processor Jobs. The first impression from such mails and related websites is that, it is a great work from home option - more like an extended data entry program where the data entry is restricted to processing rebates from home. i.e. Pick the rebate data records one by one, fill out the rebate value and submit to the customer data, make up to $15 for that much work! Sounds ridiculously simple right?

If you take a detail look into such sites, you will realize that there is a sign up fee ($30 to $40 usually) involved to become the so-called ‘rebate processor’. The reality is that what they advertise is not exactly what you will be getting. These sites are nothing but affiliate networks. They will sign you up and will be training you to sell certain products via your websites where the buyers of those products will be offered certain rebates. You will get your commission on these rebate sales and they call the whole thing ‘rebate processing’!

There is definitely some business opportunity underneath these names and hence they are not exactly scams. But again, you are not getting what they are advertising and hence it is nothing but a misleading campaign (glorified term for scam, may be). Also there are many good affiliate networks available on the net that are absolutely free of cost in terms of sign up. So these people are essentially milking your money for the training program that they are giving on affiliate nets.

As a thumb rule, any work-from-home job aspirant should be looking for jobs that do not involve upfront investment or deposit. There are many work-from-home opportunities where there is no sign up fee requirements. Even if you make a sign up fee or refundable deposit amount for certain authentic jobs such as data entry, transcription of copy editing, make sure that you are working with well known organizations and recruiters. But never ever end up paying money to become an affiliate!

So next time you see the misleading ‘Rebate Processor Jobs’ somewhere on the web, be careful!