Are Data Entry Jobs a Scam?

"Data entry jobs await you...make $10,000/day filling out forms and entering data online....spend more time with your kids, fire your boss and type at home..." If you've spent any time online, you've probably seen ads for data entry jobs. What exactly are data entry jobs? Are they scams, or legitimate ways that people can make money?

Having done some research into data entry jobs, and having talked with acquaintances who actually tried data entry, I can tell you that the answer is much more complicated than a simple yes or no.

First of all, data entry is a real business. Many companies advertise their goods and services by having people type ads online. However, when online ads ask you to pay a nominal charge of x amount of dollars for a type-at-home job opportunity, what you are really signing up for is affiliate marketing.

Now, affiliate marketing is not a scam by any stretch- in fact, it's probably the #1 way by which Google makes its money. The scam actually lies in the language used to market affiliate marketing, by calling it "data entry".

Calling affiliate marketing "data entry" is like calling technical support "chatting on the phone". In fact, actual "data entry" is probably the smallest component of real affiliate marketing. The typing at home comes after hours of research into niche markets, optimization of keywords, press release and article writing, and submission to RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites. And of course there is the Web site set-up too. Only after all this is done does one sit down and write the product ad.

To be absolutely clear, affiliate marketing involves the making of commissions off of other people's product sales. The commissions are given because you are doing something to draw potential customers to the product ads. Typically, you drive online traffic to ads by starting Web sites and posting quality content on the Web pages. Interspersed in the pages are the product ads, posted by you. Customers who are interested in your Web content are probably interested in buying the site's products. When they click on an ad that you have posted, you make a share of the profits from the resulting sale.

But data entry ads are deceiving, and advertise only that one can "write a 3 line ad and make $200/hour". Instead of trying to educate the consumer about proper marketing techniques, the data entry scam sites just take money from the gullible, and give back product lists that could just as easily have been obtained online.

Fortunately, Google itself is starting to crack down on these masters of deception, shutting down Web sites and ads that state anything related to "type at home", "home typers wanted", and "data entry work". Still, the ads keep popping up, often under different guises. Just remember, while affiliate marketing is a legitimate business, calling it simple data entry is misleading and a scam.