The reading level for this article is All Levels

So, you’re doing your due diligence on a home-business opportunity.  You go to Google, type in the name of the company and — lo, and behold — you find a one-stop shop where ALL the business opportunities are being reviewed!

How convenient!

You visit the page and find all kinds of information.  They’ve listed dozens of companies, online gurus, offline gurus, the “not recommended” programs, seminar reviews, real estate programs and more.  These people have really put in alot of work!

Or have they?

Careful reading and research will reveal these “home business critics” for what they are:  just another slick method of advertising their OWN products, resources and opportunities.  The idea is that you’ll go to the Internet looking for “XYZ International” and find a “critique” of the company.  The “critic” will tell you how they have researched XYZ and, if you don’t want to get burned, you’d best give this one a pass.

After reading several of these reviews, a pattern starts to emerge:  the critic doesn’t recommend ANY of the businesses you’re reading about.  Every once in a while, they’ll give a favorable review to a particular book or a particular author….but never to a business opportunity.  Curious.

So, you begin thinking “Well, this ‘critic’ has nothing good to say about any of these businesses.  I wonder if there are any good ones out there?”….

…and then you see it:  at the bottom of every “review” of a business, product or opportunity is a prominently displayed link that says “Click Here To See How I Make My Money”. 

And, in seconds you’re swept along to a standard affiliate page where the “critic” turns out to be nothing more than a rep for a company that’s competing with all the people they just criticized on the previous page. 

That’s right:  the entire “home business critic website” is in place for the sole purpose of portraying themselves as a trusted expert, gaining your confidence and then presenting you with a product of dubious origins about making money from your kitchen table, how you can market on the Internet with ease or the “deluxe course” which will set you back almost $700.

I’ll tell you candidly how I discovered these types of pages:  I got curious who all these “experts” were when — after 10+ years of earning a fulltime income from home — I’d never heard of any of them!  So, I surfed around their pages and discovered that my own company was being featured!  The author talked about how he didn’t understand the company, wasn’t comfortable with the presentation, joined anyway (!), but eventually discovered it wasn’t for him.

What kind of a “home business critic” would join a company they didn’t understand?  What would motivate a person to create a “critic” website where dozens of legitimate companies are disparaged — companies that have produced many six-figure income earners  — and then offer a product and company that’s better than ALL of the ones they criticized?

I’m sure it’s as transparent to you as it is to me.  For less than $50, anyone in the world can host a website on their own domain and tell you anything they want.  But it doesn’t necessarily make it true.

Moral of the story:  Marketing and truth aren’t necessarily the same thing.  The definition of a “critic” implies that the opinion you’re getting is objective and truthful. 
Beware of home business “critics” who can’t seem to find any good businesses in the industry but their own. 

This Entrepreneurship article was written by Tony Rush on 9/26/2005

Tony Rush is an in-the-trenches, on-the-front-lines, multiple six-figure earning home-based entrepreneur. Through his sites RecruitMorePeople.com and HereIsMyDay.com , Tony assists dozens of people monthly in achieving their financial goals from home.

Tony lives in Alabama with his wife Jessica, two sons and a dachsund named Bentley who doesn’t know he’s a dog.