Envelope Stuffing - the Stuff Scams are Made of

You’ve seen the ads: “Make $1800.00 a month stuffing envelopes!” or “Put simple crafts together, work from home!” They often go on to say that they will pay you a dollar for each craft or envelope you stuff. You only need to pay for the kit to get started (which is typically around thirty dollars). Sounds pretty good if it were true, which is where the problem lies. It isn’t true. Envelope stuffing scams have been here long before the Internet gave them a new way to entice people. They used to run classified ads in newspapers or on the back sections of magazines. The ads haven’t changed, only where they run the ads have.

Typically you pay for a box of supplies to start stuffing envelopes. In most cases what you are putting in is advertising designed to entice more people to stuff envelopes. You pay the postage. It is likely that you don’t get paid a dime unless one of the envelopes you stuffed goes to a person who in turn pays the thirty or so dollars to start their “envelope stuffing” business. So out of hundreds of envelopes sent maybe 1% or less will actually send money to start this kind of business (or more accurately, scheme). So you have sent hundreds of envelopes, paid postage and wasted hours and hours of your time to make one dollar (if you were lucky).

Sometimes, these envelope-stuffing jobs don’t even send you envelopes or stuffing advertisements. They may just send you a box of instructions on how to make money by advertising the same scheme you just bought into. There again, if you follow the instructions, you will be paying advertising costs that may run into hundreds of dollars and have little if any return on your money.

As for assembling crafts or other items from home, it is the same story with a different twist. Some of these are exactly like envelope stuffing schemes. Some actually are just after your initial investment for the cost of the starter box. They tell you that you will be paid a certain amount per item assembled. However if you read closely, it will also say that they will only pay for items that are assembled to their standards. People spend hours assembling items only to find that their items do not meet the standards and therefore, they will not be paid.

Any real company that requires mass production of mailers or assembly items would use a distribution center or mass advertising venue or, for item assembling, a manufacturer. Sending boxes out to random people to assembly items or stuff envelopes would not meet a need for efficient production and distribution. There is no lack of this type of production facility in any city that would require a demand for people to do that type of work from home. Why would they send real production needs out to random people when they can have it done at a guaranteed time and price and distributed all in one place?

Always read the fine print when you see this type of ad. According to the US Postal Service as stated in The Better Business Bureaus publication “Work At Home Schemes”, “The Inspection Service knows of no work-at-home promotion that ever produces income as alleged.” There are real ways to make money working from home but this isn’t one of them.