Many women have decided to join the "work at home mom" bandwagon. Its little surprise, considering the number of work at home moms making thousands of dollars from their homes, that more women dont take advantage of this burgeoning opportunity.

But wait - before jumping into this growing field it is important to take note of all the things needed in order to keep a home based business honest, legitimate, and trustworthy. There are many scams out there and that makes it hard to know how to go about finding one that is not a scam. There are some important factors to consider before leaping blindly into anything.

Don't allow the scams to induce irrational fear. There are valid opportunities to be had. Being a work at home mom has benefits worth sifting through the scams for those opportunities. Learning to research these opportunities and the companies will provide protection from scammers. Research and knowledge are the best defense for this danger.

The first thing must be done before deciding to become a work at home mom is to thoroughly research the opportunity and the company. Here are some places that can be checked to do research when considering a work at home career.

* http://BBB.org - the Better Business Bureau can be contacted by the victims of scams.

* http://Fraud.org - This is the Web site for the National Fraud Information Center. It is as good a place as any to research whether an opportunity is legitimate.

There are other Internet resources where more can be learned about scams. Research on opportunities for work at home moms can be conducted on NewsGroups as well. It is very common to find information about people who has been hurt by a work at home business scam on a forum posting. These forums include but are not exclusive to the following:

* http://Groups.Yahoo.com

* http://Groups.Google.com

There are yet more ways to protect against those scams that specifically target work at home moms. Some Web sites offer practical tips to avoid scams and information about the inner workings of them. These sites are:

* http://WorldWideScam.com - WorldWideScam offers an entertaining look into some of the more outrageous scams today.

* http://ScamBusters.com - Scam Busters works to protect people and help them protect themselves from scams happening on the Internet.

* http://USPS.com/postalinspectors/ - The United States Postal Service offers several Web pages that provides information about scams, including those that specifically target work at home moms such as multi-level marketing schemes.

William Jones writes for several web sites, on home and family topics.

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