It seems like every time you go online, someone tries to sell you on the idea of making fast, easy money. You see ads promising you can “get paid $300 today for your opinion” or “earn $10,000 a month working from your computer.” A friend on Facebook keeps raving about her new home-based business. After a while, you can’t help wondering: Are you missing out on a good thing?

The short answer: probably not. There are ways to make real money working from home, but the operative word is “working.” If there were really a legal way to make big bucks for a trivial amount of effort, everyone would be doing it.

Some so-called money-making schemes aren’t worth your time because you can hardly make any money doing them. Others cost so much for materials you’ll almost certainly end up spending more than you earn. And the few that offer a chance to make real money are either ethically questionable, illegitimate, or just plain illegal.

If you still think you’ve found a money-making scheme that truly can’t miss, check first to make sure it isn’t one of these. All of them sound good at first blush, but they just don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Money Making Schemes You Should Avoid

1. Paid Amazon Reviews

Amazon is the biggest marketplace in the world and the easiest way for a company with a new product to get it into the hands of as many consumers as possible. And since Amazon shoppers rely heavily on reviews to decide which products to buy, these companies want to see their products get as many 5-star reviews as possible.

One way to achieve this is to make a product so fantastic everyone who tries it wants to give it 5 stars. But superior products take time to develop, and they’re often costly to make. So some manufacturers get their 5-star reviews the easy way: They pay for them.

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In 2018, NPR spoke with people all over the country who write Amazon reviews for money. These paid reviewers congregate in online groups using technology like Facebook, Reddit, and Slack. Sellers who want to buy reviews seek out these reviewers and give them detailed instructions on how to buy and review the product without triggering any of the algorithms Amazon has set up to catch fake reviews.

As soon as a fake review goes live, the seller sends the reviewer a payment that covers the cost of the purchase plus a commission of a few dollars. One interviewee says he makes around $200 a month.

Why It’s a Bad Idea

The most obvious problem with fake reviews is that they’re unethical. Their whole purpose is to dupe shoppers into spending their hard-earned cash on shoddy merchandise. Fake reviews have become so common on Amazon that even savvy shoppers have a hard time telling genuinely stellar products from the ones that have paid for their high ratings. There are even websites and apps whose sole purpose is to sift through online reviews and identify the fakes, such as FakeSpot and ReviewMeta.

If the ethical concerns aren’t enough to sway you, note that posting fake reviews is also a violation of Amazon’s community guidelines. If you get caught, the company can take down your reviews or even suspend your Amazon account. In 2015, The Guardian reports, Amazon went so far as to file a lawsuit against more than 1,000 users it claimed had posted fake reviews.

A Better Idea

There is one legitimate way to get paid (in merchandise, not cash) for Amazon reviews. Amazon’s Vine Program provides free products to a select group of trusted reviewers they call “Vine Voices” in exchange for their honest, unbiased reviews of the products.

However, this program is invitation-only, so you can’t just sign up to participate. The best way to get selected as a Vine reviewer is to write lots of honest, detailed Amazon reviews other users find helpful. Amazon says reviewers who become known as experts on specific types of products are most likely to be invited to join Vine.

2. Online Surveys

All sorts of companies have a stake in measuring public opinion. Companies developing products and services want to know what consumers will buy. Political organizations want to know how voters feel about a candidate or an issue. Many organizations want to know how the public perceives them and what, if anything, they need to change.

For many of these companies, the easiest and cheapest way to answer these questions is through online surveys. Sites like Survey Junkie, InboxDollars, E-Poll Surveys, MyPoints, and OneOpinion all invite users to submit their opinions in exchange for points, which they can save up and cash in for money or other rewards.

Why It’s a Bad Idea

If you enjoy taking surveys, they can be a good way to pass the time and pick up a little cash while waiting for a bus. But if you’re looking at this hobby as a serious way to make money, keep looking.

In most cases, the points you earn for each survey you complete are worth less than a dollar. Given the time they take, your hourly wage for filling out these surveys works out to far less than the minimum wage. Writer Elyssa Kirkham, who tested out several survey sites for Student Loan Hero, reports that her average earnings came to only $1.18 per hour.

Better Ideas

You can earn more money for your opinion by taking part in focus groups, either in person or online. Through these groups, you can get paid to taste different foods, comment on a TV show, or give your opinion of several different product package designs. In January 2019, Find Focus Groups founder Danny DiGiovanni told Part-Time Money that most focus groups take about an hour and pay $75 to $100.

Online panels can be even easier because you don’t have to leave home to participate in them. The pay rate for online panels listed at Find Focus Groups is roughly the same as for in-person focus groups. You can find opportunities to take part in either type of group on DiGiovanni’s site or Craigslist or by doing an Internet search.

3. Multilevel Marketing

Multilevel marketing schemes, or MLMs, are theoretically in the business of selling products — anything from vitamins to cleaning products to cosmetics. However, instead of opening stores or selling their products online, these companies recruit members of the public to sell their goods by hosting sales “parties” at home or even going door to door. If a friend of yours has ever cornered you at a gathering and tried to persuade you to buy some life-changing nutritional supplement, chances are they were working for one of these companies. Examples of MLMs include Amway (home care), LuLaRoe (clothing), Mary Kay (cosmetics), and Pampered Chef (kitchen tools).

To get as many people as possible to sell their products, these companies give their sellers a bonus for recruiting other sellers. And it’s not just a one-time payment. When you recruit a new salesperson, you earn a percentage of all that person’s sales for life. Better yet, you earn a percentage of all the sales from all the sellers they recruit as well.

Do the math, and it quickly becomes clear that the real money in this gig comes not from selling products, but from recruiting other people to sell products. And if you’re lucky enough to get in early and bring in as many other sellers as possible, it can be incredibly lucrative. For instance, the skin care MLM NuSkin claims people at its top sales tier, “Blue Diamond,” earned an average of $451,152 from commissions in 2018.

Why It’s a Bad Idea

Technically, MLMs are not the same thing as illegal pyramid schemes because these companies do have real products to sell. However, they have the same fundamental problem as pyramid schemes: Only those at or near the top make real money. Many rank-and-file sellers invest lots of money and time and get practically nothing for their efforts. A 2011 FTC report found more than 99% of those who participate in MLMs lose money.

The ugly truth is most MLMs make money not from selling to the public, but from selling their products to their own salespeople. The sellers pay special “member rates,” which are typically higher than the prices they’d pay for similar goods at the store, and store them in their own homes, then sell them at still more overpriced rates to the public. Some companies charge hefty sign-up fees to become a salesperson or require large upfront purchases of products. Others bleed their salespeople slowly but steadily through ongoing subscription fees.

However, the FTC report concludes that even if an MLM doesn’t charge its sellers any money, its business model is still fundamentally flawed. It assumes there’s an unlimited pool of new customers just waiting for the company’s products. That means new salespeople can keep coming on board and recruiting their friends, and all of them will be able to sell just as much as the people who recruited them.

But in the real world, this kind of infinite market doesn’t exist. Say your friend, who has been selling LuLaRoe clothes to all her friends for months, signs you up to do the same. The problem is that many of your friends are also her friends, and all of them have closets full of LuLaRoe clothing already. The market surrounding you is tapped, and there’s no way for you to earn money.

Jon Taylor, the author of the FTC report, talks at length about his personal experience selling for NuSkin as a young man. He bought lots of NuSkin products to give out as samples, talked them up to everyone he met, and aggressively recruited new salespeople. Within a year, he had worked his way up to the top 1% of all sellers in the company — and he was still losing over $1,200 per month.

Better Ideas

The FTC report makes a point of distinguishing between MLMs and “legitimate direct selling programs.” In direct sales, companies hire people to sell their products directly to the public — and then the companies pay them for it. Sellers don’t have to recruit other sellers to make money, and they don’t have to maintain a large inventory that they buy with their own money. It takes work to make serious money through direct sales, but it’s possible.

One example of a legitimate direct sales company is the clothing brand Abby+Anna. Anyone in the U.S. or Canada can sign up to be one of the company’s “Style Advisors,” selling their clothes online for a 20% commission. You can also apply to be a reseller, buying Abby+Anna clothes in bulk and selling them at a marked-up price.

Taylor has also written a report called “1,357 Ways to Make More Money than in MLM.” You need a subscription to Scribd to read the full report, but the preview mentions numerous small-business opportunities that are “fairly easy to get into, even from home.” These options include computer services, Internet-based sales, home repair and maintenance, making and selling craft items, and selling insurance. All these jobs require hard work and hustle, but they have a much better chance of paying off than an MLM.

4. Day Trading

The conventional way to invest in stocks is to choose a stock that looks like a good value, buy it, and hold on to it as the price goes up. When you think it’s starting to get too high and the stock is no longer a good value, you sell it and pocket your profit. And in the meantime, you make money by collecting any dividends the stock pays.

Day traders don’t do that. Instead, they try to take advantage of sudden changes in the market to turn a quick profit. They buy a stock that seems to be on an upward trend, then sell it for a higher price later that same day. Or they watch for the moment when a stock’s value dips below the average, quickly buy it, and resell it as soon as the price returns to normal. Or at least, that’s the theory.

Why It’s a Bad Idea

The problem is that predicting accurately which way a given stock is going to move — not just over the long term, but within hours — takes experience and expert knowledge. It also requires nerves of steel since the smallest error in timing can cost you all your profit on a trade and then some. In short, if you’re just an amateur trying to make a quick buck buying stocks online, day trading is an excellent way to lose your shirt.

Better Ideas

It is possible to make real money in the stock market without being an expert. You just can’t expect to do it overnight. The easiest way to achieve financial independence this way is to sign up for a broker like Ally Invest and build a “lazy” portfolio of low-cost index funds or exchange-traded funds, then invest a fixed amount in that portfolio each month. With this strategy, you automatically buy more shares of your chosen funds when their price is low and fewer when their price is high.

Then, simply sit tight and hold onto your shares, paying no attention to the short-term ups and downs of the market. The longer you hold them, the better your return is likely to be.

If you need help selecting appropriate funds for your portfolio, a robo-advisor like Betterment or Wealthfront can help. These automated services use computer algorithms to pick out investments that fit your investing goals and risk tolerance. They can rebalance your portfolio as needed to keep it in line with your goals and even help you minimize your tax liability. And they do it all for less than you’d pay a human financial advisor.

5. Online Gambling

Casinos have always lured people in with the promise of easy money. In theory, you can go in with a quarter in your pocket, put it in a slot machine, win a $50 jackpot, put all that money on 22 at the roulette table, and walk out 15 minutes later with $1,750. Of course, the odds of a win like this are incredibly small, but people still spend a lot each year trying to beat them. Worldwide, casinos raked in an estimated $110 billion in 2017, according to Statista.

Online gambling has all the same allure, but with the added perk of 24/7 availability. At an online casino, you can gamble at any hour of the day or night without even having to leave your bedroom. It’s no wonder Statista estimated the size of the online gambling market worldwide at nearly $46 billion in 2019 — and estimated it would reach more than twice that by 2024.

Why It’s a Bad Idea

Online gambling has the same problem as all other forms of gambling: The odds are stacked heavily against you. A lucky few gamblers come out of a casino with more money than they had going in, but most of them leave poorer. The Cost of Play Chart from the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba estimates that the average cost of playing casino games ranges from $2.52 to $165 per hour, depending on the game and the stakes. And the fact that online casinos are always open makes it even easier to spend a lot of hours playing and lose a lot of money fast.

Gambling can also be addictive. According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, an estimated 1% of all American adults are “pathological” gamblers — people who are unable to control their betting behavior. Another 2% to 3% are “problem” gamblers, whose gambling negatively impacts their lives. And because online gaming is constantly available, it’s even easier to get hooked on than games you can only play when you happen to be in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

Better Ideas

There are no easy ways to make the kind of money you could with a single lucky spin of the roulette wheel. However, there are ways to make money at home that don’t require luck. And some of them are available online 24/7, just like online gambling, so you can easily fit them into your schedule outside your regular job.