Fraudulent schemes often use the Internet to advertise purported business opportunities that will allow individuals to earn thousands of dollars a month in "work-at-home" ventures. These schemes typically require the individuals to pay anywhere from $35 to several hundred dollars or more, but fail to deliver the materials or information that would be needed to make the work-at-home opportunity a potentially viable business.

Often, after paying a registration fee, the applicant will be sent advice on how to place ads similar to the one that recruited him in order to recruit others, which is effectively a pyramid scheme.

Other types of work at home scams include home assembly kits. The applicant pays a fee for the kit, but after assembling and returning the item, it’s rejected as substandard, meaning the applicant is out of pocket for the materials. Similar scams include home-working directories, medical billing, data entry (data entry scam) at home or reading books for money.