Is Product Assembling From Home Legitimate?

This is perhaps the most valid question of all.  No speaking of income potential and why there is a fee associated with joining product assembling jobs means anything if product assembling is not legitimate and real to start with.

You need to understand several aspects of product assembling in order to be able to answer this question to yourself.

Most of the product assembling companies are scams.  They make money out of selling people starter kits and raw materials required to make the product. They have no intention of paying you for your work. Whenever you finish your batch of crafts and send it to the company it will get rejected no matter how well you have made it. Sometimes the design of the craft is such that it is impossible to make it with the raw materials that the company provides. You are expressively forbidden from buying their own raw materials by some companies.
Sometimes your first batch make get approved but only so that you can send in for more supplies from them.

There are however certain companies like the NEC and  COTTAGE INDUSTRIES, that many people are working for. These two companies have their own stores from where they sell their craft items.  If you visit their website you will see the pictures and the address of the store with an open invitation to come and visit them personally. Cottage industries also allows people to come and pick up their starter kit and drop of their finished batch of products at their shop removing the need and delay of shipping by mail.
There is one more company that seems to have a good enough rating on the Better Business Bureau that goes by the name of Enchanted Hearts. You can read more about this company here and even view the report that the Better Business Bureau has on it... Enchanted Hearts. We have received a good feedback from some of the people who have worked for this company but un fortunately those feedbacks are a few years old. We have not heard from anyone who is currently working for this product assembling company. You can look them up and in case you have any questions or remarks to make about your interaction with them, post them as a comment on the main website.

The question of the legitimacy of Product And Craft assemble jobs is manifold. Sure it is true that most of the product assembling companies are a ruse to make people buy the starter kit from them and that is all. But there are some that are real crafting businesses and pay people to work for them. But you need to have the right view point regarding this work. You cannot expect to make a substatial home based income from this work.
What the legitimate companies do is provide you with regular work. They take a test of your crafting abilities before expecting you to make an entire batch of items for them. Once you qualify you are approved to make the crafts for them. The legitimate product assembling companies are not evaisve about surrendering their business details and provide help and guidance over e-mail and telephone through a customer service agent.
This does not mean that their crafts are easy to make and you will have a breeze workinf for them. On the contrary the companies like the NEC have some serious craft products and you will need to practise to get approved with them.
Almost no one gets approved the first time around. You keep sending your sample till you get it right. But they help you all along the way by telling you what exactly you are doing wrong. Not only that, there is a large thread dedicated to people working for the NEC on Wahm.com. People come there to share ideas and experiences. It is a very freindly forum where everybody helps each other out.

We are also impressed with the way COTTAGE INDUSTRIES sounds. They have a store of their own as well. They invite you to go and visit them as they have the crafts that they would like you to assemble from home, on display there. They also allow you to pick up your starter kit from their store and even drop off the finished batch there with them. This is great for the people who are staying locally in the area. Not only does it save the time and money involved in shipping, but also gives you a one to one interaction with the people that you are working for.

It is a fact that more people are rejected when they send them their work for approval than the ones that are actually accepted. So in the long run even if the company is paying a few people to work for them over the course of a few months, that can be thought of as a way to keep the credibility of the company alive. Keeping the credibility is important since they want for the people to apply for jobs and by the starter kits for them. So even if they are paying 10 people to work for them and rejecting 50 will apply, they are still making money out of it.

Bottom line is that there is no record of anyone making a substantial amount of money for a prolonged period of time by doing product assembly work. Even the better business bureau says that they have no records in their files nationwide that proves that anybody has ever made money doing product assembly at home.

Bottom line is also that there are people who are actively involved with making products at home for certain companies. Whether these are the lucky few working for the legitimate companies or they are just the byproducts of a smart company keeping its credibility alive, is for you to decide.

The truth is that even the people who are working for the past few months or couple of years making simple products at home are doing it for the love of crafting. You cannot hope to make a large income from this kind of work. If you want to pursue craft assembling as a hobby you can give the companies in good standing a try. But at no point of time should you expect to one to the tunes of the claims that you have probably read on the Internet.
It is worth mentioning that only are couple of companies of the product assembling nature are in good standing with the better business bureau. Almost all of them have a rating of F. This is the lowest rating that the better business bureau used to any business based on its credibility and past record. The rating given by the better business bureau involves several factors such as the number of complaints filed against the business, the way the company acted in order to resolve it, the information provided by the business as to its activities and nature, the verification of the details of the companies such as the owner, address, phone numbers and such other vital information. You can read the reports on the various product assembling companies by visiting the main website here.

The better business bureau also explicitly warns against indulging in any work at home offer that requires you to pay a fee up front. Product assembling at home, unfortunately, happens to be one such home based work opportunity.

That said, it is true that people have worked for product assembling companies. People have enjoyed doing this work and got paid over many many months and even a few years.
But you need to remember all along the way that the work is not easy and needs meticulous attention all the way. If you are unsure of your crafting skills, we suggest you try out some crafts at home by yourself. Buy a craft book and try making similar items. See how close to perfection you can get.
Because, anything short of perfect will probably get rejected by the company, you will not get paid.

Why is There a Fee Involved With Product Assembling

Asking why there is a fee associated with joining any product assembling company is a tricky question.  It kind of depends on two lines of thought.

One line of thought that dictates the answer to this question is that product assembling is actually a genuine home based work opportunity. The other line of thought is that it is a scam.

Let us explore the reasons for a fee being levied for product assembling jobs following the first line of thought, i.e. it is a genuine home based work opportunity.
The number of reasons that can be attributed are as follows:

1) With the most of the product assembling companies the initial money that you send it to the company is used to buy the starter kit.  This starter kit contains the raw materials to make the first batch of finished items, detailed instructions for making the craft and even a finished sample to guide you along with your work.  The logical reasoning behind this is to make the product for the company you are going to need and materials anyway, even if you have to buy them yourself.  It is a good idea to buy them from the company because they are able to send you the standard materials which are required to make their product the way they want it to be made. Since you are going to be making their craft items for the first time it is a good idea to receive the materials and a sample of the product from them in order to rule out errors in design and workmanship based on the flaws of the raw materials used.
2) Since the cost of the raw materials is refundable after you have finished a certain amount of crafts for them, charging policy initially only ensures that the people who are seriously interested in working apply. Sending in starter kits without charging anything to anybody who applies would be disastrous for their financial setup.
The flipside of this is the fact that they can work this the other way round and have the person who is interested in working with craft assembling send in our sample of their home-made product in order to gauge their craft making ability. You should be allowed to buy a sample craft item from them and see if you can replicate the same. 
Some companies in fact do allow this.  They do sell you the sample of their craft for a few dollars but do not provide you with the raw materials to make it by yourself. Some companies ask for a registration fee and then say that you are free to buy your own materials. But that comes to the same thing as you have already paid the company on one pretext or the other.

Let us now explode the reasons for they had been a free to join product assembling from the other line of thought i.e. it is NOT a genuine home based opportunity.

1) The number one reason is the obvious one.  The companies are making money out of selling you raw materials and the charging you registration fee. If they are not going to approve of your finished products means that they do not have to pay you and they get to keep the money that you centre them to join.

2) Your first batch of products may get approved. This will result in you sending in for more raw materials from the company may be even in larger amounts than you bought before. The product assembling company ends up making more money and rejects your finished batch of items the second time around.

3) the company is selling you inferior quality of raw materials that will make it impossible for you to make the product according to their finished sample. Hence, they do not have to pay you and make a profit on the raw materials by charging you much more than what they are actually worth.

4) the common money back guarantees offered by the product assembling companies calls for the starter kit to be returned in an unused state in order for you to qualify for a refund. In case you have tried to assemble the product and used up even some of the raw materials centre to you you do not get your money back. Even if you do return the starter kit by deciding not to make the craft just by looking at it, only half of your money is returned and that the shipping cost deducted. The product assembling company still makes money. The money back guarantees offered by the product assembling companies most of the times laden with such stringent conditions that it becomes almost impossible to comply by them and get your money back. Getting your money back as a refund on the basis of these guarantees is almost always difficult if not impossible.

The idea of presenting the reasons for a fee attached to the product assembling home jobs is that while most of these kind of home based work offers false promises, there are a handful of companies that have a lot of crafters working for them enthusiastically. But even these seemingly legitimate crafting businesses charge a fee for joining them.
However, the method and the work practice is seemingly better than the others. For example, while you need to send money to register with the company, you never need to pay anything to receive the raw materials for your craft. As you keep finishing your batches fresh raw materials are sent to you that no extra cost.
Also, in order to get approved and start working for these companies you do not need to finish an entire batch of craft items and ship them for inspection. You are expected to only make one sample and keep sending it to the company tell it is approved. The product is up to the standard of the company the company keeps sending it back to you with the reports and instructions of what you did wrong. Once both you and the company are a sure that you are in the position of starting to make crafts for them that meet the quality standards of design and workmanship, only then do you get to start working on the whole batch.
This saves a lot of time and effort.

The general consensus on the Internet is that there should be no fee to join any work at home jobs. home based jobs should be like any other job where you joined based on your qualification and your experience.  The money should on the flow one way which is from the employer to the employee that is you.  However, one has to concede the fact that hiding people to work from home for in formal jobs like product assembling creates an element of risk for the hiring company.  They have no idea about the sincerity of the person applying for the home based job.  They have no credible means to verify the credentials of the person unless they devote a lot of man power and  financial resources to their human resource department. As far as product and craft making jobs are concerned, they stem from relatively small business enterprises.  Many of the crafting businesses have their story and also wholesale to other sellers across the country.  But the crafting business comes under the category of small business enterprises.  It is not viable for them to devote resources and finance for a separate human resources department. Most of the time such businesses are run by a single proprietor with a couple of other people hired to serve as sales and customer representativeness.
Charging a fee from people covers some of their cost. But make no mistake.  All of these companies and to make a profit from every single person who buys a kit from them.  Regardless of whether you get approved or making their craft or not, they stand to earn money from every single person that applies to them. This does not automatically mean that the company is a scam. Whether they are profiting from charging you an initial registration fee is somewhat unconnected to whether the company is a genuine business not.
Even if the company is paying you all the work done they are always making a profit anyway. They pay you out of the profits that they make by selling the crafts that you make for them. So profiting is not a bad thing. Not for you and not for the company.
Of course, in the case of fraudulent home based offers, charging a fee becomes an ultimate means of making money because they have no intention of ever paying you for any work done by you.

  So in the case of product assembling it is hard to judge the credibility of a business solely on the basis of whether they charge a fee not. Because they all do. It is the other business practices that determine the genuine nature of the business.  We shall cover this in our next post, how to be a better judge of which home based offers are genuine and which are not

How Does Product Assembling Work

Now that you have read about the basic nature of product assembling jobs, you are probably curious as to how to go about getting your first project.

We will explain the entire process to you here. The very first step begins with choosing the product that you are interested in working with. This is usually done based on your instinct and knowledge about your own skills. You have a look at all the products and based on what you think you will be the best at you choose the product. There is an entire list of product assembling companies and crafts available on this website along with their addresses, phone numbers, website and fax details of each companies listed with them along with a brief description of the craft that you will need to make for them.. You can have a look at those.

Once you have decided on the product or a series of products that you think you are to make at home, the next step is to get in touch with the product assembling company using the contact information be it an address, phone number or website. You will find a lot of craft assemble company's listing only postbox addresses and no other details. For these companies you will read that you need to send an SASE for more information. SASE stands for ‘ Self Addressed Stamped Envelope’. This means that you have to send an envelope with the address on it and duly stamped.  This will enable the craft company to send you there are work details for no charge to them except for, perhaps, the printed material that they send to you.  Some companies send you a full color brochure of their crafts and work details.

For companies that list other contact information such as phone numbers and customer care helpline numbers, call up on these numbers to take additional directions of how you are supposed to proceed. Do not shy away from asking any and all questions that you might have about the work involved. You can even ask for more information about the company itself if that is not clear enough to begin with. Once you have contacted the product assembling company in one way or the other, you will in most cases be required to send in money for the starter kit. This starter kit contains the raw materials for you to make your first batch of finished craft items. Apart from the raw materials it also contains detailed directions and sometimes even finished product sample to guide you along the way.
There are a handful of companies like Valerie Hattery and the NEC that only charge the registration fee. The raw materials for your first batch and your subsequent matches once your first finished batch has been approved, is sent to you at no extra charge.

After having sent the money for the registration, you will receive your starter kit in mail. Some companies give you a deadline of 60 days to finish and ship the finished items of them.  While others put no restriction in terms of time frame.

In order to qualify for your first payment you need to finish a batch of products which can comprise of any number depending upon the kind of craft you have chosen. It can range from 6 to 50 and the difficulty of the craft chosen usually determines this number. Once you have finished making the entire batch you are supposed to ship to the company for their approval. It takes two to three days for them to pass an inspection check on your batch. Some companies process the payment within two days of giving approval while others do it on a weekly basis on a fixed given day such as Monday.

Some product assembling companies will need you to make an entire batch and ship it to them for approval.  While there are others like NEC and Cottage Industries that require you to send in only one finished product. They will keep sending it back to you with a report and instructions if it did not meet their approval. Once you have got this product right, you get approved to make the rest of the batch. This is a preferable method to the one adapted by other companies where you are required to finish an entire batch. If the batch does not need the approval sometimes an entire batch can be shipped back to you for the doing. This can prove to be very inconvenient.

You get paid only on the approval of your finished product and craft items. Some of the companies also be on the basis of per item.  This means that in case a few items in the batch do not meet the quality standards, you still get paid for the once that right.  Only the ones that did not get approved in the inspection are sent back to you for redoing. All this is information that you can clarify from the product assembling company when you speak to them.

(Important Note : But before you do do not forget to read the reviews of the same companies. There is an important section of must read articles and information that you must go through to get the real picture on product assembling. Do not get swept away by thinking that this is a get rich quick kind of work. )

Good luck and keep reading.

What Are Product / Craft Assembling Jobs?

For those of you who are hearing this term for the first time, maybe are the full explanation of this home based work is required.  Product assembling craft assembling requires you to make simple items which are essentially craft work most of the time from your own home.  You get hired by certain companies,  that are supposedly in the crafting business,  to make the craft items at home. They then further sell these craft items on the market through their shops or through a wholesaling network.

So basically your job profile is that you need to make simple craft items at home and shape them to the company once you are finished. You are not required to do any marketing or selling yourself.  That is taken care of by the company that you are working for.

The reason why these kind of home based jobs are called product assembling

Is that sometimes the item that needs to be made by the home worker is not really a craft but of a different nature.  A good example in this would be the electronic board circuit, switchboards and such.  Hence the name product assembling.
Product assembling jobs come in three main categories divided according to the kind of work that needs to be done to make the product :

Sewing  (Requires sewing skills)
Woodworking ( Requires basic woodworking and painting skills)
Basic Assembling (Only involves cutting and gluing) 

The sewing category can be further divided into hand and machines sewing craft products.
Of these three the basic assembling category is perhaps the more popular as it requires no the skill other than being able to wield a pair of scissors and the use of glue gun. Apart from a handful of product assembling companies, they all claim that making their craft is the simple project and almost anyone can do it.  There are certain products like the bookmark which people generally feed that anyone with out any special crafting skill would be able to manage.  But experience has proved to the contrary.  No matter how easy the product sounds they are all relatively hard to make and require time effort and concentration.
There are certain reputable and respected product assembling companies that do actually tell you which of their craft items are the tougher ones and which are the more suited for a beginner to start with.
Getting the feedback from people who have tried product assembling with simple craft items has revealed that even cutting and gluing together certain pieces of crafts has proved to be a challenge.

Sewing products are also are very popular category.  A lot of the womenfolk are inherently fond of and capable of Lady sewing skills like cross stitching, embroidery and appliqué. The products that needs to be assembled in the category of sewing products are mostly of the nature of table mats, greeting cards, stuffed toys, T-shirts and capes, CD cases, eyeglass cases and more like these. The sewing products can further be divided into hand sewing and machines sewing items. There are basic to advanced sewing skills required. There are some products that you can make by simply knowing how to stitch by hand while others may require advanced sewing skills like embroidery and cross stitch.

The woodworking products are also supposedly not too difficult.  You will require to own tools like a saw, screwdriver, nuts and bolts,  hammer and an assortment of paints.
It is a category mostly targeted at the men folk. You have products like game boards, back supports, wooden toys, switchboards and such. While the products are claimed to be simple they do require a little bit of grit when it comes to sawing and hammering.

This information is the nature of product or craft assembling jobs at home.  To read in detail about how you are supposed to go about assembling your first product read next post.

Keep reading and good luck.

How Much Can You Earn With Product Assembling

How much money can you alone by doing product and craft assembling jobs at home?
This question needs to be answered before anyone can really decide whether product assembling is for them or not.  There are two factors governing the income potential with product assembling.
Number one, based on the requirement of the project how long does it take one person to finish one single batch of product. Given this time frame, the days required for the finished batch of items to be shipped and the time that it takes the assembling company to inspect the scent items and process the payment, this duration also needs to be added to the time that it took to just make the crafts.

The total duration from the time that the product assembling company dispatches the raw materials for your craft and  till the time that your payment gets processed by the company and send it to you, dictates how much work you can do every month.

Number two, is the factor of actual legitimacy of the product assembling companies.  You need to question whether it is actually possible to find work with a product assembling company and make a substantial amount of income during this work.  We profess views on this that it is not.  Even if you do find a legitimate product assembling job, a handful of which are available, these jobs are not to be taken as a serious source of income.  But we shall discuss that in another post.

So mainly speaking, the amount of money that you can make with product assembling is determined by two factors which are the number of finished batches that you can send to the company in a month and the amount of money that the company pays you for each finished batch. You may come across several websites that claim that you can make several hundreds of dollars doing product assembling jobs. Sometimes these websites belong to people who are trying to sell you a directory of product assembling companies. They want to sell you the directory for a few dollars and hence make at all claims on their website regarding the income potential.  These income potential highly exaggerated with no proof to substantiate their claims.

Then you will come across websites of certain product assembling company themselves who claim to help you earn thousands of dollars every month. This again is an exaggerated claim and we ask you not to trust any such company which is making it. If they sound too much like any other work at home job offer where you are promised a great deal of money for little effort, then this product assembling company is like any other similar home based offer which is false and fraudulent. In our estimate, it is not possible to make more than a few hundred dollars every month.

So if you want to do product assembling as a means of having regular and substantial income working from home, then this is probably not the work you need to be looking at.  Product assembling at home is mostly done by people who are fond of making craft. They do it as a pastime and a hobby and for fun.  If making a serious income is your intent of finding home based occupation then you should look elsewhere.  The kind of money that you can make by doing product assembling might serve to be of value in a small town.  But if you live in a bigger and a more advanced city the more inadequate your income from craft assembly proved to be.

If you are a crafting person, you should contemplate setting up a craft business of your own.  It is not as hard as you might imagine and you are likely to make more income than you would by doing craft assembly jobs at home.  We shall pick up on this subject in another post of ours. Till then keep reading and good luck.

What This Blog Is All About

This subsection of the parent site assembleandearn.com has been created to deal with some basic questions about product and craft assembling. While the main website has content related to various crafting companies and important information, this section is suited to learning about assembling products at home from the scratch.
If you are relatively new to the concept of working from home by doing product and craft assembling you will find this section useful as it will answer some of the beginners questions such as what exactly is product assembling at home, how much can you earn doing this work, is the work truly legitimate or a scam much like 90 per cent of all other work at home opportunities... and other similar questions like that.

After understanding the nature of this home based opportunity you will find more detailed and advanced information in the main website which includes and in depth look into several of the product assembling companies, some of which are well known if not infamous.
A decision to work for any company that pays you to work from home by assembling products or making craft should only be made on a well informed basis. It is our intent to provide you with lucid and detailed information so as to enable you to make such a decision. After you have gained an insight into the general principle behind this home based work, you can read detailed reports of the various assemble companies on the main website. You will be in the better position to choose amongst them, if at all.

In addition, this section will also list some of the work at home and product assembling resources which are not listed in the main website.
It is no secret that the work at home opportunities on the Internet are strife with scams and false promises. We always urge our readers to think and reconsider before sending money to join any work at home scheme. Having to pay money to work for someone for a legitimate job is not the natural order of things. unfortunately, all the product assembling companies that we know of require you to pay some sort of a registration fee or you need to buy your initial supplies of raw materials from them. This supply of initial raw materials is commonly known as the starter kit.

  Keep reading this blog to find out essential information about product assembling.