Ways to Identify Whether a Business Opportunity Is a Scam (Part 3)

Welcome back. Our list continues from part two of the series.

The company promises that you won’t have to do something, to do well - I was recently approached about joining a company that sells lead scraping software. The promise was never having to buy leads or generate leads on your own again. Just use the software and you have thousands of leads; so many that you won’t know what to do with.

Yes, it is true that I could have thousands of leads and never have to buy or generate my own leads, but if they aren’t qualified then it’s a waste. While the company isn’t incorrect in what it states, the educated Network Marketer knows that in order to be more efficient, you should be using qualified leads.

Here’s a seemingly legitimate company with a product that works really well for what it’s intended to do. Just because a person’s results don’t increase when they buy the software, doesn’t mean that the company is a scam. You can easily use the product to get the leads, and then qualify them yourself.

On the other side of the coin, if you come across an opportunity that states, for example, that you won’t have to do anything to promote your business (or make money) except for copying a link and pasting it to Facebook, then you should probably be skeptical. Chances are that you aren’t dealing with a sustainable business or model, and you will most likely have to do more to make any substantial amount of money.

As a side note, I’m starting to see a lot of opportunities where there is the promise made that you won’t have to sell. Well, I would like to just say that in Network Marketing, I don’t believe that you should be selling anyway. But that’s a different topic.

The company lures you in with low start-up costs and then upsells – Upselling is actually a basic sales tactic that is used quite commonly. Don’t believe me, just go to Amazon and look at the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section, when you’re viewing a product.

I know of a few Network Marketing and Internet Marketing businesses that do a lot of this. If you join an opportunity and have to pay a subscription price of $37 a month, and then you’re constantly being urged to upgrade to the next level, then it’s not really a scam.

If you are getting something for your money with your current product or service, then there’s no need to upgrade unless you want to. The upgrade should be just that, an upgrade in either product or service. Getting the next level, either more of, or deeper details of what you are already paying for.

I’ve also seen it done where you can’t continue unless you upgrade. This is getting into trickier waters, but still doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a scam. My fiance has been approached in the past with an opportunity for a Affiliate Marketing company that teaches you how to make money being an affiliate for big ticket items.

They set everything up for you and all you have to do is get traffic to your website. The issue is that they offer a low start-up cost of less than $150 to join, but then you must follow the program step for step. One of the steps eventually requires you to spend an additional amount of money to keep using the program and to make any money. Furthermore, the sum was something like an additional three or four grand. This is a huge jump from less than a few hundred dollars, especially if you can’t make any money until you’ve finished all of the steps.

Upon further research that I did, I learned that the program really does work and make folks money, but why couldn’t they have been honest about the actual amount of the investment upfront? Is it a scam? They offer a service that works, and you can get a return on investment, but you can say that they severely mislead folks.

As you can see, just because there are upsells, doesn’t mean that it’s a scam. However, you start to tread on a fine line when the “upsell” really is the meat of the product or service.

The company uses very effective sales copy and hype to lure you in – Maybe you’ve come across some sales or squeeze pages, where there is a strong pitch to lure you in. These pages will, or at least should use everything from certain fonts, to specific abbreviations and language to convert you to a buyer.

You may or may not have noticed some of the things that I’ve just mentioned on a sales page. One thing that you should notice though, is that good sales copy will play on your emotions, and too many times have I seen people fall for the hype.

While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you just want to make sure that you do your research, to ensure that you’re dealing with a legitimate opportunity.

Let’s continue this discussion in the last part of the series.

#BusinessModel #Tips #ConfidenceTrick #Scam