Ways to Identify Whether a Business Opportunity Is a Scam (Part 4)

Welcome back. Hopefully you’ve read part three of the series.

As you have seen so far, how people define what a scam is or not can be somewhat subjective. For me, as per my definition, the key is having to part with my money, and not getting a reasonable service or product in return.

Thus far, the mood of this series has been, that while you really should watch out for scams, not everything is a scam because people have failed at it or have given it a bad rep.

Before I conclude the series, however, I do want to list a few things that I watch for that raises a flag.

Opportunities where you only make money by recruiting – This is called a Pyramid Scheme and is illegal. However they still exist all over the Internet and are often cleverly disguised. All Network Marketing or legitimate businesses will either offer a product or a service to sell.

Opportunities where all you have to do is mail or email something – Back in the day before the Internet, I joined an opportunity like this that I saw in a magazine ad. You simply pay $6.95 for postage and they will send you a “free” list of names and addresses of people that you had to (stuff envelopes and) mail stuff to. The promise was that you could make thousands just by stuffing and mailing envelopes.

What they really sent was a copy of the article that I saw in that magazine and some instructions. What I was supposed to do was re-print that same article in a magazine or newspaper of my choice. Then when I received the $6.95 for postage, I was to send that same “free” information, which was a copy of the article and instructions, to the person that had responded to my ad.

Then the entire process would repeat itself when they received the article that I mailed to them.

Yes, it cost to place the ad, but of course if you had thousands of people sending you $6.95, then you’re expenses would be more than covered and you would profit.

Now, I’m seeing some form of this popping up with processing emails. Yes, you can make money like this, but it’s dishonest and not sustainable.

Opportunities where all you have to do is post a link somewhere – After investigating programs like this, most seem to be based on simply posting a link on Facebook or Twitter.

Normally, you get a one page website with some sales copy. It explains the program and the fact that all you have to do is paste the link to your website somewhere. At the bottom of the page, it’ll ask you to join for a low membership fee. You join and the person who gave you the link gets the money.

Once you join, you do indeed get a link to your site to copy and paste. When other people see your link they click on it and are brought to a replica of the same page that lured you in. Then their money goes to you upon them being lured in and signing up.

This is just another version of what I explained above with the processing of mail and emails. Furthermore, it is also a Pyramid scheme.

As I’ve said before, you can make a little money like this, but it will not be a sustainable business model that you can use over the long term.

Opportunities where there is a product, but the main way you make money is through recruiting – This one is tricky, because normally if there is a product that’s associated with the opportunity, then it’s not a scam.

However, the only difference between this point and my first point about recruiting only, is that there is a product offered. It is still a Pyramid scheme, just a cleverly disguised one.

For example, another opportunity that I’ve been pitched, was for a product that I didn’t receive a commission on (this is the key).

The scheme went this; you pay $200 to join the opportunity and then you recruit other members and of course promote the product. Where this differs from Network Marketing is that you don’t get a commission for selling the product. When you join, half the money goes to the company and you get “access” to the software. The other half goes directly to your sponsor.

When people join under you then you get $100 for signing them up, which is half of the sign-up fee from that person that you recruited. You don’t get any commissions at all. You can promote the product to lure people into your opportunity, but you only get paid if they join your organization. There is no option to sell just the software.

While programs like these seem like great opportunities, they present the same problems that I mentioned above. You may get further traction due to the product being involved, but what happens when the recruiting runs dry? No one is going to want to pay money to gain “access” to some software that they can find elsewhere for cheaper, and without worrying about having to “join” something.

Well, hopefully this series has brought you some insight as to some of the things to watch out for to avoid being scammed. This is not, nor was never meant to be an all encompassing list of things, but hopefully it gets you to thinking. Watch for unethical practices that can draw you in.

Also, take heed that just because some people have tried an opportunity and have failed at it, doesn’t justify it being a scam. Network Marketing, is a great example of that.

I would love to hear your experiences or stories about either a great program that people have called a scam, but isn’t, or an actual scam that you’ve fallen for.

#ConfidenceTrick #BusinessModel #Tips #Scam