Phone Call Lottery Scam

One fine morning you may receive a call from a person, claiming to be a lawyer from a prestigious law farm, and will tell you that you have won a foreign lottery; that a processing fee is due before prize money can be released to you. The seniors are most likely to be victims of these telemarketers. If you are located in USA, most likely, person will introduce himself as a Canadian lawyer and will inform you as if you have won a Canadian Provincial Lottery.

Lottery Scam by SMS

You may even receive a SMS message advising that you have won a foreign lottery. You will be instructed to log onto a website and enter a login and password, which would be provided to you in message. The site will have same look and feel of a legitimate lottery site, but in fact, it is a copy site created by scammers. The URL address will have a very minor, virtually, unnoticeable difference. Once you log in and see for yourself that you have really own lottery, you will be asked to forward a gaming tax of US $100 to US $500 before you claim your prize.

How to identify these scams and avoid being conned?

The number one motto that you should follow is – if it is too good to be true, then probably, it is indeed too good to be true! There is no way you can win a lottery, in what you have never participated!

The followings are signs of probable scam offers, you will be better off if you avoid them scrupulously: Any offer, where you have to send cash upfront to redeem you prize. Any offer of a substantial percentage of a large sum of money to be transferred into your account, in return for your "discretion" or "confidentiality"; Requests for signed and stamped, blank letterhead or invoices, or for bank account information; Requests for payment in advance of transfer taxes or other fees; Statements that your name was provided to soliciting party either by someone you do not know or by "a very reliable contact;" Unsolicited calls asking if you would like to be in a "Lottery pool"; Mail notifying you that you have already won a substantial sum of money.

When searching for wholesale distributors, be careful because there are a lot of companies out there that will drop ship products and claim to be wholesale distributors when they really aren't! They will take your order just to turn around and order from real wholesaler. This should spell L-O-S-S to you. What's happening is that you are buying product at a price marked up from actual wholesale price, and then you'll need to mark it up even further when selling it to your customer. There is a big slice of profit pie that you aren't getting!

Most distributors that offer thousands of different products in a number of different categories are usually that type of operation. Also, if distributor wants to charge you a subscription fee, that should set an alarm off in your head. Occasionally wholesale distributor will charge a per- drop-ship fee, and maybe have a minimum order requirement (either in quantity or dollar amount). A FEW (and I say few) legit wholesale distributors will charge a setup fee (one wholesale distributor I worked required that first order be $200 or more), but I have NEVER come across a legit wholesale distributor that charges a subscription fee.

If you are having trouble deciding what products to sell, try this: go shopping! Don't actually buy anything (if you don't want to, at least), just look around and see what products interest you.

Do you see a site that you think you could do better? Are you a sports fan? Sell sports equipment or memorabilia! Do you enjoy pool? Sell billiard supplies! Enjoy gardening, or interior decorating? Sell products for those!

A word of advice though, computer component market is crammed. You will have more competition there than with most other products.

Information products are a fabulous option as well. Not only can they easily be created by you, they are even easier to distribute because they can simply be emailed to your customers.

Can you fix cars? Write a maintenance tips manual. Write an eBook on saving money around household. Write a manual on how to negotiate with car dealers. Maybe you know how to make cue ball jump across a pool table over what would have been an obstacle. I sure don't, and I wouldn't mind finding out!

Basically, question is "What do you know?" Don't underestimate yourself either! A great way to get started is to use mind-map technique. This technique allows you to jot down ideas that relate to a core idea and build a skeleton of subjects that are all associated with each other. After only a short time doing this, you should have more than enough subjects to piece together a good eBook. For more information on mind- maps, visit these resources:

1. www.peterussell.com/mindmaps/mindmap.html 2. www.shared-visions.com/explore/literature/mindmap.htm 3. www.tsd.jcu.edu.au/netshare/learn/mindmap/howto.html

If you look long enough, or are just plain lucky, you will eventually come across someone selling complete rights to a product. You can buy it from them and resell it for as much as you want, as often as you want, and retain 100% of profits. These deals are few and far between, and can usually cost quite a bit. But do keep your eyes open for them, it may be just what you are looking for.

Hopefully a number of product ideas have sparked as you were reading this article. As you can see, there are a lot of very good options available to you. Review all of them and choose best one, or ones, for your business situation.

Copyright © 2003 by Palyn Peterson palyn@futureinternetmarketing.com

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