The web is overflowing with scams. Thousands and thousands of otherwise normal people are looking for ways to make big money by doing NOTHING. Still, we have faith that there are some legitimate opportunities on
web. But how do you tell
scams from
real things?
Here are five things that set off my BS Alarm.
Number 1 BS Alarm Tripper
"You can make thousands of dollars a week, almost immediately." There are thousands and thousands of sites that make claims like this. But this kind of BS is not limited to
web. The other day I saw a TV ad where
testimonial guy said he was soon going to be making $20,000 per week. Think about that for a minute. That is more than a million dollars a year, selling products of questionable value. This guy is going from zero to a million dollars in just a few weeks. Maybe Donald Trump can pull that off (at least in his own mind), but not your average Joe Trump.
Click!
Number 2 BS Alarm Tripper
No actual product is being sold.
This is not always easy to detect. Many "marketing" schemes claim to be selling "valuable information", but in fact are only selling you
"rights" to resell
same program (ebook, etc.) to other suckers. This is what you might call "the 24 hour plan": I'll sell you a "report" for $5, then you sell it to all your friends and relatives, then they can do
same. You aren't buying my report because of
information in it. You are just buying it to resell it. The actual content of
report is irrelevant. It could just be a blank report or a page of nonsense.
Click!
Number 3 BS Alarm Tripper "We will throw in a bunch "e-books" worth "thousands of dollars"
Generally speaking, nothing of value is ever given away free. This is an immutable law of
universe. But web "entrepreneurs" are always telling us they will throw in a valuable set of info products, worth thousands, if you just buy their $50 product.
Does this make sense? No it does not. These info products are usually available many other places for free. And
chances are you will download them and then forget about them completely. In fact
whole concept of
"valuable e-book" has been so corrupted by this practice that it devalues ALL e-books. Giving away worthless stuff is not necessarily a bad thing. But it tells me
seller is a hustler and cannot be trusted.