Avoid Falling Into Online Income Scams

byLemm

623 followers

Updated 11 years ago

It's painful to see anyone being scammed by an fraudulent online income opportunity. I went through not only one but three of them. Typically this is what I went through:

First, I would see a typical sales webpage with a title like, "How to make $300 in 5 minutes", or "How to make $5000 in one week". Subconsciously, we think "5 minutes from now". So although we don't really believe it, it's our "fantasy world" that kicks in gear, because we need some temporary ESCAPE from the current pain of not being able to make ends meet.

Next, the author of the sales page might ramble with a personal testimony (likely false) of how he struggled a lot with his previous job, career or business venture. Unfortunately to my own hurt, I tend to believe everything I see, read or hear, and testimonies are very powerful ways to convince someone because it identifies with our own experience at the EMOTIONAL level. We are primarily emotional beings and make a lot of decisions by how we FEEL.

Then you know the pattern of what happens next. You start seeing pictures or photos of sales hits, a bank statement of deposits or a check showing a large figure. Again, it plays on your mind at the emotional level, causing you to dream that this could very well be you. The sad thing is that, subconsciously, we connect these photos of sales and income with the initial title of the webpage, "in 5 minutes" OR "in one week". They won't tell you that these sales and income are the result of months or perhaps years after being in the business.

Next the sales webpage outlines in brief the eBooks, DVDs or audios offered in the program and the claims (likely false) offered for each. A lot of the claims just further play with your emotions. You see phrases like, "a secret technique" or "a hidden method" added to other phrases like "expert gurus will not tell you". (Honestly now, why would they want to give away such wonderful secrets for a low $97 or so dollars!!?).

The next pattern? You see one, two or three outrageously large crossed-out price of about $997, $495 and $249, and a final price of $97 dollars, all to make you feel like your getting a great deal. To further soup up the deal, they list a bunch of other free eBooks, DVDs and/or audios with "beefed up" values of each, with more false claims.

Next they would offer you a "iron-clad guarantee". Common now.....what does "Iron-clad" really mean? Unfortunately, my subconscious mind didn't realize that they were just trying to make the guarantee SEEM more SECURE. Is there such a thing as an "insecure guarantee"? It's either a guarantee or it isn't.

Then below the "add to cart" button, the sales page would have a ticking timer showing you how much time you had left to make a decision. Of course, this just pressures you into thinking that this offer will not last. The funny thing is that in many cases, I'd still see the same offers available on the same webpage, well after the timer has expired.

Finally (and this really annoys me a lot...grrr), when I opt-out by closing the tab on my browser, up would pop up this dialog window with a message, "Wait, I have a great offer you will not refuse", with two buttons leave the page or stay on the page. After deciding to stay on the page, I would see an offer for HALF the price of the program. To make matters more annoying, if I still decided to close the tab, the same thing would happen again (up to three times total), with the final price tag of the program as low a FREE (for the first 7 days for example).

In any case, I could pay for the entire program at sometimes at 1/3 of the initial asking price. Putting it all together with the cross-out prices, you would see a program offered from $997 all the way down to $37 for example. I don't understand why this bugs me so much. To me this is a big sign that if they could rip you off, they would do it!

There's likely a lot more patterns that I've missed (especially for those of you more experienced reading this blog, please add more "patterns" of fraudulent online income opportunities that you know of. I would really appreciate it.

Stay clear of these patterns. Guard your emotions. Read any reviews you can on the program, but beware of reviews that can sometimes be just another affiliate supporting the program.