Why do People Fall for Scams Online

Hey guys, hope your WA journey is going well. Let's start this post with a question... how many of you have fallen for online scams? I bet there are more than a few of you... Why though? Why do people fall for scams online? Well today I am going to delve into why that is, and why many of us - yours truly included - hand over our hard-earned cash when everything in our bodies is telling us that it is a crock of the proverbial.

Now a disclaimer before we begin - I promise that this post is not about me getting on my high horse and finding nice ways to call anybody who falls for these scams a fool, far from it. It has just been something that has intrigued me for a while and here is why...

Background

Over the past few months, I, like many others here at Wealthy Affiliate have been taking part in the Super Affiliate Challenge. I have been doing my training and generally been head down and bum up writing blog posts on all manner of things regarding the creation of a successful online business including software and program reviews.

And as I trawl through the never ending cess pool of new programs promising to make me a million dollars a second for 1 second of work per month, I just keep wondering why anybody would plug their hard-earned into the long-winded sales funnel sitting on my screen in front of me - but obviously people do - and I want to know why?

What do I mean by a scam site?

The sites I am talking about here are the ones that promise you fast money for little to no work. Some, I fully admit, have a little merit to them and some are actually based on the same solid affiliate marketing theories that we learn here at WA - website + traffic + affiliate links = revenue. They just all seem to forget about the actual middle bit which is continuous, problem solving hard work.

The other thing that always amazes me is that they all start out the same way with a long-winded sales funnel page with all of our favourite red flags including:

• A sales video with only plain sales text, pictures of luxury cars, boats and mansions and over hyped sales pitches - usually about how much you can make immediately. There is usually never a real person to be seen.

• No real outline of what the program/platform is and what will be delivered in return for the cold hard cash you are about to hand over.
• There are a lot of upsells that tell you that they will 10x the effectiveness of the elusive product outlined in the previous point.
• Fake testimonials - don't believe me? Do a search on Fiverr.com and check out the professional reviewer section (think I might sign up to do reviews - there seems to be money in that).
• Statements like: "I know all the others are scams but this is different" etc.
• Long winded stories about how the speaker was bankrupt and about to lose everything until he found this.

I mean if these products actually worked, do you think we would all be here at WA learning to patiently build a successful ongoing business (No offense Kyle and Carson)? No way! I will have the get rich quick scheme for mains with a side order of no work to get it please!!

So why do we do it?

So now we get to the point of this blog ( fiinnaaalllyyy...). Why do people still put their credit card into these sites and purchase things when we have a pretty good idea that they will just not work. Well I have done some research and come up with some reasons that outline why many of us fall for these scams:

We love a good lottery

Here is another question? How many of you purchase lottery tickets? As I write this, our Australian Powerball is currently sitting at a $100 million jackpot (that is like... $20 bucks USD.) and we are lined up out the door to buy a ticket. I mean many of the scams I am talking about here actually have a better chance of making us money than the lottery but we all do it (mine is in front of me as we speak). We do it because there is a chance, just a chance that we might win it all...

Well, it is the same with these sites... We have a pretty good idea that they will not do as promised, but maybe this one will... What if I didn't pay my $20 when if I do I could make some decent money. That is not to say that everybody thinks that way - I mean not everybody buys lottery tickets - but it can be a good pointer as to why we do it. Because maybe one day it will work and we will win.

We are too nice

I mentioned earlier one of the red flags I notice a lot is a long-winded story about how broke this person was, how their kids could never eat and they lived in a car. Then they did this and their life changed. Wow, good on them. And boy his kids look good (and apparently have a job as Walmart models as well - but I digress) and how great is it that they don't live in a car. How could I possibly let them down - how could I send those kids back to the car park?

You see, many of us purchase these products not because we are silly or dumb, but because we are too nice. We want to be nice, we want to help out so we do what we can. I mean how many of you have purchased something in a traditional retail outlet because of a story you were told by the sales clerk then realised you actually didn't need it, or wanted it at all. Online purchases are the same. We buy because we are too bloody nice.

We fall for the value ladder

Within the Russell Brunson marketing bible called "Expert Secrets", he discusses a thing called a value ladder. It is about providing value to a potential lead for free for under a low barrier entry arrangement. The theory is that if they come in small and relatively risk free and see how great your product is, then you can start to introduce higher ticketed items for purchase as your customers begin to trust you more and more.

These processes work on the same theory but without the value - in fact probably more along the lines of the lottery mentality I mentioned earlier. We see the first screen and it is $9 bucks. We think "It's only 9 bucks, what can it hurt"... then once you get the first upsell, you start to think "Well I have come this far...". $200 later and you have a lemon! It is actually quite a clever marketing ploy - I will discuss this more later on...

FOMO

FOMO - Fear of Missing Out. Human nature 101... We pay the cash because if we don't, someone else will and then we might miss out.

We know no better

There is a term that we used to talk about when dealing with customers in a sales capacity called the unconscious incompetent - meaning we don't know what we don't know. We don't know that these are scams as noone has ever told us - so we go in with good faith thinking that we can achieve success.

It is not until we either:

1. Fall for the scam - then we become conscious incompetents - we know that is bad but still don't know what to do about it
2. We do some training and learn how to do it better - we enter the world of conscious competence - we know what is bad and we know how to get around it and succeed.

The trick I guess is to help people find out about these types of programs so that they can avoid them and reach competence without outlaying the moolah to start with.

We are just trying so bloody hard

You know what? Sometimes we forget that you just have to learn by trial and error and, at times, failure. And this can be the most simple reason that we fall for them. We are just trying so hard to succeed with a 'whatever it takes' attitude that we can't see the forest for the trees.

And at the end of the day, we can't really blame ourselves for that can we?

What can we learn from these sites?

Let's now look at this from a different angle. We have a few reasons above as to why these programs work - even if we can see the trickery we still hand over the credit card. Why? Because they are using tried and true online marketing techniques - they are just sitting on the dark side is all...

I remember years ago when this internet thingo started. I had a school mate who saw its potential and did some hard core HTML training and became a master website builder in the days before dream weaver and wordpress etc. He became so good that he could name his price - and do you know where the biggest offers always came from?

Pornography and Online Gambling sites - These were the sites that had the most cutting edge builds on the web. These scam sites are no different - if they want to attract people to them, they need to be effective - I mean some of them are 'Dotcom Secrets' 101.

So if you are looking to set up some effective sales funnels (on the Jedi side hopefully) then you could certainly do a lot worse that funnel hack these scam sites and see just how they are built, what they are saying, how they are saying it and, most importantly, what problems they are telling you they can solve - they are shonky, but they get the $$!

Conclusion

So there you have it, some eo the reasons that I have found that people fall for scam sites. Have you been tricked? Pleasantly surprised or fell for them for a whole other reason that above? I would love to hear from you below.

Until next time

Have fun

Paul