The psychology of the scam

Since I frequently try to identify scams, I thought I would discuss the psychology of the scam. The first thing I want to discuss is what actually constitutes a scam.

Scam - a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation.

 

They also have a definition for people who develop scams. There are of course scammers.

Scammer-a dishonest person who, uses clever means to cheat others out of something of value.

The scam itself is harmless. It is no more than an idea in someone’s head. The problem is the scammers. Most of the scams I have seen lately are no more than a different version of the same old thing. 

MLM, Pyramid, Inverted Pyramid, upline, downline and referrals have been used since the sixties. The Multi-level marketing model was developed by companies like Amway, Mary Kay, Avon and many others.

The model is simple enough. You sign up and then sponsor 2 or more people to join business with you. Then those 2 people sponsor 2 people and so on. Amway’s model had you sponsoring 6 people then they each sponsor 6 and so on. 

The problem is, finding even 1 person that will get involved. The other issue is, they need to stay in the program for you to get paid. No matter what the scammers say it is not that easy to get other people involved.

Even in this weak economy, people are looking for real opportunities on the internet . But, it is so plugged up with scams it is hard to find a real opportunity to create income. And the MLM itself isn’t the problem.

Most multi-level marketing plans are tied to a product. What I am seeing lately is so much time and effort is put in to the developing “the system”, the product becomes secondary. 

That is the case with One24. They have a convoluted system to get people involved, but the product is a food supplement program that has been around for years. And you don’t have to go through One24 to get involved in their program.

The scammers tell you, you don’t have to sell anything, ever!! Well, if you don’t sell anything and the people you sponsor don’t sell anything, why have a product? And where does the money you will be paid come from?

The scammers don’t care about an end game. They want to get as much money up front as possible (your sign-up fee), then they bail out and start the next scam. Just because they have a presence on the web (names, addresses, photos of offices and buildings), doesn’t mean you can easily track them down and sue them.

The only real person you know is the one who sponsored or referred you. Most likely it is a friend or family member. And most likely they got scammed as well.

Here is a statement I found at the bottom of a “terms of agreement” page. The Terms and I quote:

 “Information on this website may contain technical inaccuracies or typographical errors.
Information may be changed or updated without notice. *************.com may also make
improvements and/or changes in the products and/or the programs described in this information
at any time without notice".

 If you notice it tries to remove all liability from the company. It basically says if this whole thing doesn’t work out, you’re just out the money you have invested. 

I think a real big motivating factor for the scammers is the small amounts of money the can easily take from each person. They bank on the fact you won’t go after them to recoup your $47 dollars (random number). Now, if they were getting thousands of dollars from each person that’s a different issue.

They make money with volume. The one thing the internet has accomplished for sure is making it easier for scammers to get to people. It’s not like the old days when you had to actually speak to someone to get them involved in a scam. And you can scam folks all over the world from the comfort of your own home.

It‘s not just the sign-on fees either.  Buying and selling your email addresses are a huge market. Like I said I get 5 to 20 spam emails every single day. I did not give my email address to any of these spammers. But, someone did.

 

So, you get a few hundred people to give you $47.00 and then sell those names and addresses to another scammer. And then six months later you close everything down and move on to the next group of suckers.

 Remember what P.T .Barnum said?

I believe we are a long way from not seeing scams every day. No one wants the Internet to be censored or moderated. As long as it is not, scammers have free reign. All we can do is to keep identifying the bad guys and letting the masses know who they are. I will continue to do my part.

Like always, join and follow the blog, click the banners and text links to start making money. You can use the EWAHR forum to post questions or request a review of a site. You can also email me directly at ewahr2011@yahoo.com

 

Peace.

More about scams

Hopefully, I didn't ruffel too many feathers with yesterdays review. After looking around the web some more, I found I am not the only offering a less than flattering review. A progam like that is the reason people have a bad experience and give up on internet commerce.

I know, it happened to me. I have been sweet-talked out of money more than once with the promise of a huge return. The only thing I know for sure (based on the last 3 months) is there is no offer available on the internet that will allow you to retire in 6 months. Unless you will turn 65 in 6 months, of course.

Do not waste yourt time with sites that make “promises” or “guarantees” of any kind!! What do we learn as children “Promises are often broken”. These kind of sites (and I am not singling out One24) have nothing to lose by making empty promises. Before anyone can shut them down, they have made enough money to move on to the next scam.

No one (yes, I said no one) can guarantee you success in internet marketing. In the first place, chances are you will never see your upline face to face. Questions or advice must be received over the internet or telephone. It is much easier to lie when you are not looking someone in the eye.

This has rouse has been praticed since time began. Only now instead of snake oil peddlers we have Internet marketing entrepreneurs.

I have also noticed for the most part legitimate offers for home based businesses have a single home page that provides most of the details of the business. And pricing is not five pages into the checkout process. I am to the point where, I can feel the scam coming on very early in the process.

I think maybe all the “good scam ideas” have been used up and now, all we see now is a re-hash of the same old thing. With that being said, scams make it very difficult to find the legitimate opportunities. That is why sites like mine EWAHR, Work at home No scams.com and 99ers.net and many, many more are a necessity.

Someone needs to be the “guinea pig” and take one for the team to expose the frauds. I think part of the problem is folks get involved in a scam and think they have to “work their way out of it”. Even though they may figure out early on they are involved in a scam, they need to see if they can at least make their money back.

Then before they know it, they are part of the same scam they are trying to get away from. Always make sure when you get involved in any work at home opportunity, you understand how to get out if it doesn't give you what it offered.

I am going to cut it a little short today, I need to spend sometime finishing up the EWAHR Newsletter for the month of May. Remember, it will contain upcoming reviews, guest articles written by EWAHR followers and special offers and links to my Affiliate marketing partners not offered at my websites. Sign up today!!

Like always, join and follow the blog, click the banners and text links to start making money. You can use the EWAHR Forum to post questions or request a review of a site or, you can e-mail me directly at ewahr2011@ yahoo.com

Peace.

Avoiding Scams

Avoiding scams is not as hard as you might think.. First let's discuss the definition of a scam.

Scam: a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation <an insurance scam> /Merriam-Webster. A true scam is designed to take money from an individual and give little or nothing in return.

So, as long as the second party receives something it's not a scam. Maybe not, but it is still wrong. I have 2 main rules that govern my life. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you and What goes around comes around.

I would have a very hard time taking peoples money and giving them little or nothing in return. That is not the case for many. Rather than try to explain how to identify a scam, I will show you examples from real website advertisments.

  

I used a program called Jing. It is a free program that allows you to capture and manipulate computer screen images among other things. I have placed a red box around the area I want to focus on.

When you view internet ads for money or credits you get to see the best of the best and the worst of the worst. I am goin to share some of the worst and one of the best. First, let me say I found all these examples viewing only 18 ads. Click the hyperlink at the beginning of each module to view the example.

Nonsensical titles- These are ads who's title make no sense at all. It is so packed with keywords it loses all meaning. I also like the absence of a photo. I wouldn't want to be identified with this site either.

Bad Math- This one brags about payout, but if you take time to do the math you see the payout is $11 a month. Nothing to brag about. This one probably should have stuck with the generic Avatar.

Rankings- I see this all the time, ads claiming a #1 rating by some unknown ranking site. This one is great because the rating comes from themselves. Active Safelist was rated #1 by Safelist Rankings. 10 bucks says they are one in the same.

Just Silly- Some ads are just silly. This one claims even a homeless person can make money using their system. They even give the homeless person a place to enter their e-mail address.

The Devil in the details- this one gives you all the details. The problem is one of the details says the have 229 members and have paid out nothing to them. You can probably expect the same.

Money for nothing- If you have lived in America for very long you know there is no such thing. My favorite line is “All with-out telling, selling or explaining anything to anybody!”.

How will anybody know you are selling anything, if you don't tell anybody? Even after you pay them $70, I'll bet they don't know how to do it either.

No spam please- One thing you probably should have, if you don't already, is an email address just for your online business. Gmail and Yahoo will issue multiple email addresses for free.

Get one, because no matter what they say, you will get spammed. I am pretty sure if a site makes it a point to say they won't spam you, they probably will.

Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg and they keep coming up with new things everyday. Next I will share a site that is not a scam.

Although it is a hard way to make a lot of money, ClickSense delivers exactly what they sell. All the details are clearly defined and do not change from month to month.

You watch a 30 second ad and you get paid for viewing (normally a penny) that ad. They also have hot buttons on their page that lead where it says they will lead, not to some other site.

The next shot shows the details of how the program works. I know for a fact all the statements are true. They even provide numbers that back up what they say. 

If you divide the amount paid out ($1,233,136.20) by the number of members (1,140,196) you get an average pay-out of $1.08 per member. Don't be fooled by big numbers. If you want to know the answer, do the math.

This is inline with what really happens when you join. Since I joined I have made $1.44.

One of the goals of this site is to help you identify the scams and find the real opportunities to develop income online with your home based business. I hope this helps.

Like always, join and follow the blog, click the banners and text links to start making money. You can use the EWAHR Forum to post questions or request a review of a site or, you can e-mail me directly at ewahr2011@ yahoo.com

Peace.