Scams Guide

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How scams are built

Posted by shenron on 15 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Scams Guide

There are plenty of easy ways to quickly separate a fool from his or her money. The real trick is to perfect your own method for doing this as quickly as possible. In the end though, all the methods are just different sides of the same coin. You just have to offer them their life’s dream for a price that they can afford.

The best way to handle this is to think about what you dreamed of when you were a kid. You might have dreamed about getting paid to play video games everyday, or you may have wanted to get paid to shop. Just follow the standard “kid in the candy store” line of thought. People can get pulled into an old fantasy quickly, and then you’ve got them hooked. I guess you could also promise them piles of money for doing surveys or data entry, but I personally feel that that’s been overdone. This isn’t a perfect method though. You can’t just say “I’ll show you how to get paid to shop, if you give me $29.99.” Your marks will know that something is up with your offer. You have to reel them in. Let the fantasy grow until they’re sure it’s real.

But how do you do that? Build up a little sales page. Try and build something professional too, that old one page with yellow text and an obnoxious headline is so obviously a trap. Build up a webpage that is easy to read and not sensational. Calmly and slowly go over their fantasy. Read out the story slowly and get them excited. You have to make it seem like a real opportunity, and everyone knows that you won’t make $200 an hour 8 hours a day for the rest of your life. Keep the numbers realistic and explain the reasons for why someone would pay them to do this. Bait the hook and wait for them to bite.

Don’t get cocky! You still have to reel them in, and this can be difficult. The golden age of the internet is behind us. People are starting to wise up, since most of them have probably been worked over once. You are going to need to appear serious throughout the article. Feed the fantasy with your own facts. See if you can find an old news article that validates something similar to what you’re selling. Just linking to it will give them a lot of confidence. You also need some testimonials, and I mean good testimonials. The last thing you need is some trashy canned response about it “changing their life, so simple I couldn’t believe it, etc.” If you can’t write a good review, you can just hire a few half-decent freelance writers who will give you a 100-300 word response for 1 cent a word. This should at least give you some extra perspective. Words aren’t that powerful though. A picture speaks a thousand words. Add a little picture and a fake name to each of the testimonials. You can easily grab a portrait shot from any stock image provider, image host, or even myspace if you’re willing to spend a little time looking. The time is well spent, since a lot of people assume that pictures mean real people. You should also look up a few cheap, obvious scams and report them to your loyal readers. Explain why they’re fake and how you are different from them. Good targets are the old survey promotions, data entry jobs, and the old “make millions with adwords” e-books. This should give you a little confidence boost with them.

So, you’ve got the page set up. You’ve reeled them in. Now, it’s time to scale them and take them to the market. I personally hate those little “it was $50, but for a limited time it’s only $19.99.” Those look really fake and I think everyone has caught on to this little scam. It really hurts your credibility too. Just offer a fair price with no pointless frills. I’ve found the $15-$30 range to be just right. Anything higher and they’ll research it, anything lower and they’ll think that what you’re selling is worthless. Also, you should make sure that you do have a half-decent product. The only reason the old survey sites lasted was that they actually did give the buyer a list of other survey sites to use. This should also give them less credibility when they are arguing that they were scammed, since they did get something in return for their money. They’ll gripe about it on a message board somewhere, but they’ll just get a little sympathy.

There is one more step to the process. Why fish for yourself, when you can have other people fish for you. Get yourself listed through Clickbank or any other affiliate marketplace, and then just let a few other people push your little product for you. All you have to do is split the profit with them. It’s your call in the end though. If you are good, you can keep opening up new pages and just let your affiliates focus on marketing them.

This should give you a good step towards your first big paycheck. With this method you can ranke in on the new internet fortune from the comfort of your own home.

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