"Turn $30 Into $30,000 in 30 Days!"
"Make Money While You Sleep!"
Instant Riches- Anyone Can Do it!"
"Just Launched - Get In On The Ground Floor!"
Emails like these flood our mailboxes every day. There seems to be no end of "Once in a lifetime" opportunities floating around the internet.
But are they really legitimate? Can you really make any money with them?
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently launched "Project Fal$e Hope$", joining with state law-enforcement agencies to target alleged business opportunities and bogus work-at-home scams.
"Bogus business opportunities trample on dreams of financial independence that don't exist", says the FTC. "If a business opportunity promises no risk, little effort, and big profits, it almost certainly is a scam. These scams offer only a money pit-consumers never achieve the riches and financial freedom promised."
In plain English, these "opportunities" are out to take your money, period!
The problem with almost everything that comes along is the people who are promoting these things have "bought into" the fantasy themselves, and believe they can make money with them, regardless of how far-fetched the scheme itself may be.
Unfortunately, the people promoting these schemes are living in a fantasy world. They are HOPING that you will get involved, and that YOU will be a good recruit FOR them.(Read: do most of the work for them.) Over 99% of all money-making "programs" (they will never call them "schemes" or "scams") fail in the first six months, and the only people who made any money are the ones who started them!
One thing we have definitely noticed- as will you if you start paying attention to your email - most of the stuff comes from the same people! Last month they were promoting one thing. This month it's something else.
WHY?
Should you bother to ask them, they will tell you it's because they didn't make any money in that other program. But then they will go on to assure you this latest one is IT! This is the program we're all going to get rich with.
But it doesn't happen, and will never happen. There's an old saying: There's no such thing as a free lunch! Any time you get involved in one of these schemes the only thing that will happen is you will be out of your hard-earned money!
How to quickly determine whether an "opportunity" really exists"
The quickest method we have come up with is to request the sender email or fax us a copy of their personal earnings before we make any decision. IF it's really legitimate, and IF they are really making any money with it, they should be happy to respond. (However, we've done this literally hundreds of times, because of the volume of email we receive, and we have NEVER, NOT EVEN ONE TIME ever received a response from the sender! Kind of tells you something, doesn't it?)
This isn't to say ALL programs are bogus- there ARE some good programs out there, but they are few and far between.
And they don't offer money for nothing! And they're NOT free! True MLMs all provide something of value (products or services) in return for money spent. They also do not, and by federal law CANNOT "guarantee" you will make even one thin dime if you join them. They may show you "potential earnings", but they MUST tell you earnings are based on individual effort, and are not guaranteed. That is the law in this country!
In the final analysis, you should especially be very, very skeptical of any program that promises a lot of money for very little effort. It ain't gonna happen!
