 |
It sickens me when I see websites and TV commercials that scream how easy it is to make money online. Yes, according to them, it’s very simple and within a month or so you’ll be living the high life — fast cars, cool houses, mai tais on the beach. Not.
Here’s the truth about starting a small business whether online or off. It’s hard work. Overnight success takes years to happen. You will endure lots of failures (hopefully small!) along the way. But success will come to you if you define a path and take action.
But I know that many of you need help spotting what’s shifty and what’s for real so I was really thrilled when I happened upon Mark Cunningham’s site The Business Mindset. He wrote an eight part series called “How to Spot a Scam.” I’ve highlighted the topics he covers in the list below. It would be worth your while to set aside some time to read the entire series. Update: For some reason Mark’s website won’t load anymore, but here are the highlights.
How to Spot A Scam: Part 1 — An overview of things to watch out for that scream scam like not telling you exactly what the business will offer and requesting money in advance.
How to Spot A Scam: Part 2 — Scamsters will play on your emotions. They tap into deep rooted fear and greed to push you to take action.
How to Spot a Scam: Part 3 — Scarcity and time pressure are two keys to getting you to dive in without doing your due diligence. These are common sales tactics.
How to Spot a Scam: Part 4 –Be wary of typical results. Yours may in fact be entirely different. Having the same results as someone else means you would have to do exactly the same thing they did.
How to Spot a Scam: Part 5 — Being dubbed the “chosen one” or invited to be a part of an “exclusive” club is something to be cautious about.
How to Spot a Scam: Part 6 — Hype about “living the dream” and working one or two hours a day for a start up are totally unrealistic.
How to Spot a Scam: Part 7 — Can you reach those people? Does their contact info look professional? Do they respond to you in a timely fashion?
How to Spot a Scam: Part 8 — If you here the term “turn key” business, be skeptical. Rarely is a business totally turn key. All businesses require hard work.
So there you go! Do you have any tips to add? Please leave a comment.
A good, legitimate way to make money on line is the passive income model. I give you the straight skinny in my free passive income guide. Get your copy today.
About Denise O'Berry
The truth is there is no quick “trick” to being successful. It takes hard work, creativity, dedication, and the right strategies for success.
I went to a business coaching seminar with Brad Sugars and the coaches there teach you exactly that. They have a ton of experience and can give some pointers that really do work. I paid for my tickets to go to the event, but there’s a site that is giving them out for free. http://coachmybusiness.net. It’s through Action Coach. I definitely got a lot out of it and I think your readers would too.
Very good article. In the case of the Google Money Kit, they also provided very little tangible information which described what the investor (or victim) would actually be doing. Also this information didn’t make sense. They just said the user would be “putting up links”. Putting up what links? Doesn’t Google have its own automated system for this? Why would the god of IT need to pay small-time business owners to put links up for them when their own software could do it faster, cheaper and more reliably? When looking at these topics you need to scrutinize them to see if they make sense as well. You can find more information on this at http://www.engineer-a-business.com/index.php/articlelist/67
One of the biggest challenges facing people today that are looking for a legitimate get rich quick scheme is that many of them are not aware of the multiple tactics that scam artists use to persuade people to buy into their offers.