I Am An Internet Marketer, Hear Me Boast!

‘I am an Internet Marketer’, the man in the bar says. Or maybe some friend of a friend claims to be an Online Entrepreneur. “Ooh”, you exclaim, and think to yourself that person must be a real genius, and undoubtedly highly successful. But don’t be fooled.
There is a huge difference between someone who boasts about being an Internet Marketer, and someone who actually earns a decent living from it. In fact, if you want to tell people you are an Internet Marketer, but would feel ashamed to simply lie about it, you can become one in less than 10 minutes.
Follow these easy steps…
1. Go on Google and search for ‘weight loss supplements’.
2. Click on one of the displayed results and look to see if they have an affiliate program, or offer commission for promoting their miracle products (same thing really). If they do, then sign up and copy the ‘affiliate link’ they provide for you.
3. Open a Blogger account (just Google ‘Blogger.com’). Follow the simple instruction and create a new blog. Call it ‘Lose 10lbs in 3 Days’. In the body of your new blog, just write ‘I can’t believe how much weight I lost using this miraculous weight loss marvel’. Then paste in the affiliate link you got from the other site. Now publish your blog.
Congratulations…you are now officially an Internet Marketer. In under 10 minutes.
Will you make any money? No. Will you make as much money as 99% of other Internet Marketers? Yes. And that will be exactly $0 and 0 cents.

Does Anyone Ever Make Money From Internet Marketing?
Yes. But it is not an easy task.
The lure of internet marketing is easy to see. You can work from home and all you need is a computer and internet connection…which nearly everyone has these days. But it is never as simple as that. If it was, every office building in the world would be fairly empty.
Internet marketing is a highly competitive industry. If you have little investment to begin with the task will be even more arduous. It is possible to start with a tiny budget, but it may take a long time before you ever see any success. And there can be a lot to learn.
If this has put you off the idea, then good, you probably were not cut out for it anyway. But if you are determined to prove everyone wrong and actually make a career with online marketing then best of luck. Now all you have to do is find some assistance.
Hoping to be a millionaire this time next week? Why not try entering ‘make money online’ into Google? There should be plenty of websites in the results ready to take your money…

Facebookmembers.com A.K.A. How to Lose All Your Facebook Friends

I have a question for you. When is a Facebook application not a Facebook
application?

Answer: When it is a site I recently had the misfortune to stumble across. Let me tell
you a little bit about Facebookmembers.com…

The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Facebookmembers.com is a particularly malevolent website that purposes to be an
actual Facebook application. But it is not really an application at all. It is a cleverly
disguised marketing scam.

The site masquerades as a realistic-looking Facebook page. It uses the same page
layout as Facebook and even the fonts used on the page are identical to those used
on the official Facebook site. Of course the scammers behind this scheme are not
stupid (they just think the readers are) and they include a miniscule disclaimer at the
bottom of the page announcing that Facebook members.com is not officially affiliated
to the real Facebook.

This disclaimer is small enough to be classified as bacterial. Not only is it tiny, it is
in a grey font that is barely distinguishable from the white page background. For
anyone not studying the page through a microscope it would be easily missed, but it
serves its purpose as a legal get-out clause for the scammers.

Apparently This Is NOT Another Pyramid Sales Scam!

Using a very strong magnifying glass, I also noticed the disclaimer stated this is
not an MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) scheme. What a load of rubbish! The ancient
Egyptians could not have created a more obvious pyramid.

I will give you a brief overview of how the scheme supposedly works and you can
decide if you agree that this is not MLM:

You start a Facebook group invite all your friends to it. They will then be encouraged
to sign up for the Pro version of Facebookmembers.com. If they have had recent
lobotomies they may invite all their friends too. And so forth. If anyone of the friends
you invite (or your friends’ friends) sign up to the Pro version, you get commission.

So you earn commission from generating leads and from the leads they then
generate. I may be wrong but this form of commission-based sales hierarchy sounds
like the exact definition of a pyramid scheme (which is technically illegal).

Everyone’s a Winner (Everyone Called Facebookmembers.com)

Facebookmembers.com has two options: Free and Pro. As expected with this sort of
scam the site tells you that the free version is brilliant and will earn you up to $350,
but no more than that. But the Pro version (costing a measly $39) has the potential
to earn you enough money to buy the moon.

As is common marketing scam practice, the particle-sized disclaimer states the site
does not guarantee any actual financial gain (such a lot of information in such a
small space). But the sales pitch boasts that if 50 people sign up for the Pro version
you will receive a $350 payment.

So Facebookmembers.com makes $1600 profit here. But what is to stop them from
saying you have failed to reach the 50 new signups limit and not pay you a penny?
How would you know? And the site does not mention any payment for Pro signups
fewer than 50. Very clever!

Then there is the small matter of persuading your friends to sign up. You may have
been daft enough to waste $39 on the Pro version, but can you seriously say you
know 50 people gullible enough to fall for this same scam, especially when it gets its
cheating behind uncovered?

Happy Smiley Fake People

The bottom of the site’s main sales page has a host of alleged testimonials all
praising the wonders of Facebookmembers.com. It does not take a genius to realize
these are faked. The pictures besides these sickly acrimonious comments are not
the sort of realistic profile pictures you would expect to find on a real Facebook
profile.

The images are probably ripped straight from online stock photography sites and the
glowing testimonials are undoubtedly the work of the product creators. I will say that
they have done a half decent job of trying to make the comments look realistic, right
down to the use of emoticon-based symbols explaining overwhelming happiness.
But it is still nothing more than self-satisfied, back-slapping, high-fiving, fictitious
trickery.

And If All of This Was Not Enough

The site kindly provides even more proof that this is nothing more than a marketing
scam – a barrage of cheap, tacky, uninventive pop-ups as you try to hastily exit the
site.

Remember the massive carpet bombing tactics used in the first Gulf War named
Operation Shock and Awe, designed to batter the opposition into early submission?
Well this is Operation Annoy and Irritate.

Designed to break your will to live, these pop-ups offers ask you if you are really
sure you wish to leave (your answer should be yes). They even pretend to show you
how to leave and exit the exit pop-ups, but this is nothing more than a stalling tactic
allowing the site to make a desperate effort to get you to click on an affiliate offer, so
they can at least make something from your visit.

It is all designed to confuse and if you are not careful you end up being redirected to
another marketing scam offer page.

Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts

Facebookmembers.com is a new breed of marketing scam and maybe it is a sign of
things to come. This brazen con is piggybacking on the success of Facebook and
while is claims not to be affiliated with the actual site (albeit in the minutest of terms),
it does its very best to make its offer look like it belongs to the actual Facebook site.

Facebookmembers.com (should that be .con?) has a slogan that reads, ‘For
facebook members from facebook members (sic)’. If the people behind this scam
are indeed Facebook members they are guaranteed to be the people that you barely
knew at school, never really liked, but insist they want to be your friend. They are the
Facebook undesirables and I urge you never to befriend them and stay well clear of
their fake scam marketing site.

Four Internet Marketers Play the ‘Get Rich Quick’ Game

Four internet marketers sit round their favorite board game: ‘Get Rich Quick'. One of the marketers blows on the two dice in his hand and rolls them across the board. The dice stop – both shows a 2. The marketer punches the air and whoops with delight, he has rolled a double and can now begin on his road to riches.
Rolling again, the marketer gets a 4 and a 3. He moves his gold Lamborghini Diablo board piece 7 spaces, landing on a square marked ‘eBay Fortune’. He receives a ‘Scam’ card. “Yes”, he cries, knowing that if he collects the remaining three ‘Scam’ cards, namely ‘Amazon Riches’, ‘Craigslist Assassin’ and ‘Adsense Arbitrage’, he stands to receive a huge windfall.
The next marketer has already started and is well along the board. Her next roll totals 11 and she moves her little Beverly Hills Mansion piece along 11 spaces, ending up on an ‘Opportunity’ square. “Ooh!” proclaim the other 3 marketers, all excited to see the outcome. An ‘Opportunity’ square means the marketer gets to select a card from the ‘Opportunity’ pile and stands the chance of fast cash.
The card is slowly picked up and cautiously turned over. Shrieking “Oh my God!” the marketer turns the card around so the others can see what is written:
You set up a recurring monthly payment scam without customers realizing. They thought it was a onetime payment. Collect $250 a turn, for the next 5 turns, until the customers notice.
“Awesome!” exclaims the next marketer and picks up the dice and throw a 5 and 2. His tiny luxury yacht moves 7 spaces from the previous square and lands on one labeled, ‘Over-priced Twitter Marketing Guide’. The marketer instantly hands over $100 and buys an ‘Unsolicited Bulk Email’ chip to place on the square. He knows that if anyone else lands on his Twitter product square they will now be hit for an extra $500 payment.
The fourth marketer is currently sitting pretty with 2 product cards and over $2000 in cash. She won most of this by selecting an ‘Opportunity’ card that awarded her $1500 for selling customer’s email addresses to porn and gambling sites. She has just thrown 5 and has landed on the dreaded ‘Rags or Riches’ square.
The other marketers sit nervously as she picks up the card. Hand trembling, she slowly turns it over to reveal her fate…
‘Google has removed all your websites for being misleading and lacking in quality – lose all products. Your marketing career is over!’
The marketer throws down the card and storms out of the room.
The game continues until there are only two marketers left. 10 minutes earlier, the third marketer lost everything when he unveiled a ‘Rags or Riches card that read:
‘All your websites have been found to contain stolen content and you have been accused of violating copyright laws. You are facing multiple large fines and/or a jail sentence. Forfeit everything. Your marketing career is over!’
Out of the two marketers left, one is clearly in the lead. He has over $6000, 4 products and 3 ‘Scam’ cards. He has been continuously calling the other marketer a ‘loser’ for over 10 minutes and now accuses her of ‘being too moralistic and honest to ever survive in this industry’. He has just rolled 11 and landed on a ‘Rags or Riches’ square.
“Yeah baby! You make your own luck in this game. This will be a winner for sure!” the marketer boasts, as he picks up the card and turns it over. The card reads:
‘Your email provider has received over 1000 spam complaints and blacklisted your domain and IP address. And your Adsense Arbitrage product has resulted in customer’s Adsense accounts being deleted. They all want their money back. Lose everything. Your marketing career is over!’
Exploding with rage, the marketer jumps to his feet with such force that he knocks over a bowl of Cheetos and spills his Dr Pepper all over the carpet. Suddenly panicking, he cries “My mom will kill me!” and runs out of his bedroom to find a cloth to clean up the mess.
The last remaining triumphant marketer allows herself a wry, self-satisfied smile. She knew she would win. She deserved to win. After all she took all the chances. Yes, she lost all her products after landing on a ‘Busted!’ square and being penalized for providing a genuine guarantee. And though she did lose the bulk of her cash when she landing on a product square owned by another marketer (who had added a ‘Fake Time Sensitive Offer’ feature to the square), she was still the only one to make a profit and survive.
As she left the bedroom, moving aside to allow the other marketer to frantically run past with cloth in hand, she looked down at the $1 in her hand. “$1 dollar is still better than $0” she thought. Until she realized her bus ticket home would be $2…
Moral of the story: In a game where everyone playing is a cheat, no one really prospers!