Tired of reading biased reviews from Sitesell affiliates that plague the first page in the search results? If you did a search for Site Build It scam, you’ll see that nearly half of the top 10 sites you see have the words “sitebuildit” in the actual domain. The company would only allow this if it’s a positive review which makes the reviews on those sites biased and untrustworthy. Another two, including the paid ad at the very top, is from Sitesell itself which of course will praise their service. Another one is from the owner of the company so, again, another biased review. So of the 10 results, 8 of them are from people associated with SBI as of the time of this writing.

If you’re reading this, then you’re likely looking to see if this program is worth the money and want an honest review. Well, you’ve finally found one that will tell you why you don’t want to buy SBI. Since this program/hosting company is about creating income, you are right to want to research and find out more about it. There are so many scams on the internet that it’s ridiculous. Let’s get started.

Is Site Build It a Scam?

A scam, by definition, means that all customers get ripped off. It also means that deceitful tactics are used in order to lure customers in. So according to that, Site Build It is not a scam. It’s basically a hosting company that gives you different tools in order to help you create a website, drive traffic to it, and make money. The main purpose of even signing up for something like this is to simply make money.

Now anything that involves making money will produce “praisers” and “haters”. The praisers are the ones who swear by the program and recommend it to all of their friends. The haters are the ones who bash the program calling it a scam and try to steer people away from it. It’s often hard to tell which side you should listen to since everyone has their own unique experiences but in the case of SBI, here are a few things you will want to consider.

What Site Build It Teaches

SBI teaches you to create a website about something you have a passion for. Although this sounds like a solid plan, if the only thing you are passion about is something that few others even care about, chances are, you’re not going to make money.

They teach you to create quality content and keep writing more and more content and you will make money. Although quality content is really important, just writing content won’t get you anywhere on the internet, at least not anytime soon. You will need to build links and although they teach this as well, it’s not emphasized enough. In fact, it’s downplayed enough where many SBI owners who have had their site for years still don’t know how important links are. They do offer a link exchange program but if you know anything about links, one way links are way better than reciprocal links.

Their Website Builder

One of the things that turn a lot of people off from wanting to build a profitable website is the thought of having to “program” and design a website. With SBI, you don’t really need to know much. They provide you with a website building template that makes creating pages somewhat easy. They also provide a forum for you to ask any questions you want. Just don’t complain too much or they’re pounce on you. You also get a mailing program to send out ezines to your list of subscribers.

The bad thing about their site builder is that it’s years behind other platforms like WordPress. If you look at just 10 SBI sites, you’ll notice that they all have pretty much the same structure. The SBI sites that look completely different are the ones built by people who know coding or people who hired someone to design their site for them. Honestly, if you know how to design your own sites, don’t bother with SBI. With WordPress, anyone with no experience can make a site that looks 100 times more attractive than a typical SBI site in under 10 minutes.

Price of Site Build It Website

Now the cost of SBI is the main cause of why there are so many sites with the heading SBI scam or Site Build It scam that offer real reviews. The cost for one website with this company is $299 a year. For that amount of money, you can get one hosting account and run about 22 websites. Of course, you won’t have the support or the tools that SBI offers but unless you’re a total beginner, you probably don’t need the tools anyway.

Is the $299/year Worth It?

The fact is that in order to make money online with websites, you need to be able to pick the right niches and build links. That’s it. The main goal is to get your webpages to rank #1 in the search engines in order to drive traffic to your site and make you money. So no, Site Build It is not a scam like some people are calling it.

Is it overpriced? Well, that depends. If the thought of searching around the internet and tinkering with WordPress themes is enough for you to not even want to get started, then $25/month or $299 a year is worth it if that will at least get you to get started in this business. However, there are plenty of forums and videos that can help you set up WordPress sites so unless you’re just extremely lazy, there’s not a huge advantage with going with SBI because learning how to use their site builder will take just as much time as learning how to upload and tweak WordPress themes. You also have way more flexibility with WordPress as well.

Are SBI’s Tools Worth the Price?

Anyone can start a website for less than $20 (hosting and domain), but unless you know what you are doing, you’re not going to get very far. One of SBI’s selling points is that they provide you with tools you wouldn’t get from a $10/month hosting company.

They have tools that will help you brainstorm for site ideas, find niches and low competition keywords, built in traffic analyzer, email marketing software and so on. They also have a long action guide that takes you through their system of building and making money with a website. Do you really need these things? In my opinion, no. I bet most Site Built It owners rarely use those tools after they find the niche they want to build their site in.

The silliest thing about their over-hyped tools is that if you want to buy a second SBI site, you’ll still have to pay $299 a year. Why? You have the tools from the first site, why make you pay the same price for a second? They want to make money off of newbies, that’s why. They also have these specials where you can buy one SBI site and get the second for free of for half off which is just a marketing ploy to get you to buy more than one site so that when the year is up, you’ll have to fork up $600 to renew both sites.

FREE Alternatives

To look for keyword and niche ideas, you can use Google Adwords Keyword Tool, it’s free. To analyze your traffic, you can use Google Analytics or Statcounter, also free and both give you way more insight into your traffic. For email marketing, you could use Mail Chimp, also free for up to 2,000 subscribers (most SBIers will never get this many).

Another Big Issue with SBI – Transfers

Say you buy a Site Built It site and you outgrow them. You don’t need their tools or any of their support and want to transfer your site to another hosting company. Guess what? They don’t make it easy. They have no problem unlocking your site but their interface is terrible.

For most other hosting companies, all you need to do is get the database file that has all of your site’s info and content and make the transfer. Easy. With SBI though, you basically have to go in and copy the content from every single page of your site. This makes it tedious and prevents people from switching in fear that they might mess up and ruin their site or not do all of this fast enough and lose money.

A Much Better Alternative to Site Build It

A much cheaper choice as well as much more highly advanced in terms of producing results is to sign up for The Keyword Academy for FREE. You can read my Keyword Academy review about this program for more details. This is the community that I’m a part of. It was the best decision I have ever made.

Putting up a website is easy, anyone can do that. Making residual income off of your websites however, is something only a small percentage of people are able to do. If you feel that SBI is right for you, then go for it. I wouldn’t recommend buying a second SBI site though. It’s a huge waste of money. If you think you have the ability to learn how to create a website with WordPress, then signing up for the Keyword Academy is a much better choice. It’s free for the first month. So stop searching for the term Site Build It scam since most site rankings are affiliates giving biased reviews anyway and start creating websites today in order to build residual income and free yourself from needing a job.

If you’re searching the term Market America scam then you have probably been approached by one of their reps. Is Market America a scam? If not, is it worth investing the time and money? Before getting into that, let’s look at a company itself. Started in 1992 by a former Amway distributor, Market America has since grown into a pretty sizable company. Their main products deal with health and skincare. So number one is that this company has a product which is a good thing. Pyramid schemes normally don’t have a product and if they do, it’s something useless. It’s more of a front to look legit.

Of course, just having real products doesn’t mean much. What you want to look at is whether or not the products they promote are being sold at a price that normal, everyday people will buy. The prices of the products are more expensive than what you can find out in the stores. However, the claim is that the products are higher in quality. All MLM companies say that.

Looking at the compensation plan, you will see that they follow a binary system. In order to join the company, you will need to purchase business center and products. The levels vary but you can easily spend over $1,000 to get started. Each month, you are required to purchase 50BV. The BV is just a point system. Each product has a number of BV attached to it. In terms of real dollars, you’re looking at about $130 a month.

As you can see, this is a typical network marketing company. In order to be successful with Market America or any other network marketing company, you will need to be able to recruit people into your organization. The focus isn’t on selling the products to real consumers. The focus is on getting recruits and having them buy the products on a monthly basis. The more people you have in your organization, the more money you will make.

Like many MLM companies, they have celebrities speak at their conventions such as Scottie Pippen. The whole point of this is to give the company more credibility. Although, what does being a celebrity have to do with being a smart business person? By the way, being a guest speaker at MLM conventions is big money.

So is Market America a scam? The answer is no. Like all other popular network marketing companies out there, the company sells real products. They market their business as an unfranchise since you don’t have the overhead costs of regular franchises. The biggest challenge that anyone joining this company will face is getting enough people into their downline. The whole point of that is the more people you have in your organization, the more products will get sold because everyone is forced to purchase products on a monthly basis. Reps will claim that Market America hasn’t had a down quarter. If you think about it, this makes sense. As more and more people get recruited, more and more products are bought which is great for the company. Just don’t be surprised when or if you find out that most people fail to make more than a person working for minimum wage.

If you want to learn how to make real money using the internet without having to recruit anyone and seeing your friends and family as dollar signs, then you can do so for FREE for the 1st month. This is how I learned to make the residual income that most network marketers can only dream of.

Internet Marketing Course

Usana is a nutritional company that sells vitamins and other health related products under a network marketing model. The term Usana Scam is something that many people have been searching for online in order to become better informed about this particular MLM company. So is Usana a scam? Well, under what the law states as a scam, Usana is not a scam. However, this doesn’t mean that you should jump aboard its ship. Let’s take a look at what is really going on behind the scene of this multi-level marketing company.

As with all make money opportunities, the best thing to do is to do your research before getting involved. This only makes sense. Just because your friend tells you an opportunity is sound and will make you money, it doesn’t mean that it will. The problem with going online and searching for terms like Usana fraud or scam is that you will inevitably run into websites or forum that are dominated by people who have failed in the business and never even gave it a real try. This isn’t just for Usana, it’s for all MLM companies. Now on the other hand you will find reviews that are written by Usana reps which can be quite bias especially if the title of their site led you to believe that you were going to read about how Usana is a scam.

Update: Numbers are showing that the Usana business is declining due to former execs leaving the company and starting a new one. This has caused many top distributors of Usana to jump ships and join the new company, Ariix.

So let’s make it clear: Usana Health Sciences, by definition, isn’t a scam. Unlike those ponzi schemes where the only product is money that is being passed around from new members to older members, Usana makes money by selling products. If you look at their stock prices over the past 10 years, you will see that prior to the economy taking a turn, they increased their earnings every single quarter. So how were they able to do this? By selling products. But who exactly do they sell these products to? That’s right, recruits. Obviously, they have customers as well but the majority of their products sold every month is to recruits who need to buy the products in order to make a commission. This is called the “pay to play” structure where in order to qualify for a commission, you need to buy a certain amount of products from the company each and every month.

If you think about it, this is a genius idea. What better way to ensure that your products get sold than to force your reps to buy it from you? Of course, like any other network marketing company, they will say their reason for having this requirement is that it doesn’t make sense for a rep to be selling something that they don’t use themselves. This may sound like a great answer but Usana also claims that their vitamins are superior to their competitors and that’s why they can charge so much for their products; it’s just that good.

At this point, this Usana scam article may be confusing you. Is Usana a scam or not? The answer is, no, but it depends. It depends on how the reps go about recruiting people. If you were told that this business doesn’t take a lot of work and that you can retire within a year, then you may want to investigate a bit more. Yes, it’s possible to retire within a year with MLM but it’s also possible to retire within 1 minute with a lottery ticket.

The fact is that to be successful at anything takes hard work and time. Are there ways to quick riches? Sure, but it doesn’t guarantee that the money you make is sustainable.

If you are reading this article, them most likely, you searched for Usana scam to find out if Usana is a scam or not. This means that you must of been approached by a friend or learned about this company online somewhere. If that’s the case, you are wondering if you should join Usana or not. Well, this may help you decide.

Different Usana Network Marketing Groups

There are several different groups in Usana or any other network marketing company. The first group consists of people who make money by selling the products to one customer at a time. They hope the customers will like the product enough to go on automatic shipment every month in order to make residual income. This way can make you money but it will take a long, long time; long enough to make most people quit.

The second group consists of people who put on presentations and have reps invite their friends to these presentations. The presentation itself can be ran in various ways. The most basic, and probably least effective way, is to just give information about the company. It’s just a quick 30 minute presentation that shows you the opportunity and if you want to sign up, good. If not, that’s it. Another type of presentation which is much more successful, uses psychological tactics.

Everything from how the reps dress to what type of music is played, to the length of the presentation, to how you are asked to join at the end is all planned out to strategically get you to sign up as a member. Does it work? Yes. Is it ethical? Depends on your definition of ethical. If the intention of the Usana reps is good but they designed the environment in a way to influence your decision, is it ethical? After all, once you’re in Usana MLM or any other MLM, you will believe that it’s your duty to help other “escape” the rat race called a job. In their minds, they are doing you a favor even if they lied to get you to the presentation.

The 3rd group consists of people who do all of the recruiting online. They set up websites and join forums and buy network marketing leads. Many people like this approach better because they don’t have to ever meet their downline or attend weekly presentations and trainings. Plus, they don’t have to bother their friends.

Here’s the bottom line of this so called “Usana Scam”:

How to Make Money with Usana – Recruit. Whether you do the recruiting or motivate your downline to do the recruiting, it doesn’t matter. Someone, somewhere needs to be recruiting.

The question you’re asking yourself is, “should I join Usana?” If you are okay with the fact that the company is making most of its money from getting its recruits to buy their products every month, then you should consider joining. You’ll make a lot of positive friends especially if you’re doing this the traditional way (i.e. not online).

If you are okay with the fact that most of the people/friends you recruit will fail to make much money with this business, then you should join. The reason most will fail is that most people won’t put in the work and time necessary. This may be caused by the illusion they were given when they joined that making money in Usana is going to be a walk in the park. The fact is that Usana is no different than being in sales but since the products are so good that they it sells itself, you don’t have to worry if you are bad at sales. Although, it’s funny how they require their reps to buy the products on a monthly basis. If the products were really worth the price, see prices here, wouldn’t reps buy the products anyway? Apparently not. Also, most reps aren’t able to sell these vitamins without attaching a business to it. Just go to Ebay and you’ll find a ton of people selling their Usana vitamins from the Healthpak 100 to the regular bottles for a deep discount to reduce their loss. Why buy it at wholesale prices when you can get it for “at loss” prices?

If you are okay with hiding what you really do to people who ask you what you do and instead come up with fancy titles like “director of marketing” even though you’re really just a sales rep, then you should join. Most recruits are told to be general when it comes to answering questions about what they do because most people wouldn’t understand until they come to a presentation.

If you are okay with people accusing you of being part of a scam, then you should join. Again, Usana Health Sciences is not a scam but because it does involve a business opportunity for people to make money, there will be those who will take advantage of others and give the company, and the MLM industry a bad name.

If this sounds like too much for you, then maybe it is. This Usana scam article is written only to give you a better understanding of what this business opportunity is about. Am I in Usana or any other MLM? No. I make my money through internet marketing. I like to do things where I can proudly tell people exactly what I do if they ask even if I don’t make a lot of money yet. I don’t look at people with dollar signs in my eyes and think of them as potential recruits. I am not forced to buy anything I don’t really want. If I really wanted something, I’d buy it regardless of a requirement.

Network marketing truly is a powerful way to make residual income. However, it’s not for everyone. If you’re not okay with any of the stuff I wrote about in this article, I suggest to look elsewhere. Never put money ahead of everything else in your life and you will find that you will make ethical decisions and have better peace of mind. Hopefully, this Usana scam article was helpful to you.

Since you are interested in making money, if Usana or MLM doesn’t seem like something you want to do, perhaps you should try internet marketing. This is what I do to build residual income. No recruiting involved, no selling to friends, and it’s truly my own business.

Since you are searching for Vector Marketing scam I’m assuming that you got a flyer or got something in the mail for this job opportunity where you can make $17 an hour or however much it says on the flyer and you’re wondering if this is too good to be true. Let’s take a closer look at this “job” opportunity.

The Pay

Basically, you are not getting paid by the hour. You really get paid from how many kitchen products you sell. The dollar amount represents per appointment which can be 15 minutes or even several hours. This means that if you do 40 presentations and make less than the amount they are advertising that you would make, then they will give you the difference. The amount will vary from state to state. The commission you can make will normally be greater than the base pay as you do more presentations. Each presentation will be about an hour long so in way it’s sort of a per hour pay but not really. You can do 20 presentations, stop, and never see a dime. Correction: Things have changed. You can make the base pay even if you do just 1 demo for the week and not sell anything. However, the demo must be done in front of “qualified” customers (married, full-time job, over 30, owns a house, have kids). This might vary from office to office.

Note: Different offices have different managers who run their business differently. I’m sure there are many managers who are completely honest and advertise the job as it really is while others might not. All of the horror stories you read online about Vector are most likely from people who happened to come across the bad apples of the company. Keep this in mind as you read the rest of the article.

The Hiring Process

So is Vector Marketing a scam? Well, in theory, no, it’s not. However, their marketing tactics can sometimes be a bit misleading depending on how the managers at certain offices are running their business. Most people go into an interview thinking this is a job where they will get paid by the hour only to find out that it’s really a commission sales job. Unless if you don’t speak English or come in dressed like a bum, you will probably get the second interview (group) and eventually a “job” offer.

You will then usually go through 3 days of unpaid training where you will be taught how to give the sales presentations. During the training, you will be asked to write down the names of everyone you know from friends, family, to neighbors. The reason for this is that these are the people you will be calling to set up appointments to do the presentation to.

After each presentation, you will then ask for referrals and eventually, you will be doing presentations to friends of friends. Since you can always say “so and so referred me to you”, you will still have that trust factor. Why else would anyone let you in when you’re holding a bag of knives? Flyers for Vector Marketing jobs can be found all over college campuses.

The Product

So why does this company sell these Cutco knives, the brand, and kitchen products this way? The reason is because the price of these products makes them extremely hard to sell at the store. When was the last time you even considered buying knives for this much? As you can see here, the prices aren’t cheap.

The quality is top notch though, or is it? Now because of the price tag, they rely on using you as a trust factor to sell to your friends and family. People will buy even if they really don’t want to just to support you.

Can I Make Money with Vector?

Now since you are searching for Vector Marketing scam, this tells me that you are looking for a job. Can you make money selling knives? Yes, like with other sales jobs, if you’re good, you can make bank. By the way, you will also need to get a sample kit to do your presentations which will usually require a deposit which is refundable. Looks like they recently took this deposit requirement out due to so many complaints over the years. You can now just borrow the sample kit.

Realize that this is a sales position where you will get paid based on how many products you sell. If you are looking for a sure way to make money and you just suck at sales, then you’re probably better off working at McDonald’s. The upside is that you will have a chance to improve your sales skills if that’s what you want and if you’re actually good at it, you can make a lot of money selling these knives, more than most of your friends your age. You will also learn a lot of personal development skills as well. Not all sales companies will take the time to teach you self improvement skills but Vector will for the most part depending on what office you work in. For some, this alone can be life changing.

Just like anything else in life, if you want to be successful, you need to put in the work. People who work hard at this company do make a decent income. But since this is a sales job, only a small percentage of people have what it takes. This is why the turn over rate is so high. Most of the people you go to training with will probably drop out within the first month.

An Alternative

Since you are looking to make money, you may want to get into internet marketing. If you don’t mind writing articles about different types of topics, then you can actually build a good amount of residual income, enough to retire on if you put in the work. This is what I do personally. The reason you are even reading this is because I was able to get this article ranked high enough in the search engine for the term Vector Marketing scam for you to find it. Like a sales job, you won’t get paid by the amount of time you put in. However, you do get residual income which is the most powerful form of income there is. This means you are able to make money even while you sleep. Think about how you make money with a savings account and you’ll see what I mean.

If you want to learn a step by step process in order to be successful at internet marketing, then sign up for the internet marketing course that taught me everything I know about this business. You can learn what you need to know for free. However, keep in mind that it will take a lot of work as well as patience. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme so you will need to have the right long-term mentality to make this work. So instead of searching more about the Vector Marketing scam, get a real job and do internet marketing on and side and in a few short years, perhaps by the time you finish college, you could be in a position to retire or at least work in a field purely because you love it and not because you need the money.

Feel free to comment below about your own personal experience with Vector.

Wanting to know about the Amway scam? If so, then you were probably asked by someone to be a part of this business opportunity. This means you are looking for a way to produce some money on the side. If so, then first, let me tell you a little bit about Amway and why you should think twice about joining this company. Of all the MLM companies out there, Amway is probably the most well-known since it’s been around for decades. When looking into a multi-level marketing company, one of the first things you want to look at is how long the company has been around. Dozens of companies open up and close down within the first 5 years. It would be a shame to build up all of the residual income just to see it get wiped away because the company you work for goes under.

Although Amway has been around longer than most network marketing companies, it doesn’t mean that it’s a good opportunity. In fact, since there has been so much bad publicity about this company that they started doing business under another name, Quixtar, which they then changed back to Amway after a while. Regardless of the name, one thing is clear. In order to make residual income with this company, you will need to recruit, and even then, you might not make all that much money. There as been countless stories of distributors who have reached high rankings in the company only to find out that the lifestyle they were sold on when first joining the company was all smoke and mirrors. Back in the 90′s, Amway was scrutinized for having the top level Diamonds making their money off the sales of motivation tools that were sold to Amway reps. These tools weren’t mandatory but they were seen as essential to being successful in Amway so you basically had to buy them if you were to be taken seriously.

So is Amway a scam? Well, it’s hard to say since they are still around even though they would prefer to be called by another name. Do people make money in Amway? Yes, but the majority of people who join this company don’t. If you are looking for a way to build residual income working part-time and don’t mind buying products from the company in order to show your loyalty and try to recruit everyone you see, then perhaps it could work out.

On the other hand, even if you are okay with doing these things, you still might want to think twice. The income you build up with a company that has been under a lot of investigations could possibly be wiped out if something were to happen. I guess there is a risk of this happening even with a job. The Amway scam has been talked about all over the internet for years. The images of people having products stocked up in their garage and attending countless hotel presentations are largely caused by the existence of Amway. They are a private company that has sales of over a billion dollars a year but that doesn’t mean you will have a good chance of getting a piece of that.

The bottom line is you want to make money in order to free yourself from having to work for the rest of your life. You searched for Amway scam because you wanted to know if this is a legit opportunity. That’s the wrong question to ask. What you should be asking is if this type of work is for you. If you don’t like sales, if you don’t like approaching people to recruit them, if you don’t like seeing people as walking dollar signs, then MLM isn’t for you.

Now I don’t want to leave you feeling discouraged about not finding the right business opportunity. Let me tell you what I do. I’m an internet marketer. My job is to build sites and rank them. It’s not as hard as it sounds. I have no programming skills so in terms of building sites, I just use WordPress. It’s something anyone can do. My main “work” is writing articles. So if you are okay with writing articles about things that interest you, then internet marketing could be for you. Making residual income is real and it can be achieved with this line of business. Your results will be determined by how much work you put in and not how many people you recruit. It will take time and work but the passive income you will build will be worth it.

The Amway scam or business opportunity is full of people who will tell you that MLM is the perfect business for you regardless of who you are. I’m here to tell you that internet marketing isn’t for everyone. If you hate writing and don’t have money to hire people to do it for you, then this isn’t for you.

Now if you don’t mind writing, then you can start this business by finding out exactly what you need to do by signing up for the internet marketing course. Even if you find that this isn’t for you, it’s free. If you do find that it’s for you, it’ll be a decision you won’t regret.

Did you get a job offer and are now wondering about its legitimacy? Most likely, you saw a flyer or a posting on a job site advertising that there are a bunch of positions open. Let’s cut to the chase. You searched for Kirby Vacuum scam or selling vacuums scam for a reason. Something is telling you that this “job” offer isn’t legit. So let’s take a look at what you need to know about this job position.

First off, your job will be to sell Kirby Vacuum cleaners. These vacuums, although are good in quality, sell for nearly $2,000. Your job as a sales rep is to go door to door and convince people to buy these vacuums from you. Will you make money? Sure, if you can sell. The process goes a little something like this: Once you get the offer, you will go through some training. Once that happens, you will be put on a team where you will be driven in a company van to different neighborhoods and dropped off for hours while you and your team go door-to-door. There are different methods of how this works. One is where you have the knocker. This person basically tries to convince home owners to accept a free carpet cleaning. Once this happens, the cleaners come in and demonstrate the products to the potential customer. When that is done, the closer comes in and tries the close the sale. Some reps will go door to door and do all 3 steps on their own.

Now the reason why many websites will use terms like Kirby Vacuum scam, Kirby sales scam, or Kirby Vacuum cleaner scam is because many people have felt they were lied to when they were offered the job. They were promised a lot of money but many found out that the pay is ridiculously low. This isn’t always the case though. This is a sales job after all. The more products you sell, the more money you make. Now another complaint you will find is from customers. Many have experienced very high pressure sales tactics used on them. In some cases, the home owner had to threaten to call the police in order to get the sales person to leave.

So is Kirby Vacuum a scam? No. The company has been around for nearly 100 years. The products may be a bit expensive but they’re not complete junk and actually work quite well. It’s the job position that gets people to call this company a scam. Most people won’t go to a retail store and buy a $2,000 vacuum but if they get a free carpet clean and are pressured into buying, they very well might buy. Not all sales people who work for this company are like this though.

The bottom line is this. If you want to make some money, then unless you are good at sales, you probably have a better chance working at a fast food restaurant. Search for Kirby Vacuum scam and you will find a ton of horror stories.

You searched for the Kirby Vacuum scam and were introduced to internet marketing. Maybe it’s fate. Seriously, internet marketing can change your life like it did for mine.

In the previous post, I wrote about those Free Workshop, Seminar, and Bootcamp Scams. In this post, I will be discussing the network marketing scam, also known as the MLM scam or multi-level marketing scam. Of all the residual building strategies, this is probably the most non-upfront one. What I mean by that is many people who are a part of MLM seem to not want to admit they are part of one unless they are already making a ton of money.

The reason for this is because, as a sales strategy, you don’t want to reveal you’re in one of these in fear of having to answer questions to a potential recruit if you’re not trained to do so. That and because sometimes it’s awkward if you’re pumped up about a business that you haven’t made a dime with. Another reason is the stigma network marketing has. Most people see it as a flat out scam where you get your friends and family to join and make residual income off of them. Technically, it’s true unless if you recruit online to strangers and build a whole internet business out of it.

Different Types

There are two types of recruiting strategies. One is offline – recruiting friends and their friends and their mom’s friends and anyone who makes eye contact with you. The other way is online – setting up systems and websites and network structures to sell internet surfers on the idea of your home based internet business.

A Scam or Not?

So, is MLM a scam? It depends on what you mean by scam. In the previous post, I mentioned how sometimes you could be getting scammed without even knowing it. If they are legal but the vast majority never make money, does that mean it’s a scam? If the company is legit but its sales people oversell the value, is it a scam?

Part of the reason network marketing has a bad reputation is because in the olden days, you have to buy products, stack them in your garage because you found out that no one wants to buy your junk and because it’s a company requirement. It was filled with meetings on a weeknight in people’s living rooms or hotels. There was a lot of raw raw and hype involved.

That type of MLM still exists today but more and more people are moving to the internet to do their recruiting to avoid those endless meetings and having to see everyone they meet as dollar signs. As with anything, there are the scams and there are the legitimate ones.

How to Spot MLM Scams

1. They focus on recruiting with not much focus on the product or service.

You want to represent a company that has a product you would actually recommend to your friends and family even if you weren’t getting paid. If you wouldn’t recommend it to them, then you are purposely selling people junk to make a quick buck. That doesn’t create value. Business is all about creating value if you want to stay in the game for the long term.

2. They oversell on the dream.

People join these things mainly for one reason, to make money. So how do they recruit people? They do it by selling them a dream. It’s all about appealing to people’s need for financial freedom, respect, and even love and connection. They do this by bashing on jobs, saying residual income is the best income and the network marketing is the best way to get it. They basically make you feel pain in staying the way you are and pleasure in joining them. Watch out for any exaggerated claims of making $10,000 by the 2nd month or some other large number or short amount of time.

Here’s the truth. Assuming that you joined a reputable company that truly provides something of value, it will take time for you to make decent money. The fact is that at least 90% of the people who join these things never make their money back. Of the 10% remaining, at least half of them could be making more money working at Mcdonald’s.

That being said, there is a real opportunity to make thousands of dollars every month or every week but it is a lot harder than most of these salespeople make it out to be. (They’ll never call themselves salespeople or recruiters. They all have fancy titles like “business owner”, “manager”, or “marketing directors”.)

3. The company started 2 weeks ago.

A lot of these companies will tell you the company just launched and since they are on the ground floor, this is the best time to get in. If you wait too long, you’ll be on the bottom. Don’t believe it. They may really be new, but if the company is truly legitimate, it wouldn’t matter when you join, you should still be able to make money. Generally, if you’re going to go into network marketing, you want to go with a company that has a track record. One that has been around for at least 5 years since many of these companies go bankrupt within the first few years. Building up all the residual income and seeing it all disappear will be pretty depressing.

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So network marketing is one of those ways of building residual income that requires a lot of research. Read reviews online about the company you are thinking of joining. Keep in mind that for any company you are researching on, there will be a lot of negative reviews from people who joined and failed. The biggest issue with this type of business is that it attracts a lot of money hungry, unethical people who will stretch the truth just to get you in.

Whatever the amount they say you will make in whatever time, cut the amount by at least half and double or triple the amount of time given. There are good honest people out there who make this a real business. Unfortunately, they are the minority and the rest are just out for your money.

Obviously, I’m not in any MLM companies. The way I make my money is with an internet business. More specifically, I build websites and drive traffic to them. I have no problem telling people I’m an internet marketer or that I run an online home based business. I don’t need to lie about my title or anything else.

You can learn what I do by downloading a free 2 hour video which will show you what you need to know: Massive Traffic 101 (you’ll see an article, the download link is at the end of the article.)

Final word: If you are doing something to create residual income but are ashamed to tell people, then that should be a clue that you’re not doing the right thing. You can’t lie to your conscience.

In my previous post, Avoid the Scams, I wrote about how not all scams are the easiest things to spot. In this post I want to talk about the free workshop, seminar, or bootcamp shows that are being ran all over the country.

These are those things advertised on the radio or the newspapers. Basically, a company will run some free event at some hotel to show you the secret of making money through various ways like with an internet business, real estate, stock investing, etc. These things are really just a 1-8 hour sales presentation. It can even last several days. A lot of them will tell you tickets to these events are normally several hundred dollars but you’re “special” so you get to go for free. No one really pays for these things in most cases.

The Process

So what happens is that they have some professional sales person talking to you about how he/she used to be broke or some other sad story with the point to make you connect with them. Their goal is to make you drop your guard by coming across as an honest, average guy who became successful and all he wants to do now is to give back to the community. They may even throw in the fact that their children are part of the business too and how they are so proud of them. Some might even cry right there in front of you.

Once you trust them, they start producing feelings of pain inside of you. They know that most people who go to these things are broke so they will hit you with that fact in order for you to want to “make a change” and buy their program. The price of their product or service and how they present it will depend on how long their free seminar is.

If it’s just a few hours long, they will typically sell you on some 3-day event that may cost just a few hundred dollars. If it’s already a 3-day event, they will sell their package deals that may run up to $50,000 or more depending on the business that’s being sold. You read correctly. The ones that last a few hours where they sell the 3-day event is a gradual sales technique.

How They Get You

What really happens is that instead of showing you their real prices, they will make you commit to a small price first since they know that once you put money in already, you’re more likely to put more in.

This is why the easiest people to sell to are existing customers and the way they do it is called the upsell. You experience this all the time. What do they ask you at any fast-food chain after you place an order? “Would you like fries with that?”

With these workshops, the same thing applies. At those 3-day events, they never give you enough information to actually go out and make money. Instead, they overload you with a ton of non-essential information just to confuse you.

After 3 days of this BS, once your mind is worn out, they introduce to you the “coaching” programs. They might bring up “real customers” who have made money with the program to tell you their stories about how they were just like you and just a short time ago, they were sitting in your seat, and because they made the decision to buy, they get to stand before you.

Since you already spent your time and money, you’re worn out, and you feel lost as heck, you are now the perfect victim. Those “real customers” are mostly just sales reps who get paid a commission. Even if they claim they don’t, you can be sure that they are getting rewarded in one way or another.

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There are different variations to this scam and not all of them are actual scams but like the warning signs from my previous post says, if they are promising you a quick way to riches, chances are they are full of crap.

Again, the free workshop, seminar, or bootcamp scam can vary. It can be a simple internet business program where they promise to “do everything for you” for only $100 or something. After you buy, you will find out that the ones who make the big bucks went for a larger package that cost thousands. It’s all part of the upsell. No one is going to fall for these things if they talk about the expensive packages and deals first. It’s because they start small and build up that many people fall for these scams.

In the next session, I’ll be discussing MLM or network marketing and discuss how you can spot a scam from a legitimate home based business.

Next Post: MLM Scam

When it comes to creating an internet business, or just making money online in general, there are TONS of scams out there. Many people believe that they can smell a scam a mile away and that people who fall for scams are just plain stupid.

Let’s not be too quick to judge. Scammers have gotten a lot smarter and sophisticated over the years. Many people get scammed and don’t even know they’re getting scammed. If you want to make money online, or better yet, build residual income, you need to know how to spot them to avoid wasting both money and time.

I’ll lay out some that I know of but keep in mind that there are literally tons of others and in different variations. This will be spread out over several posts. The reason I am doing this is to help you avoid the residual income opportunities that will just residually make you more broke.

What I’ll talk about in this post are some of the warning signs so that you have a base to better understand the other posts about specific scams.

The Psychology Game (Warning Signs)

Let’s face it, many of these con artists are flat out amateurs who make you wonder how anyone can possibly fall for their schemes. You know the ones I’m talking about – those “jobs” that only require you to hold money in your bank account for some company overseas that claim they are trying to expand to other countries. All you have to give them is your bank account number. “What? People actually fall for this?” Seriously, right? But the sad fact is some do.

Putting that aside, let’s talk about the professionals. These are the ones who use psychological tactics. They prey on our desire for wealth, financial freedom, power, and respect. They will use words like:

easy money, instant wealth, secret, fast cash, retire young, retire rich, security, power, fame.

They will advertise their product or service with images of exotics cars, yachts, mansions, beautiful happy people with perfect bodies and blinding white teeth, and stacks of cash.

Advertisers do this all the time. Have you ever seen a beer commercial that didn’t have a sexy woman in it? Just like how drinking beer is more likely to get you a beer belly than a night with a super model, getting these programs or products is more likely to reduce your net worth than to increase it.

When ever you see these signs, proceed with caution. That being said, the picture on this site signifies “secret”, but as I stated in a couple of my posts, there are no secrets. Everything you need to know to make residual income with an internet business and make your life the way you want it is available for you for free. You just need to take enough action to make it happen.

In the next post, I’ll be talking about the scams that rip people off anywhere from $1,000-$60,000.

Next post: Free Workshop, Seminar, Bootcamp Scam