The easiest thing to find online are products that scam people out of their money. There are a lot of ways that this can happen. Make money online and Internet business scams are all over the place. In order to make residual income, you need to think long term and be legit. Here are just a couple of ways people have been scammed.

Free Trials:

This is where they get you to sign up for a free trial for some money making program but where you also have to enter your credit card for some monthly subscription where you can “cancel anytime”. Most of the time, these monthly subscriptions aren’t up front. They are usually in the fine print. You would think that canceling these things are easy. Not always. Sometimes you will have to go through a lot of crap to get your credit information removed from their system.

Here’s a way to avoid these things. If it’s really a free trial, then you shouldn’t have to supply them with any credit card information. This isn’t always an option though. However, many of them are actually legitimate meaning they will tell you up front that there will be a monthly fee. The problem is that most people forget to cancel their subscription. What you can do is see if you can go through the cancellation process in advanced. You will want to see if they have a phone number where you can contact them directly. Email is okay but they can always say they never received it. Another thing to look for is payments through Paypal. Since you can cancel without even having to call the company, using Paypal makes things very convenient as well as safe.

Crap Products:

There are a TON of products out there that many people recommend that are just crap. Why do people recommend these products? Because they make money off of it. For many people who try to make an income online, they will tell you anything to get you to buy the products they recommend even if they have never tried it out themselves. These products are normally either not useful to the buyers, or they are just an introductory product that will lead to higher priced products.

One popular type of crap products that people by is those stupid make money online or internet business ebooks where you make money by getting other people to buy the ebooks about making money. How does that even make sense? If the ebooks are really that good, why not just use the information in them to make money online with an internet business? Oh right, because the ebooks are full of garbage. These are similar to MLM’s where in order to make money, you need to sell the concept to someone else in order for them to do the same thing you are doing. Can you make money? Sure you can, but where is the value? Whatever it is you are promoting, when it comes to making money, that product of yours should be able to make your customers money on its own and not have to rely on them to sell the same crap to other people.

Be Ethical

If you are going to make money with an internet business, you need to be ethical. This means if you recommend a product, it should be something you actually used yourself and would recommend to your best friend. Always, always, always put the interest of your visitors first. If you find a product that you can make a lot of money on by getting your visitors to buy it but you don’t use it yourself or you think it sucks, then DON’T recommend it.

Take the products I recommend on this site for example, 3 of them (The Keyword Academy, 7 Minute Articles, and Hostgator). I use them all and I have recommended them to my friends as well. If you won’t recommend it to your own friends, don’t recommend it to strangers.

Don’t use tricks. Tricking people by getting them to sign up for crappy programs or tricking them into getting into some hidden fees is just wrong. There are already a ton of internet scams so you don’t need to add to the problem. You may make some quick money but it’s not going to last. Karma is really a b*tch.

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