FreshOutCreative.com

I am writing this article for one reason and one reason only – most of the internet businesses marketed as “get rich quick”, prey on people who can least afford it and to me this is morally wrong. These companies reach people who have lost their job or had some other misfortune in their life and need to find some way to replace lost income. They are probably down to their last dime and these businesses promise such gigantic rewards.

Now how did I come to these conclusions – past experience. The position I had as a contract employee unexpectedly ended during January and by the middle of February, I found myself without much money left. I posted a listing on crags’ list looking for work, as well as registered with Monster.com, Hot Jobs and several other job sites.

By the next week, I was getting all sorts of calls to sell all types of products, but all wanted too much money to buy in. Most of the others after investigation were obvious scams.

Then one evening I got a call about a product that interested me. $40 for my website, $10 a month for website maintenance, a product coach, a grant for advertising and a warranty in which I could get my money back after one year if things didn’t work out. There were 200 of these independent agents on the Better Business Bureau site and I checked out each one. Everything looked good so I closed by eyes and jumped in.

The next week a package arrived with two credit card receipts to sign, a copy of the warranty, an application for a credit card and some examples of marketing materials. The warranty was not quite what was explain to me – small details like if I cancelled before the year was up, I would owe them around $300 and I had to have at least 12 product training sessions. I also noticed that the company’s name was different; phone numbers were different as was the company address. So, I called and asked about these small problems and was told they were doing so well they had to move into bigger offices. Sounds reasonable!

I was given the name of a banker to call about my grant and told that I was to contact him. This person asked me the usual application questions – such as “monthly living expenses”, “money in the bank”, “do you have any savings” – more like a loan application than a grant.

Being the trusting person I am, I answered all the questions and several days later, I was informed that I qualified for a $10,000 grant – whoopee! I knew I could do some awesome e-marketing with that much money. (Here comes the but) But, to show good faith and belief in myself, the bankers wanted me to put up $1000 at $100 a month. Also I didn’t get a website for $40, just a URL re-directed to the company’s main website – well, it is very hard to do e-marketing on a URL re-direct. I was beginning to have suspicions and asked about the details of the grant. How was that money dispersed etc? No one could answer those simple questions for me except that they guaranteed me 9,500 unique visitors. Well, I have been doing e-market and SEO for about 10 years and that did not seem like a very good return on investment I then asked if the website had all the necessary metatags for Search Engine Optimization – no one could tell me. But against the advice of the little voice in my head, I made arrangements to start my training.

The next week all of these strange charges started showing up on my debit card. Now I am not saying these charges were from this company but it just seemed strange. $10 here, $11.99 over there – to the tune of about $100.00. It took me all week to track down all of these charges and I was able to recoup most of this money back so no real harm done.

My training was to begin on the next Saturday at 11:00 am my time and the trainer would call me. Well, guess what – no phone call. Now I am a fairly patient person but after the credit card problems and finding out that I needed to pay them another $100 a month – my last nerve got stepped on and I got very angry.

I did some very in-depth research and all the websites that were shown to me on the BBB website – were now listed with another company or just were not there. There were several complaints against this company and so I immediately cancelled my debit card. I then started calling the numbers I had – no one answered or I either got voice mail. I left a very hot message threatening an expose article – it got their attention and I got a call back within 5 minutes. This led to a very rude and threatening conversation in which I terminated the call especially since the guy named Brian refused to let me get a word in edge wise. Not a very business like manner for a VP of a savings and loan company to use. I was told they had me on tape. Now why would a company selling products to independent agents with each agent having their own website – need to tape all our conversations? I was also told that I am one of those people that wants to “lie on the couch and do nothing” and have the money roll in. Well, Brian you obviously don’t know me very well at all.

So, I have some advice that will hopefully save others like me a lot of time and money.

• Most internet businesses are scams. For every 1 that is legit, there are 9 that are scams.

• There are no get rich quick businesses – starting your own business is hard work and you will spend a lot of hours to be successful.

• If the 3rd or 4th question from them is do you have a credit card. Hang up!

• If the focus of the business is for you to bring on more people rather than selling the product – that is a version of a pyramid scheme and pyramid schemes of any type are illegal by federal law (check it out for yourself).

• (In my opinion), if you get a call from Steve, Brian or Curtis from a company out of Nevada calling itself Greatest Business or Great Business Opportunities – hang up immediately.