The Internet is littered with ads for “get rich quick” schemes and it’s easy to get sucked into wasting time reading about automated systems that are going to make you hundreds of thousands of dollars every month in your sleep. For every site advertising a legitimate business opportunity there must be a thousand sites run by people that are advertising pyramid schemes or just collecting email addresses and spamming the hell out of inboxes with affiliate links. So how do you tell the difference between the good and bad? Here are a few fun rules of thumb for safely navigating the web on your journey to Internet riches:

Scammers Love Sports Car Photo Ops

It amazes me how often I find websites trying to sell steaming piles of B.S. with a picture of a guy standing next to an expensive sports car. What baffles me is that the pairing of a get-rich-quick message with the visual of an expensive set of wheels must work a lot, because pictures of dudes hamming it up next to hot rods are everywhere! Before you go giving your email address away and opening up your inbox to sir-spam-a-lot, recognize that any loser with a point and shoot camera can get a picture of themselves standing next to a set of hot wheels.

Beware The Buzzword Bonanza

Overuse of generalized buzzwords should set off red flags for you immediately. Scammers use buzzwords as a smoke screen tactic. Throwing out a couple of technical terms and jargon can make them sound like they know what they’re talking about without actually having to tell you anything. If you find yourself reading a “sell” page that’s already used the words “automated system”, “turnkey” and “revolutionary opportunity” before you have to scroll below the page fold, you’ve probably found someone who can only make money by getting your email address.

The Louder The Volume, The Greater The Scam

Exaggeration and buzzwords complement each other beautifully. They are the dynamic duo in the scammer’s arsenal. But don’t be fooled. Scammers, above all things, are salesmen. They know that they’ve got just one page to capture your attention and get you as excited and amped as possible so that giving away your email address at the bottom of the page feels like an investment in your future. Be aware that bold or CAPITALIZED text and BRIGHT COLORS are designed specifically to get your attention. Scammers know that people scan pages for the most important information, so they’ll highlight what they want you to read on the page. When you see too-good-to-be-true headlines like “Income Potential of [Insert Ridiculous Dollar Amount Here]” highlighted among regular text, put your armor on.

Testimonials Are For Trapping Suckers

So you’re half way through the “sell’ page, you’ve been hit with buzzwords, exaggeration and the picture with the guy next to the Ferrari and your red flags are all up. You’re one paragraph away from closing the browser window and then you’re blind-sided with something you weren’t ready for…a set of testimonials! Now you’re thinking…maybe this IS legit? Maybe this revolutionary fully-automated million-dollar turnkey system that works in your sleep is REAL! SCORE! Umm….don’t do a victory dance just yet. Apply some judgment and some savvy. Here’s the thing about testimonials…they’re for trapping lazy suckers who don’t do their homework. A quick google search can usually expose a false testimonial or a scam in a matter of minutes. Try using the word “scam” or “rip-off” next to the name of the company when you’re doing your search. You’d be surprised how quickly bloggers and webmasters will go out of their way to expose scammers and spammers. As a rule, good testimonials come from verifiable, credible sources and hold up to scrutiny. Good companies know this and go out of their way to lend credibility to the testimonials they post.

If It Looks Like Crap, It Probably Is

This one is a no brainer. Trust your eyes. Doesn’t it makes sense that if someone actually got rich, they’d have a little extra cash to spend on a web designer to make their page look good? Hiring coders and designers is so cheap now that there’s no excuse for a shoddy looking web site anymore, especially if you’ve supposedly got a couple of bucks to throw around!

Opting In Without Losing Your Shirt

Pyramid schemes, Scams and MLM Opportunities will never go away. It’s an unavoidable reality Internet goers will always have to deal with. The people pushing the schemes are smart and they’ll always come up with new ways to get their hooks into you and to abuse the information you give them. One thing I’ve done that’s helped a lot is to have a separate email address that I JUST use on the internet. I call it my spam box. If I’m ever asked to submit an email address to a source I don’t have 100% confidence in, I use my spam box address. It keeps my real inbox clutter-free while giving me access to information that requires an email address submission.

Final Thoughts: Buying The Famous Phrase “Making Money While You Sleep”

One last thought…I will never say anywhere on this blog that making money on the Internet is not hard work. It’s fun, it’s addictive and it can be incredibly rewarding…but it takes effort, motivation and it’ can be really time consuming. Although web pages are up 24/7 and DO generate money around the clock, getting rich by doing nothing is a ridiculous notion. The people who wake up and find out they’ve made big money overnight are almost always the ones who spent all day putting the web pages up that generated the income in the first place.

**A Special thanks goes out to the owner(s) of the…ahem… “revolutionary” website that inspired this post, seen in screen shot at the top. Oh, and if you are reading this…there’s a spelling mistake in the second paragraph of your squeeze page.

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