As some of you might know, I regularly do reviews on internet programs and courses that I find along the way to help more people avoid these scams so that they might not fall prey to them as to how I did before.
Before coming across my final stop which is the last program that really clicked with me in building my Online Business, I have come across loads of internet scams that have robbed me of my money and left me disappointed countless times.
Still, I always find the strength in me to get back up and move further so that I can successfully create my online business and share what works and what doesn’t to help others chase after their goals a lot smoother.
But before we get to the main part, let me share some useful tips on…
How to Spot an Internet Scam? –Things You Actually Need to Know Of.
Internet scams are everywhere today and almost every day different programs get launched and we have no way of knowing whether or not they are scams.
So what is an internet scam?
A scam is a tricky slimy attempt evil people do to trick you into giving them your money by playing with your desires (My own definition).
Internet scams are programs or products that promise you something really attractive (Like making millions overnight) but in reality, they do not live up to expectations and do not give you what they promised you.
Fortunately for you, internet scams usually have similar patterns that almost all of them use to trick you which is why you need to make it your business to know how to spot them…
- Making millions overnight – Although you can in fact make money online, there is no such thing as making millions overnight, not in a month nor even a year. The only way for you to really make money online is through a website and because it is a typical business, every business needs to start small and grow which means that it will take some time before you even reach a stable income.
- Hidden upsells – It’s understandable that upsells are important for a business to make money. iPhone may upsell you a custom cover when you buy it whereas free game apps make money by upselling through their in-game store. However, hidden upsells are not acceptable as it is very unethical. Internet scams are really famous for this trick and it is the very reason why many people fail online. Imagine you only have $50. You bought program A for $47 because that’s the advertised price and it also claims that you can start making money with no extra cost but the moment you join in, you realized that you’re bombarded with tons of upsells telling you that if you don’t buy, you can’t access the important features. Does that sound familiar? Hidden upsells are a nuisance and if you see a program doing this, quickly leave and get back your money-back guarantee because that Won’t be the only time you’ll have to pay!
- Dead community – If that program is so successful, why aren’t there any strong communities in it? If there even is a community. One way to determine how strong an online course is, is to see whether or not there is community interaction or not. Many scams do not allow community chats within the member’s area because they know that eventually, one clever guy will know that it’s a scam and will start complaining. So if you see any particular program with an open community where you can mingle freely with just about anyone, you just know that you’re at the right place.
Top Ten Internet Scams That You Need to Avoid.
Before you start asking as to what makes me such a professional that you should hear me out, the truth actually is that I’m not.
However I do have experience in getting scammed by many online scams and because of that, I rose back up from my fall to write reviews on them so that many other people can avoid these pitfalls that I fell into.
So here are the top 10 online scams that you should know and avoid…
Internet Scam #10 – The Launch Bible.
Type of business: eBook launching online business course.
Created by: Alex Jeffreys
Price: $9.95 Dime sale, $17 Marketing with Alex upsell, $27 IM Mastermind upsell
Alex Jeffreys is one of the most well-known scam artists who charge exorbitantly high for his pieces of training and surprisingly, that wasn’t enough.
The Launch Bible is a clear scam even for anyone who’s never even known what a scam is because the moment you paid for it, you will come across upsells being bombarded to you like nobody’s business.
You will have a hard time skipping those upsells because the link for that is soooooooo small and hidden, that you won’t even know you can skip the upsells!
It’s totally ridiculous because you haven’t even reached the member’s page yet and already you’ve come across some red flags.
A lot of people get tricked into buying the useless upsells because they never knew those upsells can be skipped.
So what happens if you do manage to skip those upsells and reach the member’s area?
You’ll get a useless eBook that doesn’t even show you how to properly launch an ebook, or even how to make it compelling enough so that you won’t mess it up.
When I bought the Launch Bible and I contacted the support for my money back and told them that the steps weren’t detailed enough, I got scolded by them saying “You did not follow it properly”.
How would they know if I read it properly or not?
The book wasn’t detailed enough because in order for you to access the videos, you actually need to PAY more which doesn’t make sense.
The Launch Bible is a terrible course that has zero value and is why you need to avoid it.
Internet Scam #9 – CB Passive Income.
Type of business: Affiliate Marketing course
Created by: Patric Chan (He’s from Malaysia hey!)
Price: $47 + Complicated upsells
CB Passive Income is actually an okay program if it costs a lot lesser but because it tricks newbies into thinking that Patric will do all the work for you, that’s asking for trouble.
Basically, CB Passive Income is an Affiliate Marketing Course whereby you need to pay in order to become an affiliate.
So why is this bad?
That’s because becoming an affiliate is actually free as you are basically doing the product owner a favor by making him sales.
A proper program wouldn’t charge you to become an affiliate but if it is indeed charging you, then their true intention is not to make you their affiliate – Their true intention is to make you a customer.
For example, when you go to Amazon or Clickbank, you can choose to become an affiliate for free and you won’t have to pay a single cent!
A lot of beginners do not know this which is why CB Passive Income preys on the newbies, especially with the most powerful snare of all, “Let ME do the work for you” which catches the attention of thousands of innocent people.
Internet Scam #8 – Autoblog Blueprint X.
Type of business: Mass blog production
Created by: Mike Johnson
Price: $27 (Sometimes change to $37)
Autoblog Blueprint X may work a long time ago but after Google’s recent update, it’s totally useless.
The concept is simple, you create a ton of blogs by paying other people to do it for you and you earn money.
Simple, no?
Sure it sounds simple and doable, but what you didn’t know is that once you join the program, the lesson will keep asking you to spend more money on things like an advertisement, Google ads, Market Samurai, Moz Pro Analytics and of course, your team of freelance writers who are willing to write for you cheap quality articles and all of this, can cost you up to $1,000 a month!
Knowing that, would you still want to take the risk of joining this program?
Sure it may not cost that much to join but if you were to spend a thousand bucks a month, how confident are you to make 2 times more money?
Auto Blog Profit X plays its game very dangerously and in business, you should never play with luck.
Internet Scam #7 – Instant Payday Network.
Type of business: MLM
Created by: Jeff Buchanan
Price: Free to join, but with hidden costs inside.
Instant Payday Network is a very old program which has tricked thousands of people back then and surprising, thousands of people today.
People get excited when they see Jeff’s video which looks very honest but when they got inside, they’ll start to regret ever joining.
The program itself is not even a program!
There are no real training at all. Instead, all you get if you join are nothing more than other upsells.
You can’t even access the other features freely because the moment you click on something, you’ll be brought to a random upsell page that asks you for your email.
This is really annoying because every time I click on something, it will always ask me for my email.
Haven’t I given enough? Why ask me for more?
This is because Instant Payday Network is only attracting you to join so that it can sell more products to you which I my opinion, is very unethical and one of those programs is a well-known scam called Empower Network.
Instant Payday Network is a complete waste of time and I hope one day it will completely go down in flames.
Internet Scam #6 – Dot Com Secrets X.
Type of business: Black hat internet marketing course
Created by: Russel Brunson
Price: $1 for the first 2 weeks, then $47 monthly
Dot Com Secrets X was the last scam program I come across before finally finding the right program which I’m using now to build my Online Business.
I was actually attracted to its $1 trial and become premium to try out the full features.
Throughout my 3 months in Dot Coms Secrets X, I have not made a single cent and I’ve wasted more than $800 a month following what the program has instructed me to do so on marketing and solo ads alone.
It’s always very depressing to know that you’ve wasted that much time and that much money for something completely useless and I should have known that it’s scam but didn’t want to believe it because I was hard-headed and was halfway to finishing the course.
It was a mistake I regret making because all my efforts were in vain and I should have jumped off from the program earlier as I could make much more progress on something else.
As captivating as the sales video may be, you should not be fooled by the trickery behind Dot Com Secrets X.
Internet Scam #5 – Google Sniper 3.0.
Type of business: Website building / Affiliate Marketing.
Created by: George Brown
Price: $47 per month + $187 Sniper ELITE upsell + $97 real case study upsell
Once a scammer, always a scammer and I have been reviewing the Google Sniper series since the very beginning which was in version 1.0 so you know that Google Sniper 3.0 is the third version of the series and the latest.
Google Sniper is similar to Autoblog Blueprint X whereby you play with mass blog production but instead of simply creating a normal blog, you will be creating niche blogs that have low competition and that is why George calls it ‘sniping’.
As fancy and cool as it sounds, this is actually a method we Internet Marketers know as keyword research and it is something I regularly cover here on my blog as well.
Google Sniper 3.0 was has a very sneaky payment scheme where prices may increase or decrease based on what choice you choose which is totally unfair to people and practically useless because Google will penalize your website if you do follow the blackhat tricks it teaches you.
Internet Scam #4 – Autopilot Profits.
Type of business: Online Business course / Affiliate Marketing
Created by: Ewen Chia
Price: $37 + 14 more outrageous upsells!
Autopilot Profits is the exact same thing as Autoblog Blueprint X as they are both tricks to get you to buy more stuff – The only difference is that Autopilot Profits costs $37.
Although this program was made way back several years ago, I was surprised to know as to how many people still buy it on ClickBank because the videos are blurry as hell.
Not only that, there are only 3 lessons which are ALL less than 500 words whereas the rest of the features are all upsells, how ridiculous is that?
I don’t understand how people can have the heart to trick others like this just for the sake of money.
Autopilot profits have about 14 different upsells which makes it the program with the MOST number of upsells ever to be created because usually programs only put 3-5 upsells.
Creating an upsell take a really long time sometimes up to 2 or 3 months, I wonder how Ewen Chia had the time to create all of this upsell, or maybe he just paid someone to do it for him.
If you ever come across this program, do stay away from it as it’s not worth your money at all!
Internet Scam #3 – My Online Business Empire (MOBE).
Type of business: MLM
Created by: Matt Lloyd
Price: $49 + 19mth + tons of upsells
MOBE is one of the budding MLM schemes the world in the world and just recently, I say their office here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
I’ve never seen other online MLM companies anywhere in Asia so having to breach the market here must definitely mean they have quite a number of Asian members.
MOBE is quickly becoming one of the biggest online scams around and like any typical one, one of the best statement in its sales video is “You can make $5,000 a day without lifting a finger with this system”
If you’ve been in the business world for a while, you’d very well know that it’s not possible to make that much money without lifting a finger because making money needs effort.
There is no value in MOBE’s training because they are all a mask to the real intention – selling to other people at a higher price with beautiful graphics.
Internet Scam #2 – iPas2.
Type of business: MLM
Created by: Chris Jones
Price: $7 trial for 7 days, $47 One-time-offer and expensive membership upsells.
I have no idea what iPAS means but it has definitely been around for a while to even launch a second version.
Like any new program with beautiful graphics, I was impressed at how sleek the interface is but eventually, I come to realize that iPAS2 is another MLM scheme because there were no proper lessons, the videos all talk about motivation and of course, the classic lock-the-features-until-you-pay-more system still applies.
The videos are ridiculously long (About 40 minutes each) and none of them actually tells you what to do and speaking of which, even the sales video tells you to join but doesn’t tell you what you will be doing!
If there’s one thing I hate, is that people can get too focused on selling that they totally forget about the product.
Chris Jones only talks about promoting iPAS2 and that is basically the only thing you’ll ever learn… oh have I mentioned the extremely long motivational video on Chris telling you to chase your dreams?
iPAS2 also contains a hidden upsell to a program called Empower Network which is quite sneaky but surprisingly, there are a lot of programs promoting this Empower Network.
I’m curious, why are there many scams promoting this Empower Network?
Internet Scam #1 – Empower Network.
Type of business: MLM
Created by: David Wood and David Sharpe
Price: $25/month to get started, $100/month inner circle, $500 one-time Costa Rica intensive + many more upsells
Almost all the scam programs l come across secretly promote Empower Network but what is it actually?
Empower Network is the internet scam that started it all, it is the mother of all scams on the internet.
It has been around for many years and it has stood still until today and many years to come from the money they took from members.
Empower Network is the very definition of an internet scam and the members have perfected their persuasion technique so much so that they are able to trick people into joining with ease by playing the money game.
Everybody needs money today more than never as our cost of living is rising high and from there, MLM thrives because many people will do whatever it takes to get some money to get by.
Don’t mistake its established name for something ethical though, because a lot of companies worldwide are flagging Empower Network due to their unethical conditions of earning money.
I can agree that Empower Network used to be great when it was small as the community was closely-knit but today, their community is so corrupted and blinded with money that they have no moral values whatsoever.
Inside, you will learn techniques to trick people into joining and I’ve even experienced bullying by uplines because the newbies are not motivated enough.
If you’re wondering how the scams today are getting cleverer and sneakier than ever, it is because their ideas came from Empower Network’s practices.
Empower Network’s name has been tainted so much now that more and more people are coming out of their shells and exposing the true colours of this program and not only that, would you believe that credit card companies stopped dealing with them too?
I guess some people just want to watch the world burn.
So there you have it, the top 10 online scams in the world today that you should know and avoid.
What is the Best Online Business Course on the Web?
As you may have already known, I regularly do reviews of internet programs and courses that are rising on the web and I’ve written reviews for each of those scams that I’ve stated earlier as well.
Making money on the internet is not impossible and the real legit programs that help actually help you achieve that, do not get as many mentions as they should have as opposed to these annoying scams that always pop up everywhere on the web.
This is mainly because legit programs don’t have to 😉
They have been in the business for many years and the reason why they are established is that they gain people’s trust unlike the internet scams which are only booming when they first launch but after a while, their name starts to dissipate.
Throughout my crusade of uncovering internet scams over the years, I have come across several legit programs that I have even made reviews of here on my blog and rated them according to my liking.
Just kidding!
I rate programs based on cost, effectiveness, and personal touch and of all those 7 legitimate products that I’ve reviewed, the only program that receives my #1 recommendation is Wealthy Affiliate.
Although there are 7 legitimate products altogether, I find Wealthy Affiliate most agreeable when it comes to value, lessons, tools and support.
Like all the genres of my reviewed programs, Wealthy Affiliate fits in the category of an Online Business course.
Inside, you will learn how to create a website out of any passions you have and learn how to make money doing what you love.
If you’re looking for a way to make money from home while avoiding scams, the best way to build your own website because you control everything that goes in and out and Wealthy Affiliate is the place to learn how.
I find that its lessons are the best on the web because not only is it regularly updated, it is made by the owners themselves so you can always ask them if you need help with anything which is actually pretty cool because other owners never really care to come down from their thrones and chat with their users.
Trust me, having to know that the owners have your back can be really motivating and that is crucial for your success online because they have more knowledge in the industry.
This alone is worth a lot more than the cost of their program which is only $47 a month but you can always opt for a yearly plan which saves you hundreds of dollars for the year.
So how do you differentiate the value between a real website course and a hoax program?
Simple, you just see how effective the lessons are and since Wealthy Affiliate teaches you how to build websites, ranking on the first page of Google is crucial to any website success.
A good website is one that is loved by Google and if your website is legitimate and agreeable, you’ll easily rank it on the first page of Google’s search results…
Ranking your website is main part of Wealthy Affiliate as 90% of the course includes lessons on how to rank your website and its content more effectively.
Although there are many ways to making money online, they will all eventually lead to building a website because websites are your property online and it helps establish your brand better.
So why not learn how to build your business online from the very source of it?
Conclusion
Scams are getting bolder and bolder today as every week, there are new programs being launched behind the scene.
This is because most scam programs do not last long as they know people will uncover their plots eventually so in order to make more money sustainably, these scam gurus will usually recycle their content and re-brand their product name so that they appear ‘new’ and innocent to the eyes of the public which is why learning how to spot them is very important.
If you’re interested in learning more about the best Online Business course to safely kickstart your journey, check out my #1 recommended program here.
Stay awesome and thanks for reading, don’t forget to share your thought below!
i don’t know how these evil money grabbing bastards are not in jail. The evidence against them is clear and overwhelming for any judge to conclude they are guilty of robbery !!!
I know right! Most of these scammers will rehash what they’ve used in their previous programmes so that they can create another program which looks new and from there, recruit more people and when the heat is up, disappear again. It’s sort of a trend that they’ve been doing for years. We just need to be wary when we meet these kinds of people.
Top Scam thousand for a regurgitated course, no personal coaching, left to his team, no refunds and spend the time bragging about how great he us and how is going to be the coach to the gurus and quite frankly what suckers you are for being into this and that’s how you make money – not in Integrity, when asked if there was any other costs, the sales guys says no, tells you Alex with be speaking with you, makes it sound like it will be a personal call – no response, arrogant, Egotistical thinks hes a rock star, thousands for a course that you could have aid then bucks for, he talks about giving back – no way – his pockets get lined and you get ripped off and the people who give the testimonials are his buds – Just Don’t – People who do this out of desperation, just look on the site and see the rip off reviews – had business – if he was good he’d offer a refund like the good guys- he’s a Bottom feeder and laughs cause he knows hes got you and you sign a Non disclosure
Right on Ben!
These scam gurus have no integrity, its disheartening to know that they feel fine sleeping at night with the money they scam from people but its the reality we live in today. People get blinded by money easily but fortunately, there are still good samaritans out there who help uncover their plots. Hope you find this article helpful!