There Are Scams And There Are Scams

There are scams being perpetrated on the net which are so subtle that one would find it absolutely difficult to build a case against those perpetrating the scheme, for the simple reason that they are so clever in devising the scam that it just never occurs to you that you are being scammed. The sales pages are so convincing but one would have to be an expert to really find something wrong or illegal about it. I would not know since I have not tried to test the legality of some of the "scams" which are being played on the net every day.

A very common theme which I have found is the big sales pitch that one could make lots of money from joining some free site. This would entice everyone except the jaded and the smart. They explain in a very convoluted and verbose fashion the mechanics of how it works, taking care not to show exactly how it works. Am I being obtuse here? Let me explain. Let us say that you are to be paid a certain amount for doing something like clicking on ads or banners. This is most questionable but for the newbie, it can be a damn simple way to make money. Or so he thinks. The deal is, there are only 3 or 4 banners to click everyday and each click pays a fraction of a cent.

You do the math. You cannot make even a cent in one day. The reason for this is they ask you to recruit other people to join the scheme thereby allowing you to make more or so they would want you to think. Very clever indeed since the more dupes they get, the better for them and, since the dupes do not make any real money anyway, they will not have to worry about paying anybody out dupe or otherwise.

I have always wondered about the legality of this kind of website but I figured, it is the job of the authorities to go after them. The big thing to remember here is that they very often give you a big bonus for signing in, but you will never see the color of their money since the amount they set for payout is so high that it would take you ten years of clicking to get at the money.

This trick or technique of setting a very high amount for payout is not limited to paid to click schemes. You often find these in manual or auto-surf sites which entice you to join free and earn bonuses from surfing other people's sites. It can get pretty exciting when you get bonuses of 2 or 5 or 25 or sometimes even 50 cents every few minutes while earning visits to your sites too, but pretty soon you realize that it would take forever to earn the payout of $150 or more. I remember doing this and feeling excited when I totalled $15 in one day and simultaneously felt groggy and nauseous from having to stare at the computer screen for most of the day. I could not do any kind of work the following day due to the fact that my vision was scrambled and I had a touch of vertigo from trying to earn a measly $15 the day before.

Is this a scam? Maybe. Is it illegal? I do not think so. Caveat emptor. The Romans say. Is there incentive for the operators of this scheme? Do they make money? I do not think so. I have seen a lot of sites like this go out of business after a few months. The upshot is, everybody learns. I would hope.

I have since come to realize that there is no substitute for learning your way around the Internet and seeing how things really work from reading about other people's experiences and getting burned first hand (ouch!). Still, the Internet is all about selling whether it be products or ideas. Even some ideas being sold are so outlandish one wold think they are somehow "scammy".

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Jose de la Serna Retired software developer Ching Recommends