Hello everyone,
In light of the recent upheaval in the online world with payment processors, paid to surfs and hyips, it's time to take a look at what you're doing.
Any so-called business can make any outrageous claim they want on a website. While some are blatantly obvious thrown together sites filled with typos, bad copy and erroneous statements, there are thousands of very slick, well-written, professional-looking sites. The crooks and con artists know how to fool people!
The common thread between an honest business site and a con artist's site is that BOTH are involved in sales. They are trying to sell you on the idea that YOUR life will improve if you take them up on THEIR offer. Depending on the skill of the copy writer, they can be very convincing.
You, as a reader, need to be aware that one of the key skills in writing good copy is to be able to appeal to the emotions of the reader. If the copy is properly written, your mind will tell you that if you take the deal, you'll feel better, live longer, make more money, have a happier life, get more visitors, or many other things too numerous to mention.
It doesn't matter if the information you're reading is false. Your mind will believe it, because it wants to believe it. After all, it's going to solve your problems and make your life better.
You, as a savvy business person, need to set your emotions aside and do something you've likely heard of many times before, called DUE DILIGENCE. What that means is, you immediately start digging to find out all you can about the company behind the website. Use the search engines and whois to find out all you can. Follow the links on forums. (Note that forums are often deceiving in themselves, because the writers will often post links that when followed prove their assertion to be false.)
Look for proper contact information on the website and use it to ask questions about the company. If you get no reply, or can't find the information, stay away from that company!
Don't let a friend's excitement cloud your decision! Just because a company has a history of paying doesn't mean it will continue to pay. One of the classic tricks used in ponzi and pyramid schemes is to start out paying on time and regularly. Then, when a certain point is reached - often right before the company would collapse anyway, the owners take the money and run, leaving YOU broke and mad.
Avoid prelaunches that tell you nothing about the coming business venture like the plague! They are used to hype up the "venture" before it comes on line to drive up the emotions in advance of the launch. It is a trick that works will with products or services that are basically very boring, difficult to understand, poor quality, or expensive (or all of the above).
By steadily building up excitement during the prelaunch, the sales team is priming you to jump as soon as the PAY NOW button appears. They constantly publish the numbers of people joining during prelaunch and strongly suggest that it's so popular that anyone who jumps in and pays as soon as it launches will be guaranteed to get wealthy.
NOT SO!!
I've been involved in sales and networking for over 27 years and have never seen someone get rich from taking part in a hyped-up prelaunch. I HAVE seen people make a lot of money from choosing a really good company and working really hard to make it work.
Now let's get back to the so-called companies I started this thread with - the paid autosurfs and hyips.
First of all, let's deal with the hyips. Can you spell S-C-A-M? You convince me how they can offer the percentages they offer legally and I'll print a retraction.
Now let's go on to paid to surf. I include any kind of system that pays you to surf, autosurf, click ads, or whatever in this category.
This is not the first time these things have shown up. I can GUARANTEE you that if you make any of these your primary business - no matter how honest they may be - you ARE going to lose. You will lose either all the time you've put in, or all the money you've invested, or both.
Let's assume that you pick a paid to surf company that is running legally (if there is such a thing these days), and you work hard, build a downline, invest your money, and watch sites buzz by till your eyes fall out. Where do you think the money is coming from if they're legal?
The bulk of the money comes from advertising! By their design, these are high traffic sites, which makes them a desireable advertising venue for other businesses. An banner ad on the sign in page of a paid to surf site costs a lot of money!
However, as happened a few years ago (like I said, this is NOT new) so many companies are jumping into the arena that the value of that adspace has been steadily declining and eventually there will be so much competition that these companies will either have to drastically reduce their payouts or stop paying period.
If you think they won't stop, you haven't been around long enough to remember when this happened before AND you haven't read the fine print on the site that states that they DO NOT GUARANTEE PAYMENT! (Does anybody remember AllAdVantage.com and all the others that came after them?)
So, if you're SERIOUS about building a long term, profitable, paying business, start looking for a real business and do your due diligence. Visit the forums here of people who deal in solid facts and learn from them. Take a serious look before you leap! You'll succeed much faster by slowing down first.
God bless,
Dave
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