Help, I'm Desperate!

I've been visiting a few forums that I wouldn't normally visit lately. They are the ones where people are looking for online riches.

It started when somebody asked me what I thought of the Rich Jerk. To be honest, I've seen the ads, but have always disregarded it. The style of the ads just isn't me.

So I decided to take a look and give this person my honest opinion.

First I bought the eBook. For $10 it was hardly a risk.

I didn't like it. The eBook is full of straight-to-the-point advice, but it's terribly outdated and absolutely crammed full of affiliate links at every turn. It's obvious where the revenue for this publication really comes from!

The approach is old and outdated, but this publication keeps on selling, as it's promoted by commission-hungry affiliates all over the world.

Type rich jerk into Google and you'll see tons of paid links - from affiliates. They are usually "reviewing" the program - which is what RJ is all about by the way.

A few days after buying the eBook and giving it away immediately, I received a call. It was from somebody at Rich Jerk offering an extremely rare opportunity to get some one to one coaching from a member of the RJ team.

Wow! One to one training. Imagine that.

In order to qualify, I'd have needed to sit through a 30 minute telephone "interview", followed by another 1-2 hour interview by a senior member of the team to see if I qualified.

Their motivation for calling me and offering me the chance for one to one training, was simply so they can get my testimonial.

I can smell a scam a mile away and this has all of the hallmarks, so I Googled the course.

It didn't take long to find the answers. The "interviews" are really just high pressure sales pitches using reverse psychology - the old pull-away technique used in direct selling for many years. You could have this.... if you qualify. Tell me how you qualify.

Tell somebody they can't have something and they want it more.

I used that myself in direct selling more than 20 years ago. It was used to sell the concept of "show houses" for various products like replacement windows, stone cladding, driveways and central heating systems.

The interview also provides an ideal opportunity for price conditioning. Depending on your answers, the one to one training can cost anything from $2000 to $5000 according to the forum posts I read.

The reason I bring this up is because these Internet Marketing gurus are all offering very similar products, revamped to their own particular style.

Each has a back-end sting in the tail that will cost thousands - sometimes with additional product offerings and sometimes as ongoing membership fees.

I continued reading the many forums I visited and got completely depressed.

It seems to me that the Internet is full of people seeking immediate online riches. They bounce from program to program in desperate hope of finding the one killer course that will set them on the way.

People on the forums ask questions like, "does this really work"?, "Can I really make money"?, "Is this any good for newbies"?

It's clear where the money is online!

No wonder these guys can keep on cleaning up with outdated products. There is a never-ending source of people gagging to part with their money.

If I thought a new eBook would help, I'd write it. Seriously.

But the fact is, that it doesn't really matter if you spell out a magic formula showing somebody how to make money online - the majority wouldn't do anything about it anyway.

I was chatting to a friend a couple of weeks ago. He's a talented guy who works for himself in the building trade. Sadly, he's not getting much work at the moment and is really struggling.

He was so desperate for money that one of his ideas was to walk the local canals and see if he could fish out any old shopping trolleys that he could then weigh in for their scrap value, as the price of scrap metal is sky-high at present.

In times when money is tight, people look anywhere for the answers.

They are now flooding to net as times get hard. Someone's going to get rich. Sadly, it won't be any of these newbies.

If you're online searching for new ways to make money, steer clear of these jerks, even the rich ones.