LESSON #5: How to Avoid Scams

By | June 16, 2008
365 Comments

In the previous lesson we talked about a bunch of different ways of making money online. If you go out looking for those money making opportunities, you’ll find that there are literally thousands of them.

The question now is… How do I separate the real opportunities from the scams? Because we all know that the internet is full of scams, right? So lets talk about it…

(Watch this video…)

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Main points:

  • I believe that most business opportunities are not scams. But just because something isn’t illegal, that doesn’t mean its something you want to get into.

  • There ARE a lot of scammers out there though. There is no limit to how far a con artist will go to take your money. So you need to be on your guard.

  • If it sounds too good to be true, it often is.

  • Be an educated consumer. (here is a place to start: the FTC)

  • Don’t buy ANY business opportunities. (unless you honestly know what you’re doing)

    Action steps:

    1)If you ARE knowledgeable about scams, don’t let down your guard.

    2) If you don’t know about the most common Internet scams, do some research and become an educated consumer

    3) Put your wallet away

    Soon it will be time to choose one business model and focus on it, but before we can do that, we need to talk about two different pathways… and only you can decide which one is best for you. We’ll talk about those two pathways in the next lesson.

    As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below.

    Have a great day!

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    • 365 thoughts on “LESSON #5: How to Avoid Scams”

    1. Eric Post author

      Yes and no. If you’re selling to people in the US then I believe they do have some jurisdiction, so I’d play it safe and stick with their rules.

      Reply ↓
    2. Shane

      Awesome to see some more kiwis in here. Erics Tips is a good place to start with good advice that the other gurus wont tell you unless you buy something from them. So take Erics advice and put your wallet away. I did learn the hard way. All good though!!
      I came across a good Squidoo Lens a couple of weeks back that has a list of some of the scams that are out there at the moment and is being added to all the time. So, if you have been scammed add the name to the list so they can our hard earned money. Here is the link: http://www.squidoo.com/typeathomescams

      Hope it helped. Ka kite ano.

      Shane.

      Reply ↓
    3. David Ashton

      Thanks Eric,
      I’m glad you are informing people about all this stuff. I agree if it seems too good to be true it definitely is.

      Reply ↓
    4. Jason

      I don’t feel that I have been scammed. I have burned myself though. Mainly with Google Adwords. I’m fairly cautious, but chasing an idea can end up costing a few hundred bucks. It’s can be very easy to get sidetracked and start chasing ideas. It may be easier to pay for traffic or advertising, but if your new to this then you have no solid idea of how to create the sales funnel or follow up. It’s much easier, to stand back, take the longer and more free route and learn along the way.

      Reply ↓
    5. Joana

      Hi, Just started learning you’re lessons and they are all (so far)great and easy to understand. You teach without being pushy.Really makes us, your students, want to keep learning these lessons. But I must say that, the intro music makes me laugh. For some strange reason, it reminds me of old intro porn music? Not that i’ve seen old porn movies or anything. Maybe that’s just what I imagine old porn music to be? I don’t know? I thought I could make some people laugh with my thougts? Um…main point is…Keep up the great tutoring! Jo (AU)

      Reply ↓
    6. Ex zurück

      Hello Eric… I consider myself to be quite Internet savvy, but I also was almost scamed by the Nigeria Connections. That was at a time when I was selling orgenic fertilizer. They told me that they want to make a big order on my fertilizer, but I was supposed to buy some documents of the Benin Government first. They have sent me many documnents which were looking absolutely real. Lucky me, I have made a lot of research, and figured out that this was a big scam.

      You never can be too careful…!!!

      Thanks fot the tip,
      Arne

      Reply ↓
    7. Lee

      Thank You Mr Eric, i m from Malaysia, and i met a lot of scams thru the internet as bcoz i m a newbie, thank you for your lessons, its so great,

      Reply ↓
    8. Olayinka

      Hi Eric,
      Lesson 5 says not to buy any businesses. I clicked on a link on your page to mytrafficbusiness.com are you saying to stay away from buying that business????

      Reply ↓
    9. Eric Post author

      Good point. But remember my caveat… don’t buy business opportunities, UNLESS you know what you’re going to do with it.

      Reply ↓
    10. alfred

      Hi Eric
      Iam enjoying your lessons i have a question for you iam new in online business and iam very excited to start if i open an ebay store can you recomand a dropshipper that i can use to get my product and sell it on my store on ebay
      Thanks look froward to hear from you

      Reply ↓
    11. Martha

      Only yesterday I bought your Trading Pro-System, and I thank you for the opportunity and especially for these tips and lessons, they sound very rewarding. I do hope I succeed in the Business… at the moment I feel overwhelmed by it all and ready to learn.

      I am somewhat confused though. In this lesson you just mentioned not to buy any business, nor spend any money especially if it all sounds too good to be true!! Not being sarcastic here, but you’re making me feel somewhat guilty, especially after my newest investment. Please reply on this, need to hear it will be ok.

      Reply ↓
    12. Eric Post author

      Again remember my caveat… “unless you know what you’re going to do with it.”

      I personally buy reseller and PLR products all the time because I know how to use them.

      If you don’t yet know how to use them, don’t feel bad or guilty. Just learn how to use it before buying more of the same kind of thing 😉

      Reply ↓
    14. Barbara

      Dear Eric can you send more lessons in one day so I can learn faster? It will take 3 months sending one lesson at day.
      I truly enjoyed it all and so ready to learn and become successful. Thanks Barbara

      Reply ↓
    15. cristina

      lei en uno de los comentario que todo va paso a paso y es una realidad, pues a medida que uno va viendo las cosas paso a paso asi se llega, dios les ebndiga a todos.

      Reply ↓
    16. James

      Eric, can you send me all the lessons by tomorrow ?…..NO, I AM JUST JOKING !

      For quality content, I am prepared to wait.Take your time. Thanks !

      Reply ↓
    17. madhu

      hey these are very useful tips , i hope i would have known it little before

      Reply ↓
    18. Freddy Lizardi

      Hi Barbara!

      If you notice on the right side of the page, close to the bottom, there is a link that says “LESSONS” if you click it, it will show all the lessons posted so far.
      Regards

      Reply ↓
    20. mohamed

      hi Eric
      thanks a lot about this informations
      and i am asking if there is software against scamers

      Reply ↓
    21. Eric Post author

      The only software I can think of would be antivirus and anti-malware software to protect against trojans and other attacks. But those won’t protect you from various online scams.

      Reply ↓
    22. mohamed

      and there is another qustion if i have free website can i use it for making money or i have to have my own site

      Reply ↓
    23. Eric Post author

      Sure you can use free websites to make money as a tactic. It’s a good way to use free resources. However, your sites could disappear overnight because you don’t own that web space, and you don’t have full control over it. It’s best to have your main website on your own domain. Then you can use free stuff for additional marketing/SEO purposes.

      I explain this in lesson #23 and 24.

      Reply ↓
    25. Mele

      Bonjour Eric, it must be a day for Kiwis. I am a kiwi living in Mauritius and would like to thank you for the difference that you are making in so many lives around the world! Thanks

      Reply ↓
    27. Murray J

      Thanks, Eric; Yes! I’ve been burnt too with scams – I didn’t know about searching on-line for “scams”. Still – I know now!
      Thanks
      Murray J Greene
      Cairns, Australia

      Reply ↓
    30. Eric Post author

      The “work” doesn’t start until about lesson 19. We have to put in some mental work to build a preliminary foundation first 😉

      Reply ↓
    31. Mark

      I find it interesting for you to tell me not to buy anything but yet you were sure willing to take my $134.00 for the program you sold me interesting huh?

      Reply ↓
    32. Eric Post author

      I never said not to ever buy anything. I said stop buying stuff you don’t need. I also said not to buy “business opportunities” unless you know what you’re doing. I also said that there are a few things you do need to buy, and some other things that might be helpful for your business.

      The reasons I said those things in this lesson and lesson #3 are…

      1) Many newbies get into the habit of buying one product after another. They are chasing after false hope without going through the real steps of building a business. They need to start building their business the right way, THEN they can choose to buy products that may have a good ROI.

      2) A high percentage of products sold as “business opportunities” are scams. Therefore you should be particularly leary of such products.

      I do sell various products which I believe are helpful to the people they are intended for. And YES, if you attempt to buy one of my products I will accept your money! Selling products is a major part of my business. It’s also the business model that I’m TEACHING. So it should not come as a surprise that I practice what I teach.

      Reply ↓
    34. Maureen

      Why isn´t anything being done about scamming on-line? Is it just because it´s about money? It´s still stealing. I was scammed by Mary Gersten and her Global Cash Flow network. A nice young man called me in October 2009 and said I could earn money on line and that they would set up 2 internet sites for me for a one time cost of 300 dollars. He was a mormon so I said “One mormon to another is this a good deal?” He said “Yes, you´ll earn your money back before christmas, and if you don´t succeed you have a 12 month refund gaurantee.” So I paid the money. A couple of weeks later my stuff arrived and then I got a call from my level 1 tutor who told me it would cost a further 1000 dollars to get the sites working. I didn´t have a 1000dollars. After that I never heard from them again. When I sent an e-mail it was returned, NOT ABLE TO DELIVER!
      What I find most amusing is that all these gurus say they will not share your information but the day after you sign up for anything you will suddenly find you mail box full of other gurus wanting to sell you stuff. So when they say they are protecting your information they are lying, if they lie about that then they will lie about anything!

      Reply ↓
    35. Phil

      Congress needs to pass and enforce laws to
      put an end to internet scams.
      These scammers just waste peoples time and
      money.
      Providing diclosure of earnings should be mandatory and should be easily accessable to
      the public on an FTC website. Promoting any money making opputunity without submitting the
      earnings or providing bogus earnings
      to the FTC website should be a federal offense
      with a year in prision.

      Reply ↓
    36. John Schaeffer

      Eric,

      I recieve vast amounts of spam scam as i like to refer to it from many senders daily telling me i won a large amount of money or that some millionaire has deceased and left me his fortune.

      And i got hacked in my paypal just three days before X-mas this past year. I got caught of guard by an email the hack was for aprox $13,000.00 but fouratanetly all funds were recovered . SO i suggest that the readers of Eric”S Tips pay close attention to their emails so as not to go though the paypal hack

      Reply ↓
    37. Mark Coulthard

      Some anti virus software will warn you that a website is suspicious,I have recently started using an anti virus program that was designed in New Zealand is where you can find them.As I have been down the road that Eric is describing,namely jumping from one opportunity to another, you not only wast lots of money but you end up with hundreds of Emails cluttering you inbox. Have you tried to unsubscibe to some of them, almost impossible.

      Reply ↓
    38. Mike Keith

      Hi Eric . Really enjoying the course and the open way you are dealing with it . On requesting your niche market report , the offer comes up for the PLR package . Is this something I should get now , is there any downside to it at this stage , and do you use this as material to sell or use as a freebie?
      Mike

      Reply ↓
    39. Eric Post author

      I’m a big believer in PLR, as I’ve been both a buyer and seller of it for many years. I don’t see any downside of buying it, other than it’s pointless to buy something if it’s going to sit on your hard drive and not get used. PLR can be good for selling AND as a freebie to build your list (In lesson #60-62 I talk about freebies for your opt-in page). So as a rule of thumb, buy it if you have a plan to monetize it. Don’t buy it if you don’t yet know what you’re going to do with it.

      Reply ↓
    40. Qutaiba

      Hi Eric. I’ve recently started watching your videos, and I admire your way of conveying your message of making successful online business. I find your lessons quite interesting, informative, and useful.
      i would like your opinion on good article directories which I can use to promote my products.

      Reply ↓
    41. Eve

      Eric, while I enjoy your lessons, I do believe that spreading them out for a 100 days is not very productive. I would like to get on with building my online business, and waiting 100 days is a bit too long. Can you send out at least 2 lessons per day, which would cut the waiting time to 50 days (much more reasonable).
      Thanks for all you’re are doing.

      Reply ↓
    42. annette taylor

      Hi Eric

      Good topic I was recently catch up in a scam on skype. I realized after he asked for money but he impersonate this person so well he had for fooled for quit few weeks.

      Take Care

      Reply ↓
    43. arunas

      Hi Eric
      I live in Ireland,and I find your lessons quite interesting, informative, and useful.

      Thanks for all you’re are doing.

      Reply ↓
    47. Anonymous

      I WANTED TO PASS ON SOME WISDOM HERE BUT I’M NOT SURE I HAVE ANY TO SHARE.I DON’T KNOW ERIC BUT EVEN I AT AGE 75 CAN SEE THAT HE HAS THE WISDOM TO NOT FEED YOU MORE THAN YOU CAN DIGEST AT ANY ONE TIME.

      Reply ↓
    48. Jim Howard

      Hi Eric

      You hit the bullseye on target, every time. Your lesson 5 confirms my thinking completely.

      Many thanks and God Bless

      Reply ↓
    49. Jim Howard

      Hi
      I agree with you, the internet is full of liars. I look out for PayPal and Clickbank myself. I think paydot.com and Amazon are OK but I have never used them. I really like Erics approach…

      Reply ↓
    50. Jorge Dutra

      Thank you for the info on scams because I have been scammed many times. Where you get 10% of…Now I say why can’t the company work it out themsleves they don’t need me if you understand…….JAD

      Reply ↓

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