Old Dogs, New Tricks: The High-Tech Pyramid Scheme

 A couple of weeks ago I talked about literary schemes that aren't scams--just really shitty deals.  And then I experienced a non-literary one for myself.

I forget exactly which rabbit hole I went down while browsing but somewhere there was a promise to make $2800 a month with no work!  Too good to be true?  Sure, but I thought I'd check it out anyway.  I mean, why not?

I got an email and it said to sign up for some seminar where I'd learn how to make money with only 27 minutes of work and no lists or websites.  The seminar was at 10pm because the guy who runs it is in Northern Ireland; I think by Belfast.  I played on my phone while he went through this whole spiel of how you could use these sites I'd never heard of to make money by selling online products.  Have you ever heard of Clickbank?  JVZoo?  AWeber?  I'd never heard of any of those.  AWeber is like Mailchimp, the thing I use for my Eric Filler newsletter.  The other two I still don't really understand but they have something to do with selling crap online.

Anyway, I'm listening and of course it all sounds too good to be true.  Where's the hammer?  The ask?  And...boom.  This amazing program can be yours for the low, low price of $497!  Uh-huh.  No thanks.  I don't have $500 for a pyramid scheme.  But there were plenty of people who did sign up then and there.  I shook my head when I realized the guy had probably made $10-$15K just for one 50 minute seminar.  Imagine if teachers could get paid like that.

A few days go by and I kept getting emails asking me to sign up.  Finally I got an offer to try it for 7 days FREE!  And so I thought, OK, let's see if this really can work.  So I signed up for the free trial.

The first thing you have to do is sign up for Clickbank and AWeber, the latter of which costs about $200/year for the premium service.  I'm not sure if you can use the free account for what "the program" needs to do.  Anyway, after I did that I went through 12 videos on the guy's site to set up prefab email campaigns. 

Now I'm ready to roll.  All I need to do to start making the big bucks is get traffic so I can get email addresses to put on my AWeber thing to pester with emails.  How do I do that?  There are a couple of videos (almost 3 hours worth) that are supposed to tell you the great secret for free traffic.

What is the great secret?  You're reading it right now.  It's a blog!  Seriously.  You're supposed to write a blog.  Like this one.  Three days a week.  Like this one.  Preferably with a domain name that's like your name--like I used to have.  And do still have for my Eric Filler site on Wordpress.

What are you supposed to blog about?  Whatever.  How "the program" is working for you.  Or online tools you like.  Shit like that.  But be positive!  (You know, not like me.)  And at the end put in a link for people to click so maybe they'll buy something that you'll get paid for and get their email for your list.

As I listened, I wanted to bash my forehead on my desk.  THIS is the great secret.  THIS!  A blog.  I've been blogging for 11 years never realizing that was the secret to online success. Ha.  But don't just blog, promote your blog posts on Facebook and Twitter!  Which I already do.  And how many people read this blog?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Yeah.  But you could have a post go viral!  OK, it's been 11 years and I haven't had a post go viral.  And, wait, didn't the email I get say I didn't need a website or a list?  Now I'm supposed to create a website to get addresses for a list?  WTF?

At last I could finally see how this worked.  It's a classic pyramid scheme.  It's highly unlikely someone like me at the bottom is going to make thousands of dollars a day or even a month from writing a blog and putting a link at the bottom.  I might make a few bucks, probably not even enough to pay the $500 I'd have to spend for "the program."  But the guy at the top is getting 50% of "the profits" (however much that is) from everyone else in the pyramid.  That's why he's making $2-$3K while he sleeps.  The rest of us, not so much.

I'd finally heard enough and cancelled my trial of "the program" and AWeber account and stuff.  I should have gotten out soon enough that I don't have to pay anything.  In the end it's a good reminder that even though the tools change, the tactics are still largely the same.  "The program" is really not that different from HerbaLife or AmWay, only you're writing blogs and sending emails instead of going door-to-door.  There are times when my skepticism is justified.  This is one of those.

My secondary motivation, besides the highly unlikely possibility I might actually make thousands of dollars for doing almost nothing, was to see if any of this might help with MY online business--selling books.  I was curious when I heard about this Clickbank and JVZoo stuff if I could use it for book marketing.  From what I've seen, not really.  I went to the JVZoo "Marketplace" and any books in there would be non-fiction.  Mostly the "get rich quick" or fad diet kind of stuff.  

The idea of "affiliate marketing," as it's called, might be able to work, but I don't really think it would for fiction.  I mean for a nonfiction "get rich quick" or fad diet you could recruit an army of minions to blog about how great it is and how it changed their lives.  A fiction book, whether it's a gender swap like I do or a traditional mystery or thriller, would be harder to work.  You could in theory get an army of minions to blog reviews of it and put links at the bottom, but I'm not sure it'd really have the appeal of a nonfiction book.

In the end, I think the core of the scheme is something I've talked about before:  the online footprint.  If just this one guy is blogging about "the program" then it's hard for it to turn up on searches.  But if you get an army of disciples blogging about "the program" then you have a lot more footprints out there, making it more likely for people to see your product or service when searching online.  Even better if you get this army of disciples to pay you $500 apiece for the privilege of promoting your product in the hope of getting a cut.  And in a month or so when they've hardly made any money, you can blame them and say they're not working hard enough.  It's a win-win--if you're at the top of the pyramid.  

But hey, let's try this program out.

PS:  Would you like to know the secrets that changed my life?  Then go to Planet 99 Publishing and learn all about my books!