How to Avoid Internet Scams – Sorting out the Hustlers From the Good Guys
Not knowing how to avoid internet scams is the number one reason in my mind that people are rightfully sceptical about starting an online business. The recent events with Banners Broker are a case in point. The tangled and completely impenetrable web that has surrounded this company for over 3 years is testament to that.
As BB are now involved in a series of investigations and have halted both the business itself and its communication with affiliates I’m not going to comment specifically on that. I can however discuss some of the reasons as I see them for the sometimes-bizarre journey they have been on and how it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate between a scam and a flawed business model.
The business was based around the vast industry that is Internet banner advertising. A lot of advertising space is sold via brokers in a similar way to the way gas and electricity is sold. Most people find that difficult to understand but accept it and use it to shop around for competitive deals.
BB’s idea was to act as a middle -man and create an affiliate business that anyone could take part in. Basically BB would work with several big banner brokers and sell the advertising space to their affiliates. The affiliates then could build up a portfolio of advertising space and share revenue from banners that BB would allocate to that space. They could also earn credits (not money) by promoting the business to others.
Avoid Internet Scams But Be Wary Of “Good Intentions”
The problem is that most people simply couldn’t get their heads around this. In practice it worked very well indeed – for a while – but this caused two big problems. The first is that it attracted some very unscrupulous people who saw the fast buck and filled their boots. The second being the incredibly high level of negative internet chatter that ensued. Some truly evil people came out of the woodwork with “well intentioned” advice on how to avoid internet scams by claiming that BB was one.
BB have largely got themselves to blame for this as they got things wrong. They didn’t manage the payment plan or the business itself very well. They didn’t – to be fair, couldn’t – control how their affiliates sold the business to others. So it was sold as a passive income opportunity. This drew the attention of financial regulators, the payment providers they used and a boatload of critics. It made things very confusing for people trying to avoid internet scams.
A huge proportion of their critics used this to their advantage by piggy-backing on the vast internet traffic BB generated to sell their own products. Long story short: Payments to affiliates dried up, negativity increased and no matter what they did to try and fix things and prove their legitimacy, things went from bad to worse. BB became the bad poster boy for anyone trying to avoid internet scams
I could have made this a blog on how to avoid internet scams by suggesting that Banners Broker was/is one. I could have chosen keywords aimed at taking advantage of vast volumes of traffic that those keywords will create over the coming weeks. Not going to. To me that is the “dark side”. I’m using them as an example only to make a point. To avoid internet scams you need to be able to identify them.
Is It A Scam Or Just A Bad Idea?
I personally do not think BB was a scam. During the time I’ve been involved with them I saw countless schemes, programmes and BB copyists go under. A pattern emerged. A new scheme would emerge that looked great. Lots of people would join, some would get paid for a while, the business would run into problems and disappear. Sometimes they would reappear briefly with a less generous pay plan only to vanish for good a short time later. Every one of them promoted themselves as the real deal and as the way to avoid internet scams. The strange thing was though that although everyone wants to avoid internet scams, many, many people thought these were great businesses. Some lost fortunes on them.
BB never did this. Right up until this week they have held weekly webinars. They made continual changes to the programme to try and satisfy authorities, regulators and affiliates and have just been there. They have had numerous opportunities to simply “do one” but haven’t.
Simple Ways To Avoid Internet Scams
I have been deleting all my log in details for a long list of “opportunities” that I looked at and in some cases invested small amounts in over the last 3 years. BB is the only one that has stayed in business over that period and the only one that I actually made money on. From my experience, which I hope is helpful to you I will say this:
To avoid internet scams: Don’t get involved with anything you can’t explain clearly and simply to someone else. Don’t get involved with anything that seems to offer an income that seems to involve little or no work. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck it’s probably a duck. That’s probably the best way to avoid internet scams or even just badly though out ideas. It’s easy to avoid internet scams if you just ask the simple questions: What’s the product? Where does the income actually come from? Usually with a scam it comes from the people who join it.
With that in mind recognise that the Internet offers so much in the way of real business potential that there is simply no logical reason to believe in schemes, potions or snake oil. People buy real things online in ever increasing volume. If you can learn how to be the person selling these things then you have a real business.
Affiliate marketing for example is a cut into stone, tuned and dialled, sure-fire proven business model. You sell the things that people are looking for (preferably not the things they shouldn’t be) for commission. It involves work as does anything that is real in this world. End of.
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How to Avoid Internet Scams – Sorting out the Hustlers From the Good Guys
By Dave Menzies
