'Get Rich Quick' Makes The Seller Rich

The 'Get Rick Quick' is an extremely persuasive form of marketing that tricks the user into buying a product that will almost never work for the user, or a product/service/deal/scheme that never exists. So instead of buying to get rich quickly, the users end up paying the seller, so that the seller gets rich. These types of scams have been around in the past, and have continued to exist into the digital age in a variety of different forms.

You may be surprised to know some of the 'Get Rich Quick' schemes can be considered legal. An article on Wikipedia explains:

Legal Schemes
1. Work-at-home tasks that guarantee high return with no effort.
2. Selling training courses in trading of as real estate, rare coins, gemstones and other financial assets.
3. Selling software or miracle items for predicting lottery, gambling bets, stock market up/down swings, etc.
4. Selling books on how to make money fast, or on information above.

Most of the legal schemes have a proper product or service to sell, and they are pretty much willing-buyer-willing-seller. But the result of using them never works as the buyers have been misled to believe. Then again, if it really worked, would the seller have sold it for money instead of keeping the secret to her/himself, so that s/he could earn more?

Illegal Schemes
1. Pyramid Schemes
2. Advanced fee fraud

All of the illegal schemes sell no product to the buyer, only a dream of riches that will never be realized.

The Pyramid Scheme involves a follower recruiting another level of followers, who will in turn recruit another level of followers. Each time the followers are recruited, they pay a certain amount of money to the recruiter, and the recruiters above. They are enticed into the scheme with excited sales pitches of commissions for selling products by the recruiters under them, but they almost never get to see the products that they are supposed to sell.

The Advanced Fee Fraud, also called Nigerian Scam, often involves the scammers sending unsolicited correspondences to the victims for money. The way the correspondences are worded to provide compelling reasons so that the victims believe the authenticity of the deal. The scammers ask for money, and promise many-fold returns when the deal was complete, but victims are always disappointed.




Conclusion

I have no statistics, but the number of articles that teaches one to 'Get Rich Quick' seems even more than the number of articles that teaches one to avoid it. Clearly, these schemes must be working for the seller. And you would wonder why people continue to fall for such scams; even when most of the scams are obviously fake. Yet, people still do.

There are those who complain that there isn't enough done by the authorities against such unscrupulous people, but the responsibility falls ultimately on the individual. But as long as people continue to be willing preys, the predators will continue to prey.

As an exercise, just browse through some of the advertisements on the right of this blog. ;) Without going to visit them, try to take an educated guess at how many of them are frauds, how many are actually real.

Recommended Reading

Get Rich Quick Schemes
Avoid Get Rich Quick Scams
False Profits
Nigerian Scam and Other Crimes Cost $198.4 million

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