These People Actually Tried Those "Make $10k A Month" Schemes And Revealed What Happened
Updated Oct. 12 2018, 3:40 p.m. ET
It's probably happened to you. You've desperately been looking for a job and applied to countless places. You want something that's a bit respectable, so retail is out of the question. You're sick and tired of reeking of fried oil and having throbbing feet, so the food service industry is out as well.
If only you could have an office job. Somewhere you could climb the corporate ladder. Use some of the skills you developed in college before you graduated or decided to take off for a couple of years to "figure things out."
But mostly, you just want money. And a decent amount of it. The kind of money where you wouldn't have to ride the bus. Or if you have a car, the kind where a $700 repair bill wouldn't destroy you. The kind of job where you don't have to feel bad spending a few bucks every day for a quick snack or drink. Where you don't have to mooch off of your friend's Amazon Prime membership. Wouldn't that be nice?
You obsess over the "gets" of status more than what you need to do to obtain that status in the first place. So you want that shortcut, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow before busting your hump to get that rainbow to appear in the first place. You're so desperate that when someone gets back to you saying they have a marketing job that'll help you earn thousands of dollars a month with no set schedule, you're all ears.
You go to a conference room. There's a guy in an ill-fitting suit promising you the world, explaining different marketing schemes and tactics and "levels" of earners. Only thing is you need to spend a bit of cash to get in. Then you realize you've been suckered into wasting your time: this "job opportunity" is an elaborate scam. And the complimentary energy drink at the door they asked if you liked? Yeah, they're gonna try to sell you a case of it before you leave.
This recent Reddit AMA post is filled with poor unfortunate souls who weren't quick enough to spot the phoniness of said marketing schemes. They shared their stories of what happened when they actually responded to one of these scams.
Sometimes, your own "friends" try to sucker you in.
Guy who lived in my campus at University learned that i was looking for a job and being an international student there are visa restrictions on how long i can work for in a week during term time.
Showed me pictures of all cool meetings he has been going to, suited up at posh hotels. For part time it was unreal. I decided to give it a shot and meet his supervisors at a restaurant (not an office) so they can tell me more about the job.
Reach there to find there is an entire gang drooling to sign me up under them. Show me pamphlets and tell me the company has been endorsed by Donald Trump ( before he became president).
Then after telling me all about their products and the parties and the money they make, they tell me to join their company I'll have to pay about £400 and that was it.
I needed a job to earn money not spend money to get a job. Realised it's a pyramid scheme bullshit and bounced. Blocked the entire gang i met but still get requests now and then.
Some of the "scams" were actually pretty brilliant, like this one guy who basically told people they were stupid to their faces.
Years ago I was browsing the internet and there was this ad saying that you could make 20k a month from home only doing as little as 4hrs of work a day. These ads were pretty common and I knew they were a scam, but one day I had too much free time on my hands, found one that had a site attached to it with the owner of the whole thing showing off in videos the money that came into his bank account and it had a low fee tied to it, like 10 or 15 bucks.
The ‘offer’ consisted of a ‘self-published self-help book’. You know the kind, it’s a tier lower than self help books and a tier lower than self published it’s the kind that is a pdf on some sketchy pdf selling site.
Again, I knew it was fake, a scam, but the curiosity got the better of me. I didn’t want to know the secret of getting rich (because I knew it was bs), I wanted to know what the scam was, what that money would buy me. See what was so ridiculously sly that he actually made huge chunks of money out of it (because I was fairly sure that the transactions that he showed in the vids were genuine).
So I bought the ‘book’ (i.e. pdf) and after downloading I opened it with anticipation. I don’t remember the exact contents but basically it was one page, on that page were about 4 lines and the gist of it was ‘Make a pdf in which you instruct people to make a pdf, to then sell it for $10 as a book that will teach you how to make 20k a month without working for it’.
I thought it was so cheeky, plus there was no return policy from the store or the payment method that I used, that I figured he deserved it if he was able to play me that good.
I remember sitting at my desk and laughing and thinking ‘that motherfucker’ for at least half an hour.
Amway? More like SCAMWAY!
My dad and grandpa were in the used car business together. They did well and would do some investments from time to time and were doing well.
They had a customer (like, a "regular," had bought a couple cars, referred people, someone they knew better than a guy off the street) (we'll call him George) invite them to an amazing investment opportunity, and so my dad and grandpa went.
It was like a presentation, and there were maybe 2-3 dozen or so people there. Almost immediately upon arriving, my dad's Amway senses were tingling and he tried to tell my grandpa, who shook it off, "George wouldn't be into that stuff, let's just hear this out."
Like 2 minutes into the presentation, my dad knows for sure it's Amway (or similar) and tries to tell my grandpa again (they're on the 2nd row with George). Again, my grandpa dismisses him.
Finally, it's revealed that it's 100% some MLM (I honestly can't remember if it was Amway or not) and my grandpa immediately jumps up in the middle of the presentation and angerly yells at George, "How could you? You brought us to some Amway crap!" and storms out of there.
This person who should've stopped the second he heard the Indian accent.
I did this about 5 years ago. So stupid. It was some kind of stock website where you call if a stock is going up or down and bet on it. I signed up just to see what it was like. Then all of a sudden a guy calls my house from the company and kinda explains it to me in his Indian accent. Convinced me to put in $200 to try it then tried to get another $1000 out of me. When you try and get your money back it doesn’t let you. I guess they need all this government ID uploaded and all your information. I hung up the phone on him and realized I was out $200. Now they must have sold my information because other scammers keep calling me and they know my name.
Amway suckers another person into dinner.
This was in the pre-internet times, a co-worker says 'hey, you want to know how to make more money? Come to dinner with my family tonight. ' After a nice meal, we head off to the living room and he starts to play a VHS tape that goes on and on about 'don't you want a boat, a big house, etc.' After that I'm psyched. Yeah, it was Amway. So I said, okay if this is so good, why don't you open a store in the mall? Or you pay for shelf space in an existing store? No, it doesn't work that way I'm told. So I passed.
Real-estate is usually a rock solid investment - just not this way.
My brother fell for this real-estate investment scam in Detroit after attending a free siminar. The idea was that you don't invest your own money - other people hire you to manage their money and invest it in houses around Detroit, and you get paid commission somehow.
I explained in detail how the scam worked and even showed him comments online. He and his friend still spent $1000 to attend the next, 'exclusive' seminar where they would share all of their trade secrets, and luckily it was during that meeting that he realized it was a scam.
He was out $1000, but hey, I guess it could have been worse. Apparently there were still a lot of people who continued to allow themselves to be scammed beyond that though.
Dungeons and Dragons and energy drinks.
This guy i used to play dungeons and dragons with fell for one of those. He was working a shitty factory job but was doing well enough to support him and his wife. Out of the blue he starts talking about this really cool organic energy drink and is trying to get me to buy into. Starts organizing "workout" sessions to promote it. Dropped his job pretty much immediately. He even posted on Facebook once saying "What's everyone doing today?" and him being someone I've drank with commented "knocking back a few tonight, wanna hang?". He promptly deleted my comment and messaged me saying not to comment on his things saying that because it would hurt his business reputation.
After that we kind of quit talking, but i saw his wife a few months later and i asked how she was. She said she wasn't doing so well lately because she was the only one bringing in money. Her parents were helping them a lot. His "business" was going no where.
Now they're divorced and i haven't heard from him in forever but I'm still friends with his wife on Facebook. She's doing well. It was just really sad to watch their relationship deteriorate.
What is it with these energy supplement scams?
My dad was meant to be one of the founders of one of these companies. His friend from 20 years back called his one day out of the blue telling him about a great business opportunity. After months of building websites, pouring money, and time into the company, his friend embezzled the money and bought an island with it. He then started another company with the same product, but with a different name. My dad has never been the same since and has a hate/distrust towards everyone now...
Sorry kids, if you want to make money, it's best to not listen to someone with "secret advice" on how to become a multi-millionaire. If their plan works so well, they'd be doing it themselves.
