Hi, today I want to touch a topic, that all of us probably know from first-hand experience or at least have heard of. It is the nasty online fraud. Here and there we have to be careful these days to not fall into a trap of a clever awkward scam provider just waiting to steal some dollars from us.
The ideas scammers come up with are almost endless. The temptation of making a quick dollar without providing real value seems to be too big for many clever brains on the internet. Learn three tips to avoid online fraud.
I don’t understand it but the stolen apple seems to still taste better than the honest earned one even for grown adults. The possibility to earn money in a fair manner is there and especially the people promoting scams have a lot of knowledge and could make a good income with real services.
Anyway, it is how it is and we, the consumers have to watch out our selves to not waste our hard earned dollars on products or promises not worth a cent.
Here I want to highlight some warning signs that should wake your attention when you run into them. Most scams and frauds can be easily detected if we do not want to believe everything that is told on the net.
What kind of frauds do we have to expect?
The internet is full of fraudulent services and products. About every legit offer has its scam counterpart. Scammers are up to date on what are the most recent sales hits and where the most money is changing hands. So, don’t act desperate, take your time and research everything before grabbing your credit card.
Here you are in a website building for beginners website and don’t have to buy anything so you’re in a safe place. The programs and products I recommend I use my self or at least check out their credibility.
Make money online scams.
Today, the make money online sector, is one of the most polluted on the internet. Millions of people are searching the net daily for ideas how to earn ends meet in one way or another by using the computer and the internet.
Job markets are looking not that well anymore and the cost of living is rising all over the world. These facts attract hundreds of sneaky minds to try and persuade you and me to subscribe to some great easy money making program.
The three rules I write out below can all be considered for not falling into a fraud money making promises.
MLM and pyramid systems.
These are also some money making opportunities, they are half legit and you have to look at them very carefully to understand the real chances for you to earn money with them.
The promises you are made are always very optimistic and the downsides are mentioned only at the end of the add and almost invisible if at all.
If there are products or services involved the MLM has at least some kind of legitimacy but if they only live of promoting themselves and recruiting more sign-ups it is really only a way to make money for the operators.
Often you are forced to buy products in advance or create a minimum turn over to be able to start earning money. Think well before joining up with programs like these, the competition is huge and for you, as a starter, it will be hard to get into the business and cover your investments.
Most of these MLMs require having a website with a lot of traffic on it. To achieve only this goal will need time and if you are not knowledgeable about website building you have no chance.
Real estate fraud.
Another big fraud niche with lots of black and grey fraud sites is the dealing with real estate. May that be a house for rent or apartments for sale. Many people are getting ripped off their money for being too careless of how when and who they give an advanced payment.
Don’t let your money leave your pocket before you have proof of a real deal. To get an advantage by paying some backshish is often turning into a disadvantage and ends with losing all the investment.
Take the risk of not getting what you desire and follow the normal regular steps when applying to buy or rent a house or apartment. Better lose some time than the money you actually need to down pay the real estate.
Partner mediation fraud.
Here too, the people doing fraud in this business segment need you to be desperate. If you take it easy and take your time you will much more likely stay on the save side.
There are well-recommended companies with good reputations which you can check and do your research about. You might have to pay a bit more, in the beginning, to get successful but you probably prevent yourself from having very bad experiences and losing all your money to a shady service.
Use your instinct and listen to your heart, finding a partner is not that easy. It can be easy if you know yourself well and are able to communicate this to possible individuals.
Investment frauds.
Now, this is rather hard to determine. In my opinion, it is not easy to find a good portal for investing your money. All service providers, especially the established ones are lying when opening the mouth. (This is my opinion)
We have seen it not too long ago when millions of people lost their hard earned money during a very short period of time. And we also observed that no one was backing them up. The ones responsible for the crisis were backed by governments.
My advice for investing is, you need someone you can really trust or don’t do it. All these banks and investment services promise to be trustworthy but they are not. You need to know someone personally where you see what they do and how they are doing.
Fake product fraud.
This is not that a dangerous sector but still, millions of dollars are spent on products not keeping what they promise. A lot of products are not even being delivered after being paid for.
I general I would not fall for unrealistic discounts. My friend is a specialist in finding discounts that make me very suspicious. 90 or more % off, I don’t believe this is possible. Either the products are stolen, don’t get delivered or are not what they are supposed to be.
It is not easy to find reviews on the internet for these products because they appear one day and as fast they disappear again. If you see offers like this and find no reviews at all, don’t bother buying. Sometime later you’ll find reviews and learn how disappointed customers are.
These are only some of the most common fraud systems. You still will find tricks and niches where strangers try to get hold of your money in a non-legit way. Be careful what emails tell you and what you find offered in social media and youtube as well.
Here are three rules you can detect scam or fraud.
These rules can be applied mainly to online money making fraud systems. I concentrate the content of this website primarily on this topic. I want to help you find a real opportunity and way to make money online.
Making an income online always involves a lot of work, commitment, and research, anybody who wants to tell you something else is lying.
Rule number one
Pay first, try later, NO NO.
Many so-called online marketing platforms offer you great wealth without any effort. You sit and watch a long, never-ending video about how much and how fast you can easily earn money. The more they talk the more water runs from your mouth but, at the end of the video, the reality comes back. “Now, join up, with only $50.00 you can start to be a millionaire”.
This is the tactic to catch rats. I know it is tempting, and I too watched some of these videos. One just wants to believe it. But really, if you go check some reviews of these offers you get 100% warnings for fraud.
If you need to join to try you should at least have a money back guarantee. Many offers give this money back guarantee but you still have to be careful that you really get the whole amount back.
You also have to read the small written sections, often there are difficult conditions you have to apply to before getting your money back.
For me, pay first and get money back if not satisfied is not an option, not as long as there are enough similar offers that let you try for free.
A good program, that really wants to help you earn money, will let you have at least a free trial first. It won’t be afraid of losing a customer because it knows what it delivers. This program also knows the number of people joining later is proving the quality it delivers.
The good product will want you to have the chance to work with the program, learn how it works and see some results before they make you pick your credit card. The good program doesn’t like to refund unhappy customers, that’s bad for business and reputation.
Rule number two
Sign-up, relax and get rich, NO NO.
If you get told you can make lots of Dollars without any work, then it is definitely fraud. Ther’s no way to make money, at least not legit, without doing a lot of working first.
Ok, I don’t expect any program recruiting customers by telling them they have to work 12 hours for years to earn a decent living but to tell someone it is possible with the legs up, is just not fair.
If I knew a possibility how to make money without any effort, I would not have to try to sell this idea, but to hide it because otherwise, I couldn’t cope with everyone wanting to join.
If there was a legit way how money can be made by sitting on the beach and doing nothing I think all beaches would be overcrowded because no one would be doing anything else anymore and it would not be a secret for long.
There are lot’s of well-paid jobs in every market, jobs, you have to work hard to earn what you get. This is exactly the same with the internet market. The more you understand and can provide the more you can earn.
Maybe having a successful website leads to earning money without a lot of effort after a long phase of creating this website. Facebook or Twitter Amazon and youtube are all websites, they earn millions, billions, but that is the result of people doing outrageous good and hard work for many years. And I don’t think these people are now sitting back and doing nothing either.
There are loads of people making millions of dollars everywhere and many in the online business but I bet my butt, no one will tell you it was easy and not connected to a lot of hard work.
Rule number three
Do this, get 5 cents, NO NO.
You get offered a small amount of money for a task you can do as many times a day as you want or can. These are also legit offers but I call them a scam.
They are called surveys or click for cash. I must say these are not necessarily frauds but at the end of the day, they steal your time. You are told how much you can earn and often do not have to pay a fee to join, but you never get enough money out of these jobs to make a living.
Before I came to know the program I am working with today, I did surveys, for one day. I still can claim the one dollar I made during my 6 hours of doing some survey stuff lol. They can keep it.
Many different platforms offer similar things today. You can write reviews for music you listen to and get paid or watch videos or play games, even for only looking at adds you can get paid.
I think it’s not worth anybody’s time. There are much more promising ways to make money online but they need to be self-created and worked on for some time.
Quintessence
There are thousands of websites that promise a lot of cash, but many of them only want your money.
I do not know why there is so much effort and talent spent to get in your pocket without delivering any substantial give back. All these websites have the potential to make an income with real offers. The people that offer fraud are not stupid, they know the business and the techniques to sell things. Why are they only interested in stealing our hard earned bucks?
Well, that is not for me to explain. All I want, is you, not to fall for into these traps. If I wanted to make a list of all fraud websites and offers, it would break the capacity of my website. All I can do is to prepare you for your journey, looking for an online income.
One more thing I can do is to recommend a real opportunity. A program where you will find help to build a money making website for sure and this for a reasonable price. No upsells, no false promises.
You can do it if you are willing to do the work, WA can show you the way, give you the necessary training and tools to build a sustainable business with a good reputation and brand that finally lets you count your dollars coming in on a regular basis.

Take advantage now of all the bonuses given by joining Wealthy Affiliate today.
- Join for free.(No credit card needed).
- Two free websites with hosting.
- Free starter training on how to build a website. (Step by step, learning by doing)
- Earning while Learning.
- The first month again 61% discount.
- Free keyword search tool.
- 24/7 support and community interaction.
Look at my website here, all you see here I could create with the help of Wealthy Affiliate.
Do You want to build a website too and earn money with affiliate partners? Sign up here, no credit card or any paying system required.
Thanks a lot for coming to my site!!!
That’s all, for now, my friends, I’m sure you all have a good start to the online business world. I hope you could find some useful information here and come back for more.
I and all my readers would appreciate hearing what you think of this article. It is also interesting to learn from questions you might have. Please leave a comment below and let us know your opinions and about your experiences.
Have you fallen into fraud traps yet? Did you lose money on scams? Did you lose time with worthless programs? Do you know more tips to avoid online fraud?
Let us know
Have a great time, see you, Stefan 🙂 asuperaffiliate.com
Hi Steff,
Thank you for the thorough article.
It really gives an insight about how to detect the online scams online.
To be honest, I have participated in some MLM organizations and they are not fraud but it is also true that they were not online.
I mean that the MLM is a legit business, there are just a lot of scam companies who practice it.
Keep up the good work!
Hi Asen, Thank’s for the comment. Sorry, if I left the feeling that all MLM’s are scam. I know this is not true but like you mentioned, a lot of program creators use the scheme to fraud people. Working with some MLM’s can be worth the time but it is advisable to look into the details. You say you did work with some offline MLM’s, why did you stop working with them?
Have a great time, see you, Stefan 🙂
Online fraud is so serious and so many people are falling to it and losing their money and the sad part is that there are so many that are out there but thanks to websites like yours persons can know what to look for before they let go of their money.
Hi Norman, Thank’s for the comment. I hope I could open some eyes with this post. We all have to be careful what we buy every day in the real world but on the internet for sure.
Have a wonderful time, see you, Stefan 🙂
There are so many scams online it is making it really difficult to spot the real ones. I totally agree with the rules you mentioned to avoid online frauds. If it looks to good to be true then there is something seriously wrong there.
There are many ways to make money but there is no such thing as easy money online.
Hi Nikos, thank’s for the comment. It is true, if something is looking too good to be true it is worth checking. The program I work with on the first sight is also looking awesome and could raise some red flags. Due to the fact that everyone can check it for free though it should be possible to clarify that I don’t want to sell a fake product but something that just is standing out with quality.
If someone wants to earn money online they have to be aware that there is a lot of work involved. If they don’t want to do the work they might as well stop looking for a online money making opportunity because there is none.
I wish you all the best, see you, Stefan 🙂
Awesome post, Steff!
It is awesome to see that there people out there who try to take care of the others. Thank you for raising awareness and showing us what to avoid. I’ll make sure to take note of all this.
Thank’s Andrei for commenting. No one should fall into fraud traps, we should all help to avoid this.
Some of the tricks used are not 100% fraud but still, in the end, you lose more money and time than what is ever possible to gain.
I hope this post could help a little.
See you, have a great week, Stefan 🙂
Hey Stefan, this is an awesome post! The one I’ve seen the most recently is the MLM and pyramid scheme. Many of the such programs are trying to make themselves an affiliate marketing business but is actually a pyramid scheme in disguise. Those are really shameless products which should be heavily condemned.
Recently, Digital Altitude, a popular pyramid scheme has just been shut down by FTC. I’m really glad that they are finally taken down officially.
Hi Jerry, I know you discuss a lot of fraud programs on your website. I am glad some people are concerned about what others consume.
I also heard of the FTC taking out the Digital Altitude and hope the detect more programs like these and take them off the internet.
I wish you all the best, see you, Stefan 🙂
Dear Steff,
Thank you for trying to raise awareness to this ever growing problem. You brought up some very good points. Like you said it is a common practice for them to pray on those desperately searching to make money. Which is why it is easier for them do scam someone then be a legitimate business. They can take a persons money with in seconds, but would take minutes or longer to actually sell them a legitimate product. THEY make a ton of money and it is quicker for them. Especially because they don’t give a dissatisfied customer their money back.
Thank you for trying to help keep others informed of the evil that is out there.
Hi Lee Ann, great to hear your thoughts. You got a point there if there is no free trial and no guarantee of money back then the red flag should be raised very high and very big for everyone.
To offer a product, especially a legit program does easily make it possible to let people try for free first. If this isn’t offered there must be a reason for this fact and most often the reason is that there is no real product to try at all.
I wish you a great week, see you, Stefan 🙂
Great post, Steff. Often the opportunities which promise the world and make things look easy are the ones you should stay away from. It’s sad so many programs are all about hype and when it comes to results, they disappoint all the time.
Hey Stefan, thanks for this in-depth post. I only knew about MLM & Pyramid schemes before. This post made me more aware of the scams present around the web. Pretty sure you will save a few more people and make them more aware of scams around them. Keep it up. 🙂
The second thing you need to do to grow an eCommerce business is generate sales. When it comes to making mundane products and services exciting, Warby Parker knows exactly what to do. Their entire business model depends on their unconventional marketing strategy, which includes great storytelling and quirky branding. Customers no longer have to leave the Portal site to track their purchases. Steve Clayton has web advertising and marketing experience also and was the Vice President of a Lot of money 500 company. In 2017, Forrester Research predicted that the B2B e-commerce market will top $1.1 trillion in the U.S. by 2021, accounting for 13% of all B2B sales in the nation. Children build their own robot with KIBO, program it to do what they want, and decorate it. KIBO gives children the chance to make their ideas physical and tangible—exactly what their young minds and bodies need. Once you’ve identified the image you want to project and target group for your e-commerce business, it’s time to start with product ideas.
After you import data for the first time, Kibo eCommerce automatically imports data based on the settings you set during configuration. Professionally-edited images and graphics give your business a sense of legitimacy and helps build trust with potential customers. In 2017, ecommerce growth breaks a new record with online sales breaking $6.5 billion on Cyber Monday – a 17% increase from the year before. This is good news for those looking to start online stores as sales will only continue to go up, though competition will also increase in the space. At present, Amazon extended it services to an extensive range of products under one roof. Running an ecommerce store with a very small staff and the ability to add new functionality in a timely manner. On average loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. An example would be social media marketing , where the business in question must build a social media presence, engage an audience, and drive traffic to their site in this manner. You can even upsell to customers based on the items they have just purchased.
Our industry experts are embedded at many customer locations and are therefore ideally placed to collaborate with customers to identify their needs, and potential service and process improvements. Nurture future tech giants with STEM toys that help kids learn about coding basics—all in the name of fun. Well-known business models can operate as “recipes” for creative managers. The growth in e-commerce sector will also boost employment, increase revenues from export, increase tax collection by ex-chequers, and provide better products and services to customers in the long-term. Be clear what products you want to sell. Through our brands, including Electrolux, AEG, Anova, Frigidaire, Westinghouse and Zanussi, we sell more than 60 million household and professional products in more than 150 markets every year. Keeping an email list is probably the oldest trick in the book, and though it doesn’t get the credit it deserves, it’s still one of the most effective marketing strategies today in terms of conversion and sales.