Every day (and I do mean every day), new products appear online that appear awesome, amazing and just too good to be true, but their real purpose is to part you from your money.
If you’ve browsed the listings of Muncheye.com you’d be forgiven for thinking that there’s a never-ending stream of awesome money-making techniques – a million ways to make a fortune all with just three easy clicks; and of course, there isn’t. The majority of products you’ll find on there are intended to do one thing and one thing only: make money for the product creator. This post is intended to provide you with ways to spot the scammer, because unsurprisingly they all share some common features: characteristics that scammers use to persuade you to buy their nonsense. Here are eight surefire ways to spot scam products.
1) False Scarcity
We’ve all seen this: the fake countdown clock at the top of the page showing that you have less than 20 minutes to pick up a special deal, or it will be gone forever. Most scammers use this because they know the sense of urgency helps push buyers over the edge.
2) Fake Discount
Everyone loves a bargain, so scammers will position their products with a false discount: it was $199 but today it’s only $7. Again, it sounds so ridiculous but it really works – people fall for the discount, especially if the price is expected to rise in 20 minutes.
3) Fake Reviews
We all feel better if we know someone else has bought the product and found it to be good, so reviews are a key part of a fake product listing. The names are fake and the photos are stock images or from sites like thispersondoesnotexist.com.
4) The Three Click Promise
I don’t know why some of the better known scammers keep doing this, because it’s such an obvious lie, but a sure sign of a dodgy product is the three click promise: do this, then this, then this, and money will start rolling in. It is NEVER as simple as this. See promises of riches in three clicks? Then move on is my advice.
5) Fake Earnings
They look so impressive: “I earned $23,409 in 24 hours with this product – see my earnings on WarriorPlus.” The truth is that earning reports are very easily faked and so they cannot be relied on as evidence.
6) Overlong Sales Pages
There’s been a tendency over the past year or so to see how long a sales page can be, and I have to admit, some of them are impressive. You have to admire all the effort that’s gone into writing a such huge sales pages, with images and icons and reams of text that say absolutely nothing at all. Is the sales page very very long? Then that’s a strong sign that the product is poor.
7) Countless Bonuses
Ask yourself: if a product is good, why does it need all these free bonuses? Adding in bonus after bonus is a technique borrowed from fairground hawkers in the past century: adding in exciting shiny objects to sweeten the deal. Of course, if you look closely, all the bonuses are worthless, except in one way: they reliably flag that the main product is incomplete or worthless.
8) Exit Popups
Once you’ve spotted the product isn’t for you and try to leave, the site throws you a huge popup you can’t ignore with some last minute awesome discount as a desperate measure to keep you engaged. While there’s no guarantee that the product is a scam if the sales page does this (because exit popups have their place in legitimate marketing), it is generally true that almost every scam product uses this technique.
I’ll be reviewing some of these dodgy products from time to time – not because I’m recommending them, but because there might be something to learn from even the dodgiest of dodgy products!
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