Use Caution Making Money Online

If you're like me you have some fairly unique experiences that you take for granted. Those experiences mean that you can share information with others that may never have occurred to them. By sharing some of my experiences I hope to enlighten you so that you can avoid mistakes that could cost your business a lot of money. I grew up in a family with people who regularly gambled. My dad played poker regularly and I remember a couple times saying good night when the poker game was going on. I also remember getting up in the morning for school and when my dad and his buddies noticed me they decided to quit their poker game and go to work! We also went to the racetrack as Del Mar was just a few miles away from our Encinitas, California home. I think I made my first bet at the "track" at age 12. I looked older than my age and I'm also guessing that they didn't really want to waste time asking me for a driver's license. They wanted my money and to be able to get on to the next bettor. Do people online operate that way? Do they just want your money and then they'll move on to the next "bettor"? Some people in life operate that way. Online and offline. That doesn't mean that everyone does. It's important to remember that there are honest people as well as dishonest ones. Also, some aren't dishonest so much as they are incompetent for what they are doing. Then there are those who are taught intentionally inaccurate information by dishonest people, but they believe the person who taught them. They may then go on to teach inaccurate information themselves all the while believing that the information is true. What if that student then goes on to teach that same inaccurate information? They probably don't even have a connection to the original dishonest person and are simply learning from someone who was unknowingly deceived. My guess is that many of us have found ourselves in the last group at one time or another. How can you avoid this? What follows is one scenario that might not have occurred to you. You receive an email that says you can get the same information that others have used to win seven football bets in a row. This service will sell you next week's **Special** pick for $40. You read over the letter carefully and wonder if this is true. How can they be so accurate? It certainly looks legitimate. (I know some will assume that it's not legitimate SIMPLY BECAUSE it involves gambling, but don't miss the lesson. It's important NOT to let preconceived ideas get in the way of real learning.) You think about how much you have available to bet and decide that you can spare $400. They have 3000 satisfied customers who have won seven times in a row! So you think, if I bet this "sure thing" I'll get back hundreds of dollars and it will only cost me $40. Too good to be true? Maybe. Before I go any further, let me point out that not all sites related to gambling are the same. Many will give you an honest deal. Whether or not someone should gamble is a matter of opinion about which there is a wide chasm of disagreement. Also, some people are terrible with numbers and that can work against you in gambling. This is an example of how someone can be scamming you and I'll talk about how this can apply to business later. So how can they be telling the truth about having 3000 customers who have won seven bets in a row? Is it too late to get in on this deal? Hold the phone. First, remember that the internet has billions of people on it. Even conservative estimates put the number of internet users over a billion. Twitter is closing in on 200 million accounts. Facebook has almost a billion users by itself. Let's say that someone did a really great job and has a huge email list of 500,000 people. And they have ads that run on many websites so that they can get a large number of responses. If they get 192,000 people to pay for their service they can then tell half of them to pick the San Diego Chargers to beat the Green Bay Packers in week 1. The other half are told to bet on Green Bay. Maybe they give away their service for free to all those week 1 customers. For our example it doesn't matter. Because there are only two teams playing in a football game there are only two possible winners. When they give half their customers one team and the other half the opponent of that team, they are guaranteed to have 96,000 winners. So 96,000 people participate in week 2. Half of them receive Team A as the pick and half of them are told that Team B will win. Again, half of their customers are guaranteed to win. Then 48,000 people receive the winner in week 3 and 48,000 are told to bet the loser. At the beginning of week 4 there are still 48,000 people who haven't lost a bet. At the beginning of week 5 there are still 24,000 people who have won every week. At the beginning of week 6 there are still 12,000 people who have won every week. So at the beginning of week 7 there are 6,000 people who have won every single week. Finally, at the beginning of week 8 - when they contact you - they have THREE THOUSAND people who have won SEVEN TIMES IN A ROW! We could break it down further. I'm sure that many people would have been very happy to win 6 out of 7 games or even 5 out of 7. Some might be hoping for better results in the future after winning 4 out of 7 bets or even 3 out of 7. Life and business are not always as simple as football games. Sometimes there are more than two options (or more than two possible winners). Hopefully you see how someone could be fooled by an offer like this. What if someone said that the pick was guaranteed or your money back? Or maybe they guarantee you your money back within 7 days or even 30 or 60 or 90 days? What if someone says they have this incredible software to sell you? Could they use a system similar to the one described above? If they sell 800 orders at $2000 apiece that's ONE MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS! What if people don't follow through in time? I used to have a neighbor who did the sound system for seminars. He knew of this one seminar where they sold all these services to business owners for around $195. There were a lot of different things included and I asked how they could sell it so cheaply. He told me that 2/3 of the business owners left the seminar and then never followed through to get the services they had bought. The seminar company knew that on average nearly 7 out of 10 of these business owners would simply spend money and not contact the company again once they left the seminar and got busy back home with their business. Human beings are imperfect. Have you ever not gotten a refund or a rebate or money back somehow because you didn't take action within the time allowed? Or because you didn't fill out the rebate form correctly? If someone didn't take action in time they probably wouldn't get a refund. So it's likely they would be counted among the SATISFIED customers. If the software company selling software for $2000 gave refunds to half their customers they would still have EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. And if they gave refunds to 90% of their customers they would still have $160,000. Is it possible that 10% of their customers had more skill than the other customers or got lucky with their particular business? Is it possible that 2% of their customers got lucky or had more skill and that 8% of them simply didn't ask for a refund in time? I'm not saying that deception must be what is going on. I'm simply saying that it's possible. Be careful when you buy into money making opportunities. Ask around. Visit forums. Google the opportunity. Don't just be the next "bettor".