Top 4 Make Money Online Scams to Avoid
Money—it is something that we all need and want. Although it is just a piece of paper, it holds so much power. It can improve your living conditions and give you opportunities to live life to the fullest.
Many of us want to make money today online because it takes away the burden of managing a physical business. The sad thing is that scammers use this to take advantage of the gullible, and I do not want you to be one of the unfortunate victims who spent their hard-earned cash or their precious time in these scams.
Today, I will discuss several of the most common make-money online scams to avoid.
“A real business makes money from a product or a service. A company must be able to make profits from the sales of the product or service, not from the money paid by new members.”
While the definition of a scam may vary between people, my definition of a scam is simple: a scam is an activity where people use your time or money to enrich themselves while you stay poor.
Even if these activities or companies pay out, if the process or the way to get money is unreasonable, then it is a scam in my book.
These are:
- Make Money with Surveys
- Make Money Testing Games
- Membership with Networking
- Paid Membership to Get a Job
Let us get started!
1. Make Money with Surveys
Surveys popped on the internet like mushrooms over a decade. In this scam, you register and answer surveys. In exchange, you earn points. Later on, you swap these points for cash or gift cards, such as Amazon gift cards. If you want cash, you get paid via PayPal.
Yes, they pay, but…
Here is the thing: you get 1 point or a few points after completing a survey. But you need thousands of points to be able to swap them for cash or a gift card.
If you think about it, these survey scams are just using you to supply marketers with data—data that marketers use for their campaigns. So, while you spend your time filling out these surveys, the marketers just get free data from you.
And worse, you will get notified after filling up the survey that you are not “qualified”. What does this mean? It means that you filled out a survey that was not intended for you as an audience or participant, and therefore you will not get points.
Why on earth did the system allow you to fill out the survey if you were not qualified? See what is happening? You filled out a survey for free, which the marketers will use, but you never got rewarded.
Even if they pay, it will take you hundreds of surveys before you can get a gift card or cash. If you take two minutes per survey, and you fill out 100 surveys to get $5, you do the math, and you will realize that you spent three hours to get $5, not including the many surveys you completed where you are not “qualified”.
Stay away from make-money survey scams. They are not worth your time.
2. Make Money Testing Games
This is another version of the survey. In it, you need to download a game, test it, and then provide feedback. As you test more games, you earn more points, and you can use these points to earn cash.
Here is the problem: as you download these games, these game creators get data from your phone. Also, the games that you downloaded will become part of their stats. It will show on iTunes or Google PlayStore that this game has been downloaded thousands of times, thus making it seem like the game is credible.
Also, some of these scams ask you to give three stars and leave a comment on the store platform. Again, it is a scam. They are getting good star ratings from you even if you, therefore bloating the game’s feedback on the platform.
3. Membership with Networking
Any type of investment online where you are asked to pay for an investment is shady. The exception to the rule is a legitimate investment firm like those where you invest in stocks.
What I am referring to in this scam are companies that do not have legitimate products.
In these scams, they ask you to refer your friends or find other investors. If you succeed, you get a commission from the membership fee that your friend or referral paid.
This is a classic form of the Ponzi scheme. Not all networking companies are bad, but you need to know if a networking company is a Ponzi scheme or not.
To be able to do this, you have to put the company’s process to a simple test: any company that earns money or profit from the deposit of new members, instead of making money from a product or a service, is a Ponzi scheme.
You see, a real business makes money from a product or a service. A company must be able to make profits from the sales of the product or service, not from the money paid by new members. If you take away the money coming in from the new members, will the business survive?
If not, then this membership investment firm is a Ponzi scheme.
RELATED: The Importance of Emergency Funds and How to Build One
4. Paid Membership to Get a Job
We all need jobs, and if possible, we want to work from home with legit ways to make money online. As such, there are many online freelance marketplaces out there, and most of them are legit. All you have to do is sign up for an account and then advertise your services.
If someone buys, you get paid, and the marketplace gets a commission. This setup is legit. Some charge 20% of what you sell, and some charge more than that. This is alright—the marketplace owners have to maintain the website, pay for advertising, pay for their coders, and their employees, pay for escrow, and so much more.
But there are online freelance marketplaces that are not legit. These are websites that ask you to pay money so you can access their job boards. These are make-money online scams to avoid.
Seriously, you have to pay $10 a month to be able to find jobs? It does not make sense. They make it seem like they have thousands of legit jobs, but these are jobs that you can see yourself on LinkedIn and other social platforms. Avoid these online marketplaces; they have no job for you. Or if they do, they just scrape these jobs from other job boards.
If you want to make money online via freelancing, all you need to do is join marketplaces like Fiverr or post your skills on Craigslist.
Summary
Never be a victim of easy money-making schemes. We all need money to live, but you have to realize that there is no easy way to earn it. The money you make depends on your skills and the value that you provide. The exception, of course, is winning a lot in gambling—gambling is a game of chance, and you know what you are getting not before you place a bet.
The best way to make money online is by setting up a business like an online store on Shopify.
Do not be lured into fake investments. An investment is money you deposit in exchange for the possibility of growing it. Investments are backed by real assets like products and services, not by earnings through layers of memberships.