Business Opportunity Fraud Flourishes In The New Year

This article caught my eye but sort of peeved me too: All Business: Business Opportunity Fraud Flourishes In The New Year

Selling the promise of riches and then profiting by selling the means to those riches is still a tried-and-true formula. Today, thousands of unscrupulous operators peddle it daily under the broad guise of a “business opportunity.” It’s the most persistent type of business fraud, and thanks to the Internet, it’s growing exponentially.

Here’s my question.

If a business doesn’t “pan out”, did that make the person selling the business start up kit a “fraud”? Assuming every one’s a crook and every sales piece is a fraud are characteristic of lots of people because they’ve made bad choices and got carried away by promises of money without adding their own common sense to the mixture.

There’s lots of money, for instance, to be made in brain surgery if you have the skills. How many do?

There’s lots of money to be made in lots of things… if you have the skills.

Many business opportunities don’t require those skills and, as a result, are deceptively simple (or made to sound so through deception.).

There’s a fine line between an enthusiastic sales letter and deception to be sure, but we tend to blame others completely when we carry some of the blame ourselves.

So beware of scams.

Realize that if you live in a town of 2 people, paying $500 for the “Get Rich Cleaning Up Dog Manure” kit probably won’t work for you like it might for someone living in a suburban area with lots of dogs and lots of dirty yards.

Part of success too is knowing what IS NOT going to work for you. If you’re a writer, addicted to writing, then choosing a business where you can’t pursue your writing addiction doesn’t make too much sense does it?

If you love working with your hands and being up to your elbows in grease, selling insurance on the side and being told you have to wear a suit and tie in your spare time may not be a good combination.

Don’t invest in a hamburger stand if you’re a vegan either.

Don’t spend thousands of dollars on a medical transcription course if you just want to do a “little typing on the side”.

These should seem obvious but to one degree or another, people disappointed by business opportunities often make these mistakes and then blame the opportunity.

There’s an opportunity cost involved in everything.

If you want to lose no money and figure it all out for yourself, take the sales letter, analyze it line by line and scour the libraries and the internet until you learn how to do it yourself. Your cost is your time.

If there’s a trusted information source who sells an information kit, then you pay for the kit and are out less time but more money.

If you want to guarantee success, you’re talking a “system” here. The more guarantees of success, the more you’ll pay in upfront and ongoing fees.

If McDonald’s sells you a franchise, you can be pretty well guaranteed to make a full time living but you probably could have lived quite well off the money you had to invest to get the franchise.

So there are trade offs all along the way.

After eliminating genuine scams like stuffing envelopes at home, there are a variety of ways to start any business. You do it yourself, buy just start up information, or in essence buy a business. Just be sure to invest in a business that suits your personality and skills so you won’t give up before it all pays off and then bemoan the “scam” you got involved in.

And, as this article I linked to suggests, watch out for people promising you can get rich on those DVD rental machines!