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Category: Spam

If you've been online for more than an hour, you've probably gotten one of those PHENOMENAL MONEY MAKING PROGRAMS that promise to make you 50 thousand dollars richer in short order. It's the classic David Rhodes Make Money Fast scheme, now legendary on the Net. Ever wonder if those things really work?

Make Money Fast!

If you haven't seen one of these emails, here's a basic outline: You send five bucks each to four people, and order reports like: "Major Corporations And Multi-Level Sales" and "Sources For The Best Mailing Lists".

Then you send out thousands of copies of the same letter, attaching your name and address to the first report, and bumping the other names down to the next report. The idea is that eventually hordes of people will be sending you so many fivers that your mailbox will explode.

When I was a teenager, I tried something very similar, expecting to retire a wealthy man at age 16. Without the help of the Internet, I copied, collated, folded, licked, stamped and mailed out 1000 letters with my sure-fire Make Money Fast scheme. Then I waited for the money to start rolling in. After three weeks, I got just ONE reply. I lost about a hundred smackers on the deal and my Mom & Dad were nice enough not to say "I told you so".

Why It Doesn't Work

This kind of thing just doesn't work, and here's why. Let's assume a response rate of 1/10 of 1% (which may actually be generous). In order to make 50 kilobucks you'd have to send 10,000 letters, resulting in 10 people sending you a Fiver, and hope that those ten would get 10, and each of those ten would get ten. That makes 10,000 people. Expressed another way:

Level 1: Total replies: 10 / Total letters 10,000
Level 2: Total replies: 100 / Total letters 100,000
Level 3: Total replies: 1000 / Total letters 1,000,000
Level 4: Total replies: 10000 / Total letters 10,000,000

So you can see that over 10 million people have to get your letter before you'll rake in the expected booty. Theoretically, this could work, but only a couple times, before everyone on the Internet has seen the scheme. And since this type of letter has been making the rounds for about 20 years, you can bet a large percentage of those online HAVE seen it and won't fall for it.

And then figure in the fact that you'd have to be VERY lucky if all your letters on level 2 went to 100,000 UNIQUE persons. Realistically, many of the recipients will receive multiple copies, especially if you have friends sending to their own intersecting circles of friends. Now add the "Fear of Spam" factor to this scenario. Most people know that spam is bad, and they don't want to risk losing their Internet account on such a gamble.

This makes the actual response rate on levels 2 through 4 much lower than expected - and probably close to nil. In short, it's a waste of your time and money. You'll most certainly be branded an Evil Spammer, your ISP will drop you in a flash, and you may get a phone call from the local Attorney General asking for a lunch date.

If I Were a Rich Man...

If I honestly thought that I could make money using this scheme, I'd just send a Mayke Munney Fasst letter to the 100,000 subscribers of my Tourbus newsletter, wait six weeks and laugh my cool half million all the way to the bank. With that kind of money in hand, would I care if I lost my account or people called me a spammer? Hardly, but it just ain't gonna happen, folks.

So please don't fall for this scam. The only people making money off this type of thing are the sleazeballs who sell those "guaranteed fresh" lists of e-mail addresses to the suckers who fall for this type of thing.

PROVE ME WRONG!

HOWEVER, if you HAVE tried this online, and by some chance you DID make money, I want to hear from you. Even if you made enough to cover your time and cost, I want to know. I won't reveal the identity of anyone who contacts me.

When I posed this question to Tourbus riders a few years ago, two people did 'fess up to having tried a Make Money Fast scheme. None of them got rich, though. Here are their stories:

"I did this type of thing about 25 years ago. Received a couple hundred dollars. Got summoned to some court hearing in Philadelphia and was ordered to cease and desist. Would have had to repay people, but each would have gotten less than $1, so I did not have to go through that exercise. Whew!"

"In 1991 I sent one of those emails to every student at a major Australian university. I made about 21 hundred dollars and lost my account. However since I was able to buy a car I achieved my goal and I got the account back a month later."

Very interesting! But I have a feeling that things have changed quite a bit since then. People are more sensitized to this type of scam, and the penalties (academic and legal) are surely harsher. A few people wrote to say that they tried M-M-F more recently and got nothing at all. Case closed!

(Oh, and please send this article to 10,000 friends, thanks!)