Month: February 2008

Rebate Processor Jobs Are Scams!

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[See our analysis of Angela Penbrook’s rebate processing offer here.]

Steve is in the shower washing the scam off, so I get to write the full review of rebateprocessorjobs.com. Like absolute suckers, we had to spend $39 of our hard-earned dollars, signed up and prepared to make tons of money. However—surprise, surprise—it’s not what the sales page led us to believe. Here’s the short review: to say that these are “jobs” is a bald-faced lie. It’s affiliate marketing. The sales page says you’ll make $15 per rebate processed. What it doesn’t tell you is that the $15 is what’s left of your sales commission after you send a rebate—from your own money—to your buyer.

Here’s the long review:
Why you’re here
What the site leads you to believe
The truth
Inside Rebateprocessorjobs.com
Other rebate processor “jobs” sites
But Joe, don’t some people make money with affiliate marketing?
Together we can put misleading Web sites out of business

Why you’re here
You’re probably here because you’ve searched for ways to earn money online. The Google gods sent you to sites saying they would help you get a job processing rebates at home. You thought, “Hmmm…that sounds pretty good. I can do that.” But you decided to look around a little to see if the site is legit. You searched some more and that brought you to us.

You came to the right place. Unlike other sites that say “we’ve tried them all and THESE are the legitimate ones,” we are not an affiliate of rebateprocessorjobs.com. We try stuff out and give you the straight truth.

What the site leads you to believe
Rebateprocessorjobs.com targets people who are searching for online jobs or other ways to earn money from the Internet. It counts on you being a little bit desperate and it appeals to your emotions by telling you that your money problems can be over and you can have the lifestyle you’ve always wanted.

It claims that you can make a lot of money by processing rebates at home, and it leads you to believe that this processing is “a job.” Well, it kind of depends on the meaning of the word “job.” If it means “work in which you throw up advertisements all over the Web in hopes that someone will buy from your ad,” then yeah, I guess it’s a job. But Rebateprocessorjobs.com knows that you don’t think of a job that way, so it’s lying by intent. Note to Rebateprocessorjobs.com: Hey! Yeah, you, “Cindy Dalton!” Here’s what “job” means: An agreement with an employer in which you exchange your time and skill for an agreed-upon amount of money. Of course, they already know that. They’re counting on you thinking that. The sales page is expressly written to lead you to believe this.

The site leads you to believe that you’ll get a job processing rebates. You think, like I did, that such a job would involve companies telling you which customer have made a qualifying purchase, and then paying you to do the necessary typing and stuff. This is not the case. The “company” making the sale is you through your Clickbank ads. The “forms” you’ll fill out to “process” the rebates are the fields necessary to send your money to the buyer from your PayPal account.

Rebateprocessorjobs.com also claims:

  • “Make money simply by filling out online forms”
  • Enter the data into the forms that we provide you, click submit, sit back and collect the money
  • You’ll earn $15 per rebate processed
  • You can make this much money:
    2 a day @ $15 each=$210 per week or $840 month or $10,080 a year.
    6 a day @ $15 each=$630 per week or $2520 month or $30,240 a year.
    15 a day @ $15 each=$1575 per week or $6300 month or $75,600 a year.
  • Opportunities like this do not come by every day.

The truth
All of these claims have kernels of truth to them, but they are intentionally misleading.

  • “Make money simply by filling out online forms.” This is a lie. You won’t make money by filling out the forms like you would if it were a real job. You make money IF someone clicks on the ad you created by filling out the form AND THEN buys the product!
  • Enter the data into the forms that we provide you, click submit, sit back and collect the money. Again, it’s far from that simple. The forms are not “provided” for you by this site. They are part of the process of creating a Clickbank ad. And you can’t just create the ad (i.e., “click submit”) and expect to make money. You have to somehow get that ad in front of LOTS of people so that someone will click and buy. There’s no “sitting back” involved.
  • You’ll earn $15 per rebate processed. Yeah, and my grandma’s a super model. Here’s how they came up with that number. IF you sell a $37 product from Clickbank and IF the commission is $23.50, and IF you offered a rebate in your ad for $8.50, the difference of $15 is yours to keep! Woo-hoo! What about the bajillion products in Clickbank that are not $37, and for which the commission is not $23.50? Rebateprocessorjobs.com doesn’t say.
  • You can make this much money:
    2 a day @ $15 each=$210 per week or $840 month or $10,080 a year.
    6 a day @ $15 each=$630 per week or $2520 month or $30,240 a year.
    15 a day @ $15 each=$1575 per week or $6300 month or $75,600 a year.
    This is utter nonsense. As you know by now, you won’t make $15 for each form you fill out, so all of these numbers are purely theoretical. They are only possible IF you put your ads in front of enough people AND enough people click on your ads AND enough of those who click make a purchase AND you’ve chosen Clickbank products with a commission of $15 or more.
  • Opportunities like this do not come by every day. Yes they do. Hundreds of them, day after day after day.

Once you’ve paid your money (which is nonrefundable), you learn the full story. Here’s how it all goes down:

  1. You sign up at Clickbank, an online clearing house of thousands of products
  2. You choose products you want to sell
  3. You create ads for those products
  4. You plaster those ads all over the ‘Net (this step could cost you money)
  5. You somehow get people to see your ads. (the site doesn’t tell you this, nor how to do it)
  6. You somehow get them to click on your ads, not the dozens hundreds thousands of other ads from your competitors (the site doesn’t tell you how to do this)
  7. You only earn a commission IF someone buys the product you’re selling after clicking on the ad you created. Read that again!
  8. You send part of your commission back to the buyer

Wait…where’s the rebate? Where’s the processing? You see the last step? That’s the rebate. The “processing” is when you look at the email addresses of your buyers and manually send them money through PayPal. Not quite the “job” you were expecting, is it?

Inside Rebateprocessorjobs.com
When you pay your $37, you get instant access to the member’s area of Virtual Training Solutions. The first page you’ll see in the “members area” is a list of other money making scamsopportunities. The generous folks at Virtual Training Solutions (which is the “members area” of rebateprocessorjobs.com) give you access to all of these for no additional charge! The links below are to I’ve Tried That reviews on each topic:

If you click on the links in the members area, you’ll be taken down an endless road of the site’s affiliate links: things they are trying to sell you so they can earn the commission.

Continue to the Rebate Processing section and you’ll get full instructions on the steps I numbered for you above. The steps they outline are true, and the instructions are reasonable, but by now, a buyer will have realized that this is not a job like they were promised. There’s no way in hell you’re going to sign up for this bullshit “opportunity” and start pulling in money right away.

Other rebate processor “jobs” sites
Seen one, seen ’em all. Folks, they’re all the same. I don’t care what the url is or what the sales page says. If they promise you big money processing rebates, they’re selling you the same stinky cheese. EZrebateprocessing uses identical images to show you how the program works, so I know the program is the sam. But it charges $197!! If you must throw your money away, I suggest flushing $37 rather than $197. Or better yet, send it to me via PayPal at joe[at]ivetriedthat[dot]com. I’ll at least say, “Thank you” and will still be here in the morning!

Be wary of the following individuals and sites:
Angela Pembrook (or Penbrook) at myrebateprocessor.com (BBB Report: F) (Also see our write-up of Penbrook here.)
Cindy Dalton and Rebate Processor Jobs at rebateprocessorjobs.com/ (BBB Report: F.)
Virtual Training Solutions at virtual-training-solutions.com/ (BBB Report: None.)
Angel Stevens and Process At Home at processathome.com/ (BBB Report: F.)
EZ Rebate Processing at internetprofithouse.com/

But Joe, don’t people make money with affiliate marketing?
Of course they do. A lot of people make some money. Some people make a lot and you can too. If you’re interested in learning how to make money through affiliate marketing, you need the proper guidance. That’s why we highly recommend the Wealthy Affiliate to every beginner who is looking to learn how to make money from home. Read our review on the Wealthy Affiliate by clicking here.

Together we can put misleading Web sites out of business
Scams like this one thrive on ignorance and emotional appeal. You can help put these guys out of business by spreading the word about this post and the dirty tricks of scammers that want to kick you when you’re down.

War on Data Entry Jobs

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Way back in June of 2007 , I’ve Tried That declared war on data entry jobs as they’re pitched on the ‘Net. I’m ashamed to say it’s been a rather uneventful war. We looked at a few companies but got tired of it because they were all the same schtick. Meet the new Rambo in the War on Data Entry Jobs: Laz Rojas. He truly puts us to shame with his excellent homework, which shows that they’re indeed much the same—even more so than Steve and I suspected. This post is a compilation of his comments (lightly edited by yours truly) on another data entry jobs thread. Words in italics are mine.

This is a great site, and you do a terrific job of unmasking these scams for what they really are and spelling out what’s really going on in black and white. In just a couple of sentences, you described exactly what these “data entry” programs actually are, while the scammers who sell them write paragraphs and paragraphs describing what they aren’t at all.

Seen One, Seen ’em All
I actually came across your site while checking up on another company. When I first read through its site, I was nearly sucked in. Then I decided to explore some of the other sites that also offered “data entry” work at home. Not because I suspected it was a scam, but because I wanted to see what other options were out there. The red flags went up, though, when nearly every site I went to sounded the same as the one I looked at. The wording on the pages, the claims made, the assurances offered… it all sounded like the same company had put up multiple websites under different names. Even the pop-up windows with the 50% off coupon that expires at 11:59 PM tonight… every site had this. Or the regular $99 price being slashed to $49 for just a short time. So what initially sounded like a great opportunity on the first site I went to, started screaming “SCAM!” when I encountered the exact same thing on other sites. Every site seemed to have been created using the same template and following the same blueprint; every site made the same sales pitch in the same way. More about this below.

Can You Really Find Data Entry Jobs This Way?
Data entry? I don’t think so. What these companies offer has nothing to do with what most people think of when they think of data entry. This is affiliate marketing, plain and simple. And for those people who understand what this is and want to try their luck at it, that’s fine. But telling people who are looking for actual data entry jobs that this is for them is deceptive and just plain cruel. Someone who actually wants to try affiliate marketing might be able to be successful at it, knowing what’s involved and what the risks are. But someone looking for data entry won’t succeed at it, especially since they don’t even know the true nature of what they’re doing and can’t appreciate what’s actually involved.

What Your “Job” Will Really Entail
The bottom line is, the companies that are supposedly providing you with data entry work for which they’ll pay you are doing nothing more than tricking you into doing their advertising for them and tricking you into paying for that advertising. They write their little ads, and then instead of submitting them to Google and paying Google to run them, they get YOU to submit them to Google and pay Google to run them. And all under the guise of “data entry” work! Then they sit back and reap the profits from any products sold without spending a dime on advertising. [Joe’s note: Google Adwords is just one form of “data entry” in this deceptive advertising. You might also fill out affiliate applications and data fields that allow bots to spew spam ads all over the Internet in forums and blogs.]

What really gets me is this: if they were honest and up-front about what they’re actually selling you, and if they were teaching you how to use Google and affiliate ads to advertise and market your OWN products or services to make your OWN business successful, they might actually do something legitimate and helpful. But instead, they are teaching you to make someone ELSE’S business successful and conning you into not realizing that. “We’ll hook you up with thousands of companies ready to employ you and who won’t turn you down” is really “We’ll hand you over to companies ready to use you for their own gain and who won’t turn down the chance to do so.”

Don’t Encourage These Scammers by Clicking or *gasp!* Buying
Open your eyes, people. The only ones benefiting from these so-called “data entry” jobs at home are: 1) the people selling the programs; and 2) the companies they “hook you up with” who simply take advantage of you while pretending to employ you. The system they’ve created certainly works, for THEM. YOU get caught in between them, and get screwed from both sides.

One Template, Many Sites
On two different sites belonging to two supposedly different companies, the same exact text appeared in the testimonials. WORD FOR WORD. Only the photos, names, and locations of the so-called “satisfied customers” were different. What they said on one site was repeated verbatim on the other. The testimonials were even in the same order on both sites!

As soon as I saw this, that was it. There was no way this couldn’t be a scam. And I couldn’t believe how lazy and unoriginal the scam was. Worse than the 50% coupon shtick. With the coupon, you might convince yourself that a site is simply copying another site’s tactic in order to be competitive. But the exact same testimonials from different people? Don’t they realize that someone looking around the web for a data entry job is going to visit various sites and sooner or later encounter this? Or do they really think that once you visit their site, you’ll swallow their pitch and sign up on the spot and not visit any other sites? They think you’re stupid. Don’t prove them right by signing up.

You’ll see that they both use the very same graphic to show their Clickbank accounts. So, both Laura Kauth and Donna Richards made the exact same amount of money on the exact same dates during the second half of May, 2006. :) Both of these sites also use the very same image of a blue iMac with a dollar sign on its screen, and the text following this image is nearly identical on both sites. Indeed, much of the text on both sites, and the arrangement of topics throughout, is nearly identical.

The Enablers: Sites that Promote These Deceptive Programs
Something else I wanted to talk about are the so-called “review” sites which claim to steer you toward companies that are legit, a bunch of which I explored last night. They come right out and say that most of the work-at-home opportunities are scams, and then they claim they’ve done research and found the scant few that are not. And they’re willing to steer you in the right direction because of the goodness of their hearts.

This is nothing but a very clever and deceptive tactic which is in reality an extension of the original scam. These folks know that some people are wise enough to think, to analyze, to investigate, and that these people will figure it out on their own that the so-called job opportunity is a scam. The scammers can’t afford to let such people figure it out. They can’t afford to let people confirm their doubts on their own, because once the people do, that’s it, they’re gone. So they step in and short circuit this by admitting there are many scams, and confirm the people’s suspicion FOR them. They count on the people thinking, “Aha! I KNEW they were scams! I suspected it, and this guy has confirmed it! He’s fighting for truth, he’s trying to save me from falling for the scams. So if he recommends a site, he must be telling me the truth.” The scammer knows that once he’s got you thinking he’s on your side by confirming what you already suspected and rescuing you, he’ll have your trust. And once he has your trust, he can scam you to his heart’s content. Saving you from falling into the hole in front of you, he can steer you right into the hole next to you.

These review sites are all over the place. One guy proclaimed he could prove he wasn’t a scammer because he wasn’t asking for money. He was steering you to the “legit” opportunities and asking nothing in return. Why would he lie, if there’s nothing in it for him? There’s no reason to lie if there’s no incentive, right? So he must be telling the truth. That makes sense, doesn’t it? WRONG. Asking for money is not the only component of a scam. When I read this guy’s assurance that he was on the level because he wasn’t asking for money, I immediately thought, “Yeah, but how do I know you’re not getting money from scammers you’re steering victims to? You can refrain from asking ME for money because you’re getting money from THEM. And how do I know you’re not the scammer yourself, pretending to be someone else professing to have found a legit site and steering me to your own site?” [These promotional “review” sites are affiliates of the “data entry” programs, and they make a commission every time one of their readers clicks a link and signs up.]

This trick can work because people equate “scam” with someone taking their money. The assumption is: If no taking of money is involved, it must be on the level. You need to realize that no taking of money is involved in this trick because this trick is basically just Part One of the scam. The taking of money happens in Part Two, and the only purpose of Part One is to lead you right into Part Two. It’s like the game of three card monte, which is run by TWO con artists working in concert. One guy plays the game and wins to make you think YOU can win, but he’s in on the scam all along.

Thanks for the terrific points, Laz Rojas. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Let me add, however, that there ARE legitimate data entry jobs to be found online. I know because I had one. Entered subscription information from cards into an Excel spreadsheet. But I didn’t find it by searching for “data entry jobs” through Google. I found it at Craig’s List.