Whenever a new tool creates a buzz, whether offline or online, you can bet that someone will create a pyramid marketing scam to exploit it. Facebook, of course, is one of the trendiest buzzes at the moment, especially for late-adopters who have only just recognised its potential. It was no surprise therefore to see various people linking to schemes that promise untold riches by giving you the secrets to unlocking hidden and little-known features on the site.

It’s just more scammy spam. Ignore it.

One scheme, has a clever video to accompany its (very poorly designed) marketing page, and asks for nothing more than an email address and several hundred dollars to let you into the inner chamber.

To my eye, it looks like a typical affiliate reseller site ad page, with generic fonts with titles highlighted in bold, red, underlined or a combination of all three. First red flag.

Aside from the 1990s web design, the ads that are being promoted by Facebook users show a thumbnail with a video play button, but the thumbnail simply clicks through to the page, it’s not an inline video as you should expect it to be. Second red flag.

Third red flag is the use of phrases such as “unique marketing system” and “proven profitability”, and “amazing results within days”. Those are very common bait lines used in pyramid scheme marketing. Other dodgy marketing cues include the money-back guarantees, that claim to give you a full refund if you’re not fully satisfied.

An additional problem with all of these schemes is that you will usually see hundreds of purely positivie reviews for them on the web. Rarely will you find a bad review, that’s because the affiliate members have swamped the search engines with their positive posts proclaiming how great the scheme is in an effort to draw you in.

I hate to see people being suckered into joining these scams, which inevitably cost several hundreds dollars and offer a great ROI only for those right at the top of the pyramid. Think about it, if the schemes really were powerful, why would the developer/owner share them with the plebian masses instead of simply cashing in themselves?

I’ve seen so many over the years and they all claim great riches by exploiting some trendy buzz tool. They may work in the very short-term, but they’re never sustainable. There really are no ethical get rich quick schemes out there. Some schemes give away neat tips given free as an enticement, like a guy in a dirty mac offering kids candy…

In the end, success for most people has to be down to hard work and personal inventiveness, and perhaps no little luck, it’s certainly not down to being suckered into scams. And, if you’re thinking you’d like to be at the top of the pyramid, then you’re not half the person I thought you were.