The Get-Rich-Quick Up-Sell Tactic

The up-sell scam is an increasingly popular techniques used by get-rich-quick scammers and other types of investment fraud.

If you are not sure what the typical get-rich-quick scam entails, you can read our article about them here. Essentially they are scams that claim you can be financially free by following some sort of secret or underground techniques or system that will be revealed to you at a special low cost.
All of these scams will sell you useless marketing information that is either outdated, skewed, available else where for free, never in-depth enough to actually make anyone significant money, or all of the above.

The up-sell scam works as follows –
1. Firstly, bait people, with websites that promote secret formulas and underground techniques to making lots of money online.
2. Sell useless marketing information to people who bite. At the same time get their personal details like email address and phone number.
3. Design your useless marketing information to highlight the fact that while this information is useful, the victim should pay much higher costs to make the most of it and get even more special, limited information that will make them rich. The costs should be much higher for this even more special information. Bombard the victim through their phone number and/or email that they should buy this additional information. Continue to bombard victim until they bite.
4. If the victim bites again, sell them more useless and/or inflated marketing information at higher costs.

The techniques can work drastically well because people will feel invested in the `program` once they have paid the initial fee, so they will feel somewhat obliged to pay any further up-sell costs in a bid to see it through. They do not realise that the website promoting the secret formulas was just there to bait them into what is usually a never ending cycle of payment requests for endless upgrades.

Get-rich-quick scammers will use many psychological tactics and compelling sales letters to make the victim feel that they are always one purchase away from buying the information that will tell them how to get rich. In reality, they are just being sold mostly inflated information that can often be found elsewhere on the Internet for free.

Additionally, like with any get-rich-quick scam, victims often do not realise they are being scammed. Once they set up these so called miracle programs and either make little or no money, the victims often assume that they are doing something wrong. They don’t assume they have been scammed, because they are actually being sold sound marketing information - the only problem is that the marketing information is publicly available anyway and no where near in depth enough to make anyone rich. It is often information regarding the basic principles of marketing. It is the equivalent of selling information on how the stock market works coupled with a few basic stock market tips and expecting the recipient of such information to become a millionaire using the stock market. Of course it doesn’t work like that. There are many other factors determining success that these get-rich-quick scams do not go into.

Of course, the advice here is to not sign up for any get-rich-quick drivel, no matter what the cost. Generally speaking, the lower the cost, the higher the chance you will be pressured or pestered into paying more money for additional information. Cheaper does not always mean better.

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