Technology Blog

A few days ago I post about paid survey sites, and my experience at trying to get even $10 out of one site that was free with nothing but links to other survey sites (and so the circle jerk went). One of the sites I landed on asked for my personal info in case I was interested in “legitimate earn at home” opportunities, oh and get this… specific to CANADIANS.

Now, I’m a bit of an american-phobe when it comes to “business opps”. I have this belief (since I am Canadian) that the scams come from south of the border. SO NOT TRUE.

If you’ve ever been trapped in an Amway call, by say, a sister, a brother, a brother-in-law, an uncle, a cousin, or some other close relation, then I strongly urge you to AVOID THIS WEBSITE NOW: canadianhomebusiness dot ca. I hate their tactics so much that I absolutely refuse to give them a direct link. Considering the methods of operation and communicating is so INDIRECT, they deserve nothing from me, except this negative commentary.

I made the mistake of providing my cell phone while filling out the info for a “survey site”, completely forgetting that I’d be using my cell phone quite a bit while visiting family in Toronto. I received about 2-3 calls, one as late at 10pm EST on a Sunday from a number I didn’t recognize. Not only was it a private number, but they left no voice mail. Shortly thereafter, I received an email from these guys asking me to call them to discuss this “wonderful opportunity” blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, etc etc etc. No details on what the company/opportunity is actually about.

To my anger, surfing to their website was also a waste of time because once again no details are provided.

I’m reminded of the time a good friend of mine was encouraged by his work buddy to attend a “meeting”. My buddy knew I was looking for potential opportunities for self employment and suggested I give this a try. He was busy with work, but figured I could go and check it out for the both of us. His work buddy, a very nice guy and programmer was quite enthusiastic about this business “opp”. Very enthusiastic. Ok, so I bit.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the hotel was that there were no signs, no company logos, no brochures, no reports, not even a single page handout. In fact, the conference room sign was not labelled announcing the name of the company that had rented the room in the first place. RED FLAG #1. The next thing I noticed was my friend’s work buddy up on the podium talking about the business opportunity in very broad general terms without announcing the name of the company. RED FLAG #2.

I sat in that chair in frustration as my confidence in these characters was quickly slipping. After about another 15 minutes, the “final reveal” took place. The “opp” was for distributing skin products for none other than: NuSkin international.

I felt completely had by this guy that I was somewhat friendly with since I’d met him a few time previously. Naturally, to be polite I stayed for the entire schpeel about NuSkin, the whole time wholely aware that I was suckered into listening to these clowns talking about their obvious pyramid scheme.

Now, my opinion on MLM (multi-level-marketing) is somewhat mixed since my foray onto the internet for employment. I believe people should be rewarded when they refer other people to business opportunities. But when a scheme is almost entirely about creating sub groups or seller underneath you and the general jist about the opportunity is nothing but referring other people to your “pyramid” we might as well start talking about the circle jerk again. I’ll say this much, J. did not have any luck in recruiting me to this scheme. My hope is that he never quit his day job.

Although I mention Amway in the title of this blog, I would like to say that I did visit their website to compare it to the canadian business opp site that I went to. To my surprise Amway was very upfront about their MLM, and discussed their model of people buying products, everyone buying products from the same suppliers thus sharing the profits/savings amongst themselves. That’s pretty much the jist to most MLM’s that I’ve seen.

I think I’m done kvetching about this on my blog for now. The one site I will share directly however is this one: http://www.falseprofits.com/MLM%20Lies.html

This is a good read if you’re looking for work or if you feel like someone is trying to get you interested in an opportunity that appears too good to be true. As for me, this is just continued validation to trust me gut more and be very cautious as to what information I put out on the net.

Recently, I read an article about getting paid survey work from online sources. A click here and a click there and within a matter of minutes I landed on a “free” survey site. Surveys and claims that you can be compensated by participating in surveys have been around the internet for as long as I’ve been online. In fact, I’m sure that beside this blog entry, the adsense ads on this likely have advertisements to various survey websites.

The free survey website I went to yesterday guaranteed that if I completed their 10 buck challenge, they would promptly send 10 dollars plus a 3 dollar bonus for signing up straight into my paypal account. So, what did I have to lose?

What I lost was time and interest. I was amused by performing this stunt. I landed on sites for “free” ipods, “free” digital cameras, sign up incentives for casinos, sign up incentives for *other* survey sites. I was spinning around and around so fast, to various sites all pointing to similar survey sites, that it reminded me of landing on (or I confess) searching for adult related websites. It was the ultimate circle jerk. This is a rather vulgar metaphor, so rather than have you thinking I’m a dirty pervert, I’ll quote from my favorite website for information: Wikipedia.

They can refer to a situation, often in the workplace, politics or academia, where people are stroking each other’s ego without producing anything of value.

Quite honestly, survey filling can be rewarding if you know where to find these. I don’t have that talent, or more to the point, I don’t have the interest. It wasn’t long before I realized that pointing me to other survey sites was making this guy about $1.00-1.75 per referral. In other words, he kept his website free because he found ways to be compensated. I would have to sign up for about 15-20 websites to receive 10 bucks from him. You do the math. He was going to essentially keep half his money.

Are free websites therefore as scammy as paid ones? I’m not sure I have an honest answer to this question. I’ve decided to keep TechJobs free for now, because I firmly believe there are jobs out there available for telecommuters that do *not* involve paying a cent for this information.

If *anyone* has ever stayed on a survey site long enough to actually get direct payment for your opinion, I’d love to hear your experiences. Incidently, if you spam me with your affiliate link, I’ll simply ignore and delete your comment.

My little venture yesterday only did one thing for me: it brought me close to poking my own eyes out with the sharpest tool I could find on my desk. I concluded that as hard as it is to build a website up or a blog, I find this kind of work 1000 times more rewarding than filling out my personal information over and over again for…… essentially nothing.