Quora Answer: What Get-Rich-Quick Schemes Seem Appealing but End in Failure?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What get-rich-quick schemes always seem appealing but always end in failure?”

These schemes sell you the fantasy of wealth with minimal effort.  That is why they are appealing, and they have to be appealing to attract the gullible and the naive.  They end in failure because there was never really any grounding in business realities.  If there was a real way to get rich quick, whoever discovered it would exploit it, and guard their secret jealously, so as to preclude competitors.  He is not going to sell it to you at minimum cost in several “quick and easy lessons”.  It takes a special level of stupid to believe that, and unfortunately, that is a lot of people.

One of the greatest scams is multi-level marketing.  If a product and service is good, there is no need to go through the charade and cost of “direct selling”, which is anything but “direct”.  If we were to calculate the amounts supposedly paid out in reward and reimbursements, these companies should have been broke a long time ago.  But they know that it is impossible for the downlines to maximise their profit.  We have to consider that if one person has 10 downlines, who each have 10 downlines, that is 111 people to be paid.  How many people do they have to approach, and what is the percentage that is inclined towards this sort of business?  This demographic, especially when you factor in other competing MLMs, means they effectively cannibalise each other.

Another scam would be groups that sell ideas of online marketing, as if simply having a website earns a lot of money.  Most people never go to these random sites.  They make money because stupid people are willing to pay thousands to learn the “secrets” of web marketing.  A local example here would be the so-called Profits Academy.  If there really were a method to make money from internet marketing in the way they claim, we would be looking at another Ali Baba or Amazon.  Such a business would move up the food chain, and dominate the portion of the supply chain that allows them to control a node of demand.  Instead, they sell rubbish seminars to gullible idiots, and they have to write glowing testimonials as part of this mentorship contract.

As long as it involves no work, or minimal effort, it is unlikely to lead to wealth.  Even organised crime requires a lot of work.  There is no such thing as something from nothing.