Are you craving for travels? Do you need to raise some cash and you are wondering how to earn money online? In this case the first tip I should give you is to always verify reviews and other users' experiences of the system you want to use, to understand if it's a real opportunity or a scam. Unfortunately many people are taking advantage of others' need to raise an income. Too much enthusiasm seeing easy ways to earn money online is not a positive reaction, making you an easy prey to be scammed.
There are different types of scams, the most know probably is the pyramidal scheme, where you are making richer the owner of the system, lying in a beach in Thailand, while you are selling, doing affiliate marketing, or finding new adepts for his businness. While you might still do some little money, you are not obtaining the freedom you were lookig for.
Scams always start with a bait, exploiting your enthusiasm for earning money online
Recently I was attracted by a book in offer in Amazon, that for a limited period of time was possible to take for free instead of paying the 4$ of the eBook version. The title is "7 Secrets To Living The Laptop Lifestyle: How To Get Paid To Travel In 90 Days Or Less!": I'm not linking on purpose to the book since I'm not suggesting you to buy it.
The title looked interesting, and I thought it might have been a good source of knowledge to increase what I already knew and published in my previous article "Traveling jobs: 22 ideas to make money for your trips", that by the way I suggest you to check to find out serious methods to earn money online. We are talking about little money here, nobody will make you millionaire in a few weeks, don't believe the claims done in books and websites like the one I'm talking about.
In my case I didn't lose any money, since I didn't pay anything for the book, and I didn't apply to the programs (or scams? I didn't try) suggested by the author, but I lost my time for reading the book and I felt scammed anyway.
Review of a book as a practical example
There is a lot of incoherence in the book "7 Secrets To Living The Laptop Lifestyle: How To Get Paid To Travel In 90 Days Or Less!". In the first half the author is trying to convince you to quit your job, because you are a slave, and you can gain your freedom online, and many more similar stories.
I totally agree with that! That's why I'm travelling and I don't have any stable job, but I rather earn my living online little by little, and I don't believe easy shortcuts to success.
The second half of the book instead is aiming at transforming you in the "boss" of yourself, outsource your work, make your own business. Basically what he is suggesting is not to refuse the system, but to free yourself from your cage, and enslave the others! He is suggesting to use all of the methods that before he was criticizing, with the only difference that now you are going to be the hangman.
All of the book is disseminated with (theoretical) success stories of people that became millionaire, to make you craving for the possibility of making easy money and having a 6-7 digits income. Do you really think that it is so easy to be a millionaire? And first of all, is it what you really want and what would make you happy? According to the author, all of these 6 digits people, reached their status with "proven methods": but he is never saying what these proven methods are, because either they don't exist, or if they exist, you would be in competition with him.
Is it so easy to earn money online and become a millionaire?
Photo by Charles & Adrienne EsseltineDo you really think that if he knew so many proven methods to become a millionaire he was still trying to write a bad quality book and make a few bucks out of it? You still think you could learn from such a book how to earn money online?
The content is just hot air, speaking about nothing, repeating over and over again the same concepts and putting here and there some nice quotes from other authors and travellers (the merit goes to him at least for choosing them) and motivational sentences to push you to quit your fixed job. But what about practical suggestions or real ideas to make money online? Basically none. The few suggestions that he is giving are very general and about the process rather that direct tips. He is always talking about what will come in the book later, so that you keep reading, but "this later" will never come!
The book is totaling 134 pages, and the first link is at page 85; yes exactly, 3/4 of the book without even one practical link! And guess what? That link is linking to one of the pages that he created to make money and exploit your enthusiasm!
After the first time, it is repeated over and over again: you'll find no other links in the book rather that that. Basically he wrote a fake book to try to market his website (can we call it scam probably?). To be sincere there is half a page of the book with 6 more links: the first one is Amazon.com, probably to give credibility to the list, and then are following 5 more website, unknown to me, with whom probably he is doing some kind of business.
A practical suggestion that he is giving, is to write an eBook in the niche that you are planning to make business in, even a bad book (he is saying so, this is the exact quote "Technically, it doesn't even need to be a “good” book"!!), just to give you some credit and trust. And that's probably what he did. He created this scam-book to give him some credit and market his website.
If you didn't get it, my review of the book "7 Secrets To Living The Laptop Lifestyle: How To Get Paid To Travel In 90 Days Or Less!" is quite negative, and if you are still wondering how to earn money online, I would suggest you to keep your feet on the ground and don't believe these scammers! Maybe you can start following our simple and sincere guide with several ideas to make money for your trips. Remember that you need perseverance and frugality if you plan to fund your travels online!
Davide Vadalà
