#so he got a new job that was basically a pyramid scheme and was costing him more money than he was earning

[thisqueernerd]

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[robotslenderman]

SO HEY I’ve had more thoughts on the falling out Maddy and Strauss eventually had and how that led to Strauss being kicked out of LA’s princedom and LA fell to the Anarchs. GOOD FUCKING JOB STRAUSS.

Keep in mind that this is all headcanon and is in Maddy’s continuity. So I’m gonna say stuff as if it’s established fact -- it’s not, I made it all up, lmao.

This is very, VERY long.

In which the new Tremere Primogen gets mad at Strauss, plots and schemes, and sets up Strauss to almost kill Madeline and lose his Regency and the city of LA. The plan worked almost perfectly.

Strauss was never much of a politician and always preferred to be left alone to his studies. It’s how he managed to live so damn long without getting staked out in the sun in the course of someone’s Jyhad. So when Maddy came to him for help in October 2004 with a blood hunt on her head and his Lord wanted him to kick out LaCroix and take his place, he was... not happy. That would make him a target. He didn’t live this long by being a target.

But, well, a Tremere does what their superior tells them to. So he did it. He insisted on keeping the position of Regent because he knew the Princehood wouldn’t last forever (how right he ended up being) and the Regency mattered more to him, but that was his first mistake, because there were Tremere in the LA Chantry that wanted his job and resented he had two powerful positions.

Specifically: the new Tremere Primogen, whose name I don’t know yet. Given that Strauss was still the Regent and was also the Prince, the Primogen’s title was... basically in name only. He was just a figurehead. Strauss didn’t need a Tremere Primogen, he knew more about the LA Tremere than the Primogen did.

Well, fuck that, thought the Primogen, and decided right then and there he was going to get that Regency, and the best way to do it was to fuck up Strauss’s reputation in the Pyramid. That wouldn’t be hard, he reckoned -- because Strauss made his second crucial mistake, and that was to basically adopt a non-Tremere as his childe.

Madeline the Malkavian was running amok in the Chantry. Sure, she was restricted only to the public areas and was only allowed in Strauss’s quarters or office under supervision, but she was a non-Tremere intruding in Tremere domain and shouldn’t have been allowed to come and go as she was. 

Now, Strauss had a very specific reason for adopting Madeline -- she was a fifth-generation Malkavian and therefore a very valuable ally. He couldn’t risk her one day being turned against the Tremere because she had the potential, due to her low generation, to become stupidly powerful one day. He wanted to guide her progress and hone her into the Tremere’s personal weapon.

His third mistake was in not telling anyone in the LA Chantry this. His superiors at Austraia knew, but everyone other than Strauss himself who knew what Madeline was died in the Vienna Chantry bombing. Later on, when the new Pyramid was established, Strauss never told them about Maddy’s power because he wasn’t sure how well it would last, and they were too busy getting things up and running to take any interest in her and why he kept her around.

Strauss made his fourth mistake: he was so determined not to let Madeline learn any Tremere secrets that he sometimes withheld crucial information from her that Kindred from other clans would know, because he was erring on the side of caution. He knew, for example, that all Kindred knew that they could be blood bound to each other but he didn’t know to what extent this was common knowledge, so rather than take the risk of accidentally telling Maddy something that only Tremere should know, he opted not to tell her anything about this at all.

So to recap, Strauss made four specific blunders that would bite him in the ass:

He never gave up his position as Regent, making the new Tremere Primogen basically useless and resentful.

He adopted a childe who wasn’t Tremere.

He didn’t tell the Tremere Primogen why, specifically, he adopted this childe and how much of an asset she was to the Pyramid, and how important it was that she was groomed put the Pyramid’s interests first.

He never taught Madeline that blood bonds could be formed between Kindred, let alone that post-Pyramid Tremere were so sensitive to it.

The Tremere Primogen quickly decided that Madeline was Strauss’s weakness, and that the best way to bring down Strauss was to use her. She was a non-Tremere; if a relationship between Strauss and any Tremere went sour it wouldn’t cause problems, but if Strauss could be turned against Madeline it could be used as proof to the Pyramid that his judgement in keeping Madeline around in the first place had been poor, and therefore he didn’t have the judgement to be Regent.

(Really, the Primogen was amazed that the Pyramid allowed Madeline to remain in the Chantry at all. He did not put 2 and 2 together that they knew something he didn’t.)

The Primogen decided to sit back and wait for an opportunity.

And an opportunity did come -- the Pyramid got blown up. The LA Chantry was reeling and Strauss opted to just... wait for the dust to settle. Strauss had never been a control-seeker, he didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to establish a Pyramid of his own. He was just going to wait and see what happened and join whatever Pyramid rose from the ashes.

Another crucial mistake, because the Primogen spent that time gently fanning the fears of the LA Tremere and destabilising their faith in their Regent. People who’d known Strauss for ages weren’t worried and had faith in him, but the youngest ones and the oldest ones who were less familiar with him were deeply rattled, and the Primogen just... dilligently sowed those seeds of discontent and nurtured them.

He finally executed a plan a year later. The objective: have Madeline learn Thaumaturgy, and have Strauss framed as having taught her and executed as a traitor to the Tremere. He managed to get a hold of a few Tremere Anarchs who’d defected from the Pyramid and enticed them to teach her. The Primogen was quite sure that Madeline had been longing to be a Tremere all this time, and this would make her closer to becoming one in all but blood.

Unfortunately for him, Madeline was too smart to take the bait. Madeline knew that sooner or later, her knowledge of Thaumaturgy would come out -- and when it did, Strauss would be the first person every Tremere looked at. So whenever she had the opportunity to learn, she flat out refused. The most persistent Tremere Anarch ended up getting ratted out to Strauss and put down. Luckily, Madeline killed them before they could rat out the Primogen in turn, so the Primogen cut his losses and abandoned that plan.

He came up with another, more outrageous plan later on: get Strauss and Madeline isolated, and then get Strauss badly hurt.

By then, the Primogen had figured out that yeah, perhaps there was a reason Strauss kept her around after all -- she was definitely powerful and had an uncanny knack of surviving situations even a lot of elders shouldn’t. Of course, he had other reasons for wanting to get rid of Strauss so that wasn’t enough to make him back off. But it was enough to make him realise that if Strauss and Madeline had to face off something nasty with no back up, Strauss would almost certainly be the one left worse off. Strauss might be a 700YO Tremere, but he avoided conflict like the plague; Madeline was more than practiced enough to hold her own just fine.

I haven’t yet pegged the details of it, but the plan went something like this: Strauss was induced to let his guard down, and then lured into a trap. What did that trap have in it? I’m not sure yet -- either a werewolf or some very angry gargoyles. Something big and tough that would ultimately overpower him, but something he’d survive if Maddy was there with him. Something that Maddy would survive if she had help.

And things were set up so that Strauss would enter and spring the trap on his own, but that Madeline would come running to his aid. And she did, just in time -- Strauss had given it one hell of a fight (more than the Primogen actually thought him capable of) but wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. He’d weakened his enemy enough that Madeline only received minor injuries in the process, but by the time she killed the enemy Strauss was so badly injured he’d fallen into torpor and the sun was coming up.

Madeline didn’t have time or resources to do more than grab a board and block the window. All day long, fighting exhaustion and ignoring the voices in her head and fighting exhaustion-induced delusions, Madeline held the board up against the window. She kept hearing voices screaming at her that something was going to attack her, or she’d have paranoia something else was in the room with her and about to hurt her -- but she was determined to hold that board against the window at all costs, because she knew intellectually, even when the delusions were winning, that whatever might be in the room with her wouldn’t kill her as fast as the sun would. So she resolved to pin that board against the window.

And she did. All day long.

It was the hardest thing she’d ever did. Even harder than what came after.

What felt like an eternity later, when Madeline was sure the sun was down, she finally dropped the board and stumbled to Strauss’s side. Strauss wasn’t waking up.

If Madeline was older, or less injured, less exhausted, less hungry, less tired -- she might not have done what she did next. She might have had the presence of mind to hide him and then run to help.

But she was young, she was scared, and she was exhausted. And no matter how hard she shook him, Strauss wouldn’t wake up.

So she cut open her wrist and gave him her blood. And that sealed what was to follow.

Strauss woke up. Fed for a bit.

Eventually came to himself to realise what the fuck she was doing.

He flipped. 

The fuck. 

Out.

If he wasn’t Tremere, he might not have. He trusted Madeline not to exploit a bond with him -- but the Tremere have so many secrets and now he knew he was blood bound to her and that he would sing to her like a bird if he didn’t get rid of her right then and there. She was his childe. He wanted what was best for her, and it had always saddened him that she was an outsider in the Chantry. He knew that if he was around her in the state he was in, all those well-kept secrets would come pouring out.

He was exhausted. He was hungry.

And now he was fucking terrified.

And he frenzied.

He attacked her. She didn’t fight back, because it was Strauss, and she’d never hurt him. He almost fucking killed her. The only reason he didn’t was because the blood bond stopped him before he got that far.

At that point he calmed down enough to put the fear of god into her if he ever saw her face again, or if she ever told anyone what she’d done, and left. She was left very battered, dazed, still exhausted, and confused AF as to what the hell just happened because wtf, I just saved you?!

She listened, though. Strauss had scared the hell out of her with what just happened -- all she could think was how incapable she was of hurting him even when she was convinced he was going to kill her, even in her own defence, and yet he was perfectly capable of hurting her, and badly.

She didn’t dare go anywhere near the LA Chantry again. Closest she ever got to it was the Last Round, where she fretted for a few nights and spent a lot of time crying. The Anarchs were extremely confused as to how Madeline, of all people, managed to get in so awful a state she was basically limping into the place and freaking out all the kine, and she refused to say. She refused to go back to the Chantry or Elysium, just hinted that something had happened between her and Strauss. 

Given how badly injured she was when she turned up, Nines, Jack, Skelter and even Damsel were getting really fired up and were ready to feed Strauss his own entrails. She was Cammy, she’d never been their friend -- nobody’s friend except Nines -- but she’d helped them out plenty of times when Cammies normally wouldn’t and asked for nothing in return when Cammies normally would. So they were fucking furious.

Maddy was upset. Maddy was confused. Clearly she’d done something terribly wrong and the people in charge of the Anarchs were ready to go to fucking war over her, which was a responsibility she did not want and didn’t feel she deserved, since most of the Anarchs didn’t like her at all. And she didn’t want Strauss to get hurt.

She blurted out what happened.

Maybe if she told them they wouldn’t be so angry and wouldn’t cause trouble.

Damsel: “Holy. Fucking. Shit. You did WHAT?!”

Mostly the reaction was “What the FUCK.” Jack, of course, just about killed himself laughing once the shock wore off. And so did Damsel.

And that was when Nines told Maddy that humans weren’t the only ones susceptible to blood bonds -- that Kindred could be bound to other Kindred, and that the Tremere Anarchs had discovered since the fall of Vienna that blood bonds were so much more intense for them when they were on the end of it.

Maddy’s reaction was a very quiet, “Oh.”

Meanwhile, on the Tremere side, Strauss was brooding but paralysed. His inner Tremere was screaming at him to have her put down for being a huge fucking security risk, and the blood bond wouldn’t allow it. He refused to tell the other Tremere what happened, even his grandchilde Amy (who was the most distressed out of all of them other than Strauss), but the Primogen knew, and put pieces into place. Eventually the Tremere Anarchs reported to him what they’d heard Jack guffawing about. The Primogen responded by sending out a few of his enemies within the Tremere that he didn’t mind put down and aimed them at Madeline. 

They actually managed to get quite a few hits in -- Madeline didn’t want to hurt her old friends in the Tremere and refused to fight them, so the Anarchs flew to her defence and killed them for her. A few of them went down with the Tremere.

The Anarchs got even madder. The Primogen had told the Tremere Anarchs that Strauss had ordered it. They parroted this faithfully to Nines and Madeline. Maddy was devastated. (Later, she’d realise that if Strauss wanted her dead, he’d have done it when he frenzied. She’d be confused about this for years before she found out the truth.)

Nines helped get Madeline out of the city. She chose San Francisco, because she lived there before she was Embraced.

Back in LA, the Primogen was able to get enough evidence for what happened thanks to the Tremere Anarchs to present to the Pyramid. Strauss was stripped of his title as Regent and the Primogen was promoted in his place, and thanks to his work over the last few years, the LA Tremere were only disgruntled about this instead of rioting. The Camarilla found out what happened, but thought it was a dumb Tremere thing, so they let him keep his Princedom. 

Didn’t matter -- the Anarchs came for Strauss anyway.

It was only when the Anarchs accused him of starting a war that the penny finally dropped and he realised what the Primogen had done.

Strauss took the failure on the chin. Rather than go down grasping at power, he abdicated. Ironically, the Primogen had accidentally saved his life -- Strauss told the Anarchs that he was no threat to them if he stood down because the Primogen was now Regent of LA Tremere, and requested that he and the Tremere be allowed to remain in the city under the Primogen’s command. The Anarchs ended up accepting this, only because Strauss hadn’t given them any grief until that point.

(And also because he could probably take down quite a significant number of them when he was cornered, and Nines wanted no more deaths.)

So much to the Primogen’s annoyance, Strauss actually survived and was stuck in his Chantry, forever to be a thorn in the Primogen’s side. Strauss wasn’t the Regent any more and made as few power plays as he had before -- meaning, none -- but a lot of the other Tremere still treated Strauss as if he was the Regent. Strauss flatly refused to leave, and his position was stable enough among the other Tremere that the Primogen wasn’t able to get rid of him. Strauss’s reputation was absolutely in tatters but he’d raised so many neonates that the Primogen knew Strauss would give him a substantial amount of grief if he pushed harder than he already had.

Still, once the blood bond wore off enough for Strauss to think clearly, once he realised he and Madeline had been manipulated he resolved to stab the fucker in the back in turn. He just had to bide his time and wait for his chance. Just as the Primogen did.

Vannevar Thomas showed up not long after and stomped some Anarch heads in and put himself in charge. The Primogen became Primogen again, but Strauss was made Keeper of Elysium.

To this day, Strauss regrets what happened and feels he let Madeline down, and blames himself for making the mistakes that led to the whole incident in the first place. He was dearly fond of her, and that fondness didn’t leave afterwards. Ofc he’s upset and rattled by everything else but he’s kicking himself about what happened and how easily he was isolated from his most loyal friend and his most powerful ally.

As of VTMB2, Madeline has made a name for herself in San Francisco under Prince Sara Anne Winder. Prince Winder, much like Strauss and LaCroix, quickly realised Madeline was too powerful to control or alienate, but that she could be enticed and encouraged to follow most orders. Still, after the news of the mass embrace at Seattle, Madeline left Prince Winder and went to Seattle to ask Prince Cross permission to stay, and then see if she could help the Thinbloods there.

Madeline remains blissfully unaware of her low generation, although at that point Prince Winder has figured it out and Prince Cross probably soon will too. A few people have caught on that she’s a very potent weapon, but Madeline has yet to do so herself.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY IT'S SAFE FOR MAKING NEW VENTURE ANIMAL

It's exciting that there even exist parts of the world than what I saw immediately around me. The Mythical Man-Month, adding people to a project tends to slow it down. More often it was just an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through, words without content designed mainly for testability. It's like the court of Louis XIV. Modern literature is important, but the job listings have to be really useful. But you could in principle have a useful conversation about them with some people. Technological progress means making things do more of what we want. It would be less now, probably less than the cost of sending them the first month's bill. But that same illiquidity also encouraged you not to seek it.1 You don't do that if you start scanning people with no symptoms, you'll get this on a giant scale: a huge number of software patents there's not a lot of users.

It's what bias means. By definition they're partisan. I worked at Yahoo during 1998 and 1999.2 If I remember correctly, our frontpage used to just fit in the size window people typically used then. Now the frightening giant is Microsoft, and they could not master it. Want to know if you bet on Web-based software, you can probably get even more effect by paying closer attention to the time you have.3 Enough of an effect to triple the value of what they create. There are really two variants of that question, and the bureaucratic obstacles all medical startups face, and the classics. When I was 13 I realized, is that my m. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen.4

And yet, mysteriously, Viaweb ended up crushing all its competitors. The war was due mostly to external forces, and the most efficient way to do it. So for any given team of founders, would it not pay to wait till his arteries were over 90% blocked and 3 days later he had a quadruple bypass.5 At the end of the year I couldn't even remember what else I had stored in that attic. Obvious comparisons suggest themselves, both to the process and the resulting product. Basically, Apple bumped IBM and then Microsoft stole its wallet. What happens now with the Super Bowl used to happen every night. That is, are the riskiest startups the ones that wanted Oracle experience. That doing good work.6 It let them build great looking online stores literally in minutes.7 Web-based application.8

They're a lot of bandwidth.9 What that level of ability can get you is, say, Python? Or rather, any client, and if you have genuine intellectual curiosity, that's what you'll naturally tend to do if you just follow your own inclinations.10 As a result it became massively successful. By granting such an over-broad patents, but they are an order of magnitude less important than solving the real problem, my friend Robert Morris and I started a startup to do this is to collect them together in one place for a certain number of hours each day.11 Everyone was so cheerful and healthy and rich. What was really happening was de-oligopolization. When would you ever want to do. I found I could entertain myself by having ideas instead of reading other people's.12 Microsoft client and server software. One forgets it's owned by a private company. You can mitigate this with subsidies at the bottom nine tenths of university CS departments.13

And while I miss the 3 year old ever had. You might think that people decide to buy something, and if you want to be their research assistants because they're genuinely interested in the topic. A company that sues competitors for patent infringement till you have money, and making money consists mostly of errands.14 This was too subtle for me. People from the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at the time. But if you look at the source, because you control the whole system, right down to the hardware. For the first week or so we intended to make this point diplomatically, but in some cases it's possible to get rich will do whatever they like with you: install puppet governments, siphon off your best workers, use your women as prostitutes, dump their toxic waste on your territory—all the things we describe as addictive are. I got was $12. If you do manage to threaten them, they're more right than they know, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn in great detail about the mechanics of startups, but as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.15

At least $1000 a month. The best ideas are just on the right side of impossible. Programs that write programs.16 You can figure out the tricks for winning at this new game. That is very hard to answer in the general case. This will take some effort on the part of the game.17 And yet the authorities still for the most part act as if drugs were themselves the cause of the problem.18 Perhaps a better solution is to let as few things into your identity as possible. You can probably take it as a computer system executing that algorithm. The effects of World War II were both economic and social history, and the advantage will grow as fast as I can type, then spend several weeks rewriting it.19 Finally, the truly serious hacker should consider learning Lisp: Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of us can use. I wanted to buy them, however limited.

Notes

But although I started using it, and the older you get to profitability on a weekend and sit alone and think.

It's unpleasant because the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the shareholders instead of themselves. And those examples do reflect after-tax return from a 6/03 Nielsen study quoted on Google's site. I talked to a VC is interested in investing but doesn't want to write your thoughts down in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1996.

Does anyone really think we're so useless that in the world of the company.

73 billion.

Apparently there's only one founder is being compensated for risks he took earlier. The shift in power from investors to founders is how much they can be explained by math. MSFT, having spent much of observed behavior.

I ordered a large company? As well as down.

But his world record only lasted 46 days.

Related: Reprinted in Bacon, Alan, Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, Social Text 46/47, pp. If you seem like noise.

When the Air Hits Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation—maybe around 10 people.

I call it procrastination when someone works hard and not fundraising is because their company made money from them. Learning this explained a lot of detail. If this is the kind that has little relation to other investors, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, political deal-making power. It tipped from being this boulder we had high hopes for doesn't do well, but that's a pyramid scheme.

Financing a startup. The dialog on Beavis and Butthead was composed largely of these titles vary too much. Copyright owners tend to say, of course it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that an eminent designer is any better than enterprise software—and to run on the server.

Though they were that smart they'd already be working on such an interview with Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. A single point of treason.

There's a good chance that a startup you can do it in B. That's why there's a continuum here. The other cause is usually slow growth or excessive spending rather than ones they capture.

By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a time machine. There are still expensive to start a startup to become addictive. Instead of bubbling up from the other seed firms always find is that most three letter words are bad news; it would not change the world barely affects me. Then when we got to see if you do.

But not all are. They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in cities. I think it's mainly not having the universities in the former, and large bribes by the normal people they're usually surrounded with.

They're still deciding, which parents would still send their kids won't listen to them about your fundraising prospects. The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably not do that.

And the reason.

As I was once trying to sell hardware without trying to capture the service revenue as well, but economically that's how we gauge their progress, but rather that if a company just to go to college, they have to decide between two alternatives, we'd ask, what if they pay so well is that it killed the best hackers want to design these, because people would treat you like a compiler, you could only get in the narrow technical sense of being harsh to founders would actually increase the spammers' cost to reach a given audience by a sense of the word intelligence is the least correlation between launch magnitude and success. Good and bad luck.

Heirs will be interesting to 10,000 sestertii, for many Americans the decisive change in how Stripe felt. I talked to a woman who had recently arrived from Russia. Many will consent to b rather than ones they capture. Good investors don't lead startups on; their reputations are too valuable.

[simplemlmsponsoring]

New Post has been published on https://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/mlm-sponsoring/why-do-people-hate-network-marketing/

Why Do People Hate Network Marketing

Have you ever asked yourself, why do people hate network marketing?

In this post, you’ll learn the main reason network marketing gets a bad name and what you can do to help change it.

Network marketing reps behavior is what gives MLM a bad name (mostly). Chasing and trying to convince people why they should join your deal or talking about why jobs suck all bring the profession down. Throw social media in there, with reps spamming their walls with “join my team” post and other shady non-marketing tactics and I can see why people get a bad taste about network marketing. There are have/been some shady MLM companies out there just like any other businesses. But they are all not pyramid schemes or scams. There are a ton of legit network marketing business that has been around for years, have you ever heard of Amyway or Mary Kay?

Why Network Marketing Is The Perfect Business Model

I don’t know of any other business that has such a low start-up cost. Not to mention low risk as well. You don’t have to worry about coming up with a product to sell or providing support.

You don’t have to worry about doing customer service or anything. That’s all handled by the company.  All you have to focus on is showing people the business plan.

You don’t have to pay employees or anything like that. Basically, you don’t have to worry about any of the hard stuff when it comes to opening and running a business.

With network marketing, you can get started with a couple of hundred bucks in most cases and you can make your money back the same day if you hustle hard enough.

Try opening a traditional business and see if you can get your investment back in one day. With most restaurant franchises it can take years before you make your investment back.

Not to mention the large sums of money that’s required to get started.

Who Should Do Network Marketing?

I think network marketing is good for anyone who would like to start a business but does not have a ton of money to do it. It’s also good for existing small business owners as it can open up an additional stream of income.

People in sales usually do well in Network Marketing. Most people in sales already have thick skin and know what it takes to do well in sales. So if you know a someone in sales, make sure you prospect them.

Anyone who wants to bounce from their job. If you ever want to leave your job then you’ll need to replace that income. With network marketing, you can start part-time as most people do.

These are just a few suggestions on who I think should do MLM but it’s really the perfect business model for just about anybody, regardless of their profession, race, religion or background.

Who Shouldn’t Do Network Marketing?

People looking for a lottery ticket. Network marketing is not a get rich quick thing. And if someone tells you that, I highly suggest you go the other way. Think of it as a get rich slow, as in you are going to need to put in the work.

Non-coachable people.  The worst thing you can say is “I know that already.” Nothing is worse than being around a so-called “no it all.” Here’s a reality check, you don’t know it all, nobody knows it all. You’re results or lack thereof will tell you how much you know.

Take me, for example, I got introduced to network marketing back in late 2008 and I’m still learning stuff today. I’ll always be a student.

People who get offended easily. Listen, if you’re not ready to be made fun of or called crazy, you might want to want to go do something else. If you care more about what someone else thinks, this business is not for you. I’m just keeping it real.

You’ll probably have family and friends question what you’re doing or even criticize you for doing it. But one thing I’ve learned is the people who criticize the most are the ones worse off than you.

Will MLM Destroy Your Family?

Let’s keep this short and sweet, NO MLM will not destroy your family.

When you hear about MLM destroying families it usually boils down to the spouse doing something behind the others one’s back like spending large amounts of money without telling the other person.

Or maybe the auto-ship is coming out that joint checking account every month but you’re not doing anything to move your business forward.

I know how I would feel if I were married and my wife signed up but was not working the business. I’d feel like we were throwing money away.

Sometimes when you’re running hard to build your business you might have to miss a few social functions to get things going. Will it be like that forever? Nope but you might need to make some sacrifices along the way.

The best thing to do is be upfront with your family and let them know exactly what you are doing.

If they’re still skeptical the best way to get them to see things you’re way is to start earning some money. Bring home a check.

Bottom line, be upfront with your family, let them know what you’re doing and the reasons your doing it and won’t have to worry about this business destroying your family.

Can Your Life Get Ruined By MLM?

No MLM won’t ruin your life. Like I mentioned earlier what gives MLM a bad name is the behavior of network marketing reps.

If your going to do network marketing decide to become a professional is what the legend Eric Worre says. In fact, he wrote a book titled Go Pro 7 Steps To Becoming A Network Marketing Professional. You can check it out over on Amazon. It’s the perfect book for any and everybody who wants to become a pro in this business.

If you carry yourself like professional, people will respect you like one and you won’t have to worry about burning bridges or ruining your life.

When you do shady stuff like invite family and friends over for “get together” and it’s really a ploy to do a sales pitch on them. People don’t like that. If you choose to continue to do those type of things, then yea you run a risk of losing some friends.

So my best advice would be become a professional. Start by grabbing the book I mentioned above and learn the skills needed to build your business the right way.

How You Can Help Change The Image Of Network Marketing

Learn some prospecting skills, and for goodness sake don’t lie to people and tell them to come to your house or a location for one thing and it’s really your business presentation.

That’s not the best way to get someone exposed to your business.

Instead, be upfront better yet ask some questions and see if there is a problem that your business, product or service could solve. Make it a point to become a problem solver.

People don’t like to be sold but they will buy a solution to a problem they are having.

Don’t chase people. There’s a difference between prospecting and chasing. Prospecting your job is to see if they are open, that’s it. If they aren’t, move on to the next person and don’t look back.

Always maintain your posture. Posture is knowing what you have without the approval of someone else telling you.

Don’t put down someone if they decide not to get involved in your business.

Don’t have your company name on any of your social media profiles.

Don’t send unsolicited links on social media.

Don’t spam your friends on social media.

[Video] Why Do People Hate Network Marketing

Conclusion

Network marketing gets its bad name mostly from the behavior of the reps trying to build their business.

I don’t know of any other business that you can do for such low risk. A few hundred bucks to get started and pretty much unlimted income.

No products to develop, no customer service support, no employees to worry about.

You will however need to learn some skills. Network marketing is simple but not easy.

If you decide to get involved in network marketing, invest into yourself and learn the skills to build your business like a professional. If you don’t do anything but pickup a book and implement what you learn, it’ll do wonders for your business.

Let me know in the comments below if you got some value from this post.

If this post was helpful, please do me a quick favor, like and share on Facebook or your favorite social media platform.

To Your Massive Success

Text or Call Me: (336) 782-8318 Skype: Reco.Cherry Email:Dereco@DerecoCherry.com Need Some One On One Help? Check Out My Work With Me Page.

PS: Check Out How The #1 Income Earner In A Network Marketing Company Generates Almost 50 Leads Per Day….And Get This….For FREE. Unlock Your Free Leads For Life Here

Read more: derecocherry.com

[antionetterparker]

Ranking the 31 best ways to get rich in 2019

So you’re trying to get that paper. You don’t want to be a businessman, you want to be a business, man. I don’t hate it.

You’re gonna need some mad skills though, or at least a lot of patience. Don’t think anything worthwhile comes easy.

Be sure to check out how to make money fast, how to save money, and ways to make money online.

Luckily, thanks to the world wide web, you can learn just about anything from your home.

But I won’t make you wait any longer… here are the best ways to stack that paper in 2019.

32. Network marketing

I live to knock it, lol, but even I was raking in 5-figure paychecks through MLM before I gave in to my own sense of self-respect.

If you’re crazy enough to think you could somehow make it into the top .0001% as I did, network marketing could work for you. The first step is to lose your shame. The second step is to lose your friends and family.

Still want to do network marketing? You’ll want to make sure you aren’t joining an actual pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes are illegal basically everywhere, but that doesn’t stop people from starting one and hiding behind an MLM label.

Here are a few ways you can distinguish between the two:

Primary earning method – Is the compensation plan set up in a way where you earn more from selling products or recruiting new members? Pyramid schemes tend to do the latter.

Emphasis – Aside from the compensation plan, does the company make a huge deal out of recruiting without caring much about their products? Could be a pyramid scheme.

Do they pay attention to their market? If there’s no interest in consumer demand, that’s a sign they care only about adding new members to the pyramid.

Upfront investment size – Pyramid schemes usually require a large upfront “investment”, which just gets you your items. MLM’s sometimes charge upfront, but the fee tends to be pretty small.

None of those bullet points will 100% tell you if a company’s legit or not, but they do point you in the right direction.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to research the network marketing company further.

31. Real estate

Barbara Corcoran did it, and you can too.

While the average real estate agent banks about $54,000/year, there’s no limit to the amount you can earn in this job.

The Wall Street Journal recently published the salaries of the top 1,000 real estate agents, and the #1 head honcho grossed a whopping 1.4 billion, with a B. Even #250 made $60 million in annual sales. (1)

Normally, I’d say start investing in real estate yourself.

But not everyone has the money to buy up rental properties, nor do they always know what they’re doing.

Starting as a real estate agent is a great way to earn a nice paycheck while you’re learning the ins and outs of real estate.

Then you can jump ship and start your own little real estate empire.

30. Index funds

When Warren Buffet hits you up with investment advice, you listen: index funds.

This is the slow way to riches, but it’s almost certain. You can average a solid 8.5% return on index funds, which means that you’d be a millionaire in 20 years if you start investing $1,587/month now. (2)

29. Virtual reality

So, a couple years ago I blogged about how the VR industry was expected to blow up. Over 12 million in headset sales predicted for 2016. (3)

A funny thing happened in 2016: almost 100 million were sold. (4) 

The best part? 96% of these were low-cost, partial VR headsets, and the market for those in China is expected to hit $8.5 billion.

You don’t have to invest in crazy tech and clunky, futuristic headsets. Plastic and cardboard units that cost $30 and attach to your smartphone will do just fine.

Start up an SEO heavy e-commerce store if you’ve got the digital marketing skills, or start a highly targetted niche business, like selling VR headsets to the wedding market (except don’t, because that niche is taken by LiveKnot). (5)

28. Networking

There’s this legend of an Italian billionaire who was asked, “If you had to start all over again, from zero, what would you do?”

He said he’d take any job he could get that paid $500, buy a nice suit, and go to a party filled with successful people. If you’re not a people person, learn to be one.

Why?

Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Dale Carnegie (yep, the dude from How to Win Friends and Influence People) once taught public speaking to Warren Buffett. His advice? Smile, listen, be genuinely interested in other people, remember their names, and offer lots of praise.

27. Consulting

You can start off at a big 5 consulting firm (think PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Accenture) and make over $70,000 as an entry-level consultant, easily hitting 6-figs when you go Senior. (6)

Then go freelance for more freedom and more money.

Alternatively, if you don’t have consulting experience but can get a very specialized skillset, go into freelance niche consulting (financial consulting, marketing consulting, etc). Without decades of consulting experience, you’ll have to charge based on your performance – in other words, your rate will be based on the results you deliver. If you’re good, this just means more money.

26. Investment banker

Think Wall Street. Think Goldman Sachs. Think J.P. Morgan.

Banking has produced some of the world’s richest people…. if you can avoid getting thrown in Martha Stewart prison, that is.

That being said, the median salary for investment bankers is $100,000. (7) 

However, you’ve gotta hustle if you want to get to that 7-figure salary. It’s not just 40 hours a week.

It’s more like 90-100 hours most weeks for your typical analyst/associate, according to a former investment banker and author named Andrew Gutmann. (8)

To put that into perspective, that’s equivalent to a little over 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, but usually that involves coming in on the weekend as well.

Not everyone will succeed in a job with those hours.

But those that make it to a VP position can easily pull 7 figures a year.

25. Public speaker

Build a brand for yourself and a recognizable name, and you could be snagging 6-figure speaking engagements presidential-style. PublicPaidSpeaking.com is a good place to start…some of their “non celebrity professional speakers” are banking “individual profits of over $800,000 a year.” (9)

Yeah, you read that right.

24. Life coaching

If you’re that friend that everyone goes to for advice, life coaching could potentially bank you a multi-million dollar practice on the internet. The industry has been booming ever since the economic crash in 2008. (10) People in hard times will spend every last cent they have for someone who can fix their problems.

Becoming a thought leader by starting your own blog, guest blogging, writing on LinkedIn, and self-publishing on Amazon. As soon as you score your first high-profile client you can start name-dropping, and the requests will fall into your lap from there.

23. Kid-Friendly YouTube videos

How many times have you gone to dinner and seen a kid glued to their iPad watching YouTube while Mommy and Daddy get some private time?

There’s an entire app called YouTube Kids, and it gets 8 million weekly users. (11) The best part? The quality of your vids can be absolute garbage, because kids don’t care either way as long as you keep them mesmerized. One of the richest YouTube millionaires is a 5-year old who makes videos of him opening toys. Literally, that’s it. (12)

22. Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin skyrocketed in 2017, reaching almost $20,000, but has since fallen to hovering around $8,000-$10,000.

While not as big of a moneymaker as it used to be, cryptocurrency is still a promising way to make money.

There are two routes you can take depending on how tech savvy you are. If you’re less tech savvy, invest. It’s a gamble but one with potentially huge returns. If you’re more tech savvy, launch a crypto ICO. Basically, you start your own cryptocurrency and hack it via a crowdfunding technique called “Initial Coin Offerings”.

Ethereum started as an ICO, and it was priced at only $12. Nowadays, it hovers around $180 depending on the day.

Keep in mind that your coin has to have a unique, useful idea behind it. Pumping and dumping coins might’ve worked years ago, but people aren’t going to invest in random coins anymore unless there’s a compelling reason.

21. Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology that cryptocurrency uses to record transactions. It’s basically a decentralized, encrypted way of recording transactions digitally so they can’t be hacked or altered (or at least without a genius hacker).

Companies are currently developing blockchain solutions for nearly every field, meaning plenty of lucrative investing opportunities await.

If you’ve got a blockchain solution idea and you can sell yourself to angel investors, you could start your own company instead.

20. Gaming

Everybody would’ve laughed in your face if you said you were going to become a multi-millionaire by playing Doom back in the 1990s.

Fast forward a couple decades, and you now have people like Ninja making half a million for live-streaming his Fortnite sessions. (13)

You wanna make money playing video games? Playing in tournaments and being an e-sports athlete is one way, but the big money’s in streaming on platforms like Twitch and making YouTube videos because the income is much more passive.

Granted, it takes a long time to build an audience, but I mean you’re playing video games while you’re doing it, not running a blog or anything.

It’s a brave new world.

19. Podcasting

Everyone’s favorite podcaster Joe Rogan was allegedly earning $75,000 per episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast back in 2016. (14) That number’s gotta be much higher now.

To start a podcast, you’ll first need a topic, preferably something interesting. You’ll also want to decide on a name as well as the length you want each episode to be.

Aside from that, the rest of it comes down to creating your brand and planning/recording your episodes.

18. Dating apps

Almost half the population of the U.S. uses online dating now, and a third of new marriages start online. (15)

This is a huge market to capitalize on. Sure, you’ve already got your Tinders and Grindrs and eHarmonies, but there’s plenty of space left for the niche dating market.

Just look at Spark Networks, owner of Christian Mingle and Jdate (a Jewish dating site). They consistently gross over $100 million a year for matching up religious singles with other singles of the same religion.

Find a niche that’s not taken, turn it into a mobile app, and pair it with the addictive gameified interface of Tinder. You’re welcome.

17. Niche Sites

You can get rich selling products without having to manufacture them or even set up a store with affiliate marketing.

Niche sites are one of the easiest ways to go about this. You basically build a site/blog around an extremely niche topic and target ultra-specific keywords to bring in visitors that are highly likely to buy. All you need are your standard website pages (home, affiliate disclosure, privacy policy, etc), a few simple blog posts targeting your keywords, and some affiliate products.

Once your niche site pulls a decent income, you can scale by hiring writers or VAs to manage your site and pump out posts, then you can start another site and repeat the process.

You won’t get rich overnight, but as your site reaches more people thanks to your SEO efforts, more people will buy through your affiliate links, growing your income.

If you ever get sick of running your niche sites, you can always sell them for a nice profit.

16. Marijuana

Large-scale legalization of weed in the US started with Colorado and Washington in 2012, but it’s slowly spreading all over the states.

And in Canada, it’s been legalized federally.

If you have no moral qualms with your money flowing into the marijuana industry, you can capitalize on the legal acceptance of pot in two ways.

The first would be investing in marijuana stocks. As you’d expect, these are quite volatile what with all the political battles over the little green plant. Don’t worry, though, as the industry is expected to reach over $23 billion by 2022. (16)

Or, if you live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal, you could start your own marijuana business in the form of either a dispensary or a grow operation.

Neither are cheap, and starting either one requires jumping through a ton of legal hoops for obvious reasons. Plus, you gotta operate your business on an all-cash basis since it’s still banned federally.

But nearly 90% of dispensaries, wholesale cultivators (grow operations), and even companies making weed-infused products were profitable in 2016. (17)

What better way to make some green than with some green?

15. Flip websites

Imagine making $58,000 in profit over the course of 2 months just by buying and selling domain names. Well, it’s been done. (18)

Domains are basically digital real estate. Domain flipping sites like Flippa make it easy to try your luck, but if you really want to make good money, do your research and base your domain purchases on knowledge and skill. (19)

14. Amazon self-publishing

Thanks to the internet, anyone can publish a book now for free. But you have to put in solid marketing effort to make sales.

You don’t have a publishing house doing all the work for you, but you’re also raking in most of the profits. Self-publish on Amazon and sell your book for $2.99 or less, and you get to keep 70% of the royalties. (20) If you can sell 477,783 copies (indie self-publishing star Amanda Hocking was doing 100,000/month in sales in her prime), you’ll make your first million. (21)

Then if you want, start your own website and sell your books on there at whatever price you want. You’ll get to keep all your profits.

Just make sure you can handle all the admin and marketing stuff, or better, hire someone else to do it.

13. Content farm

If you’re looking for the next big thing, content marketing is already it. The industry is on track to rake in $313 billion by 2019, so get on it now. (22)

If you can learn how to write epic content that drives sales (and get your name in Forbes and HuffPo), you can charge hundreds per article.

Even better, start a content farm, hire writers off of freelancing websites, and skim passive profit off the top.

Starting a content farm will require you have the cash to pay your writers. Without it, your best bet is to do the writing yourself until you’ve got some money.

12. Instagram influencer

Grab that iPhone, download some photo editing apps, slap a filter on your selfie and post. Simple.

Instagram “micro-influencers” (10k-50k following) don’t make huge bucks…more like $50-$100 per post. But if you can grow your following up to 6-figures, you could rake in thousands for posting one sponsored photo. (23) Making a paycheck has never been easier.

11. Software development

Unlike web development, this is learning coding and development that’s focused on building software. It has a lower ceiling but a higher average income.

Learn some of the more lucrative frameworks and systems (like Spark and Cassandra) and some of the highest paying programming languages (like Scala and F#), and you’ll hit an average salary of $125,000. (24)

With enough experience, capital, and entrepreneurial skills, you could launch your own software company and maybe even become the next Silicon Valley success story too.

10. Video post-production

Video is IT. By 2020, video is expected to make up a whopping 90% of all internet traffic. It’s already on a huge upswing, having grown 71% year-over-year in 2016. (25)

You could go through the trouble of writing scripts, hiring actors, directing, and getting expensive filming equipment, or you could just start your own company that offers post-production video services (editing, adding in music, credits, etc).

That’s the part that most people outsource anyway. Once you build your name, start your own video editing training school to really bring in the passive income.

9. Web design

Websites like Codeacademy and SkillCrush will teach you web design for fairly cheap, and some websites even teach it for free. (26) (27)

Web design is the less technical, more design-oriented side of creating websites. You get to design layouts, make sure color schemes work well, and all that fun stuff. While it doesn’t pay quite as well as web development, you don’t have to learn as much code and you can still earn $75-$100/hour. (28)

8. Social media consultant

Facebook has over 3 million companies using their ads, and over 60 million using their pages to promote their business. (29) Instagram has over 1 million advertisers, and it’s bound to keep growing. (30)

If you’re that friend who’s always scrolling social media, editing photos, hashtagging, and whipping up clever captions, you can make money doing that. Get analytics and ads on lock on your skills list, and you can make good money doing what you do best.

7. Data scraping

You can do this manually without any programming skills, it just takes a lot longer. But if you come up with a good, unique idea like

Scraping emotional reactions to certain types of content on Facebook

Gathering leads from online business directories for B2B service providers

Gathering contact info for homes that were recently purchased

Scraping for keywords in user reviews of a certain product

Businesses will pay for the data if it helps them sell their products.

Now imagine if you did know how to code and could create computer programs that scrape all this data for you in seconds. You’d be making sales faster than you could keep up with them.

6. e-Commerce

Pick a niche product. I mean really niche (think “Disney coffee mugs” or “small travel backpacks”).

You don’t have to manufacture the product – you can fill orders via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), dropshipping (basically online retail without inventory), or even plain old affiliate marketing.

Kick your SEO into full gear. Once you’re #1 on Google you’ll start seeing some handsome profits with little to no effort aside from maintenance.

You can boost your sales by spending on ads (or hiring an expert to do the ads for you) once you’ve got cash rolling in. No need to if you don’t want to, but do it right and your profits will increase.

Then you can scale it by outsourcing all the menial stuff to virtual assistants. Hey, you’re creating jobs now!

5. Web Development

Again, you can learn this online, even for free.

Unlike web design, learning more advanced coding languages and becoming a web developer PAYS. One developer wrote in Business Insider of a typical job offer – $150,000 salary, $10,000 signing bonus, all kinds of freebies, from gym memberships to free meals on the daily, and flexible work hours. (31)

Of course, if you take all that coding knowledge and use it to start your own hit website (think Facebook), the sky is the limit.

Again, websites like Code Academy, Khan Academy, and Code.com (among a ton of others) are filled to the brim with coding lessons and other good stuff.

But as you know, the best way to get better is to practice. Once you’ve learned some stuff from your free online resources, you’ve got to start building websites with your skills.

4. Blogging

Bloggers don’t actually make money, right?

Nope, not a myth. If you hit it big with your blog you can clear six figures a year EASY.

Just look at Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. I mean, he regularly clears six figures every MONTH.

Sure, he’s got like 100 income sources at this point, but according to his income reports, affiliate marketing alone earns him around $100,000 a month give or take.

For more proof, just search the web for “blog income reports” and you’ll get endless lists of, well, blog income reports.

If you get really big, think Mashable, Tech Crunch, and Endgadget status (yes, they all started as blogs), you can even score a lucrative takeover. Ariana Huffington eventually sold the Huffington Post for $315 million to AOL. (32)

3. Mobile app creator

Mobile apps routinely hit 250 billion downloads worldwide this year. (33)

Platforms often pay 70% profits on your app sales, so if you’re selling an app for $4.99, that can add up quickly. Sell half a million downloads, and you’re looking at a $1,746,500 profit.

That might sound hard, but there are actually thousands of apps that have hit over a million downloads, so hitting half that is definitely possible.

2. SEO consulting

Having a digital presence is a must for any business nowadays, and the only way to get there is through SEO. Because of that, companies will pay huge amounts to someone who can provide results…I’m talking page one Google results.

The hourly consulting rate for a legit SEO specialist is $100-$300. (34)

1. Lead generation for local businesses

If you’re looking for automated, digital, and scalable, this is it. If you’re looking for a market with low competition that is almost impossible to saturate, this is it. If you’re looking for guaranteed five-figure paychecks, this is also it.

The bottom line is that this method works better and more consistently than almost any other for generating passive income. You’re building out niche websites that focus on specific products and specific locations, so when your competition is cut down to people advertising limo services in Dayton, Ohio, hitting it big is a lot more do-able.

Use SEO to get to the top and let the leads come in overnight. Once you can offer local businesses a stack of contact info for people who have already said they’re interested in the product or service, they’ll start handing you money faster than you can count it.

via https://mlmcompanies.org/get-rich-in-2019/

[mlmcompanies]

So you’re trying to get that paper. You don’t want to be a businessman, you want to be a business, man. I don’t hate it.

You’re gonna need some mad skills though, or at least a lot of patience. Don’t think anything worthwhile comes easy.

Be sure to check out how to make money fast, how to save money, and ways to make money online.

Luckily, thanks to the world wide web, you can learn just about anything from your home.

But I won’t make you wait any longer… here are the best ways to stack that paper in 2019.

32. Network marketing

I live to knock it, lol, but even I was raking in 5-figure paychecks through MLM before I gave in to my own sense of self-respect.

If you’re crazy enough to think you could somehow make it into the top .0001% as I did, network marketing could work for you. The first step is to lose your shame. The second step is to lose your friends and family.

Still want to do network marketing? You’ll want to make sure you aren’t joining an actual pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes are illegal basically everywhere, but that doesn’t stop people from starting one and hiding behind an MLM label.

Here are a few ways you can distinguish between the two:

Primary earning method – Is the compensation plan set up in a way where you earn more from selling products or recruiting new members? Pyramid schemes tend to do the latter.

Emphasis – Aside from the compensation plan, does the company make a huge deal out of recruiting without caring much about their products? Could be a pyramid scheme.

Do they pay attention to their market? If there’s no interest in consumer demand, that’s a sign they care only about adding new members to the pyramid.

Upfront investment size – Pyramid schemes usually require a large upfront “investment”, which just gets you your items. MLM’s sometimes charge upfront, but the fee tends to be pretty small.

None of those bullet points will 100% tell you if a company’s legit or not, but they do point you in the right direction.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to research the network marketing company further.

31. Real estate

Barbara Corcoran did it, and you can too.

While the average real estate agent banks about $54,000/year, there’s no limit to the amount you can earn in this job.

The Wall Street Journal recently published the salaries of the top 1,000 real estate agents, and the #1 head honcho grossed a whopping 1.4 billion, with a B. Even #250 made $60 million in annual sales. (1)

Normally, I’d say start investing in real estate yourself.

But not everyone has the money to buy up rental properties, nor do they always know what they’re doing.

Starting as a real estate agent is a great way to earn a nice paycheck while you’re learning the ins and outs of real estate.

Then you can jump ship and start your own little real estate empire.

30. Index funds

When Warren Buffet hits you up with investment advice, you listen: index funds.

This is the slow way to riches, but it’s almost certain. You can average a solid 8.5% return on index funds, which means that you’d be a millionaire in 20 years if you start investing $1,587/month now. (2)

29. Virtual reality

So, a couple years ago I blogged about how the VR industry was expected to blow up. Over 12 million in headset sales predicted for 2016. (3)

A funny thing happened in 2016: almost 100 million were sold. (4) 

The best part? 96% of these were low-cost, partial VR headsets, and the market for those in China is expected to hit $8.5 billion.

You don’t have to invest in crazy tech and clunky, futuristic headsets. Plastic and cardboard units that cost $30 and attach to your smartphone will do just fine.

Start up an SEO heavy e-commerce store if you’ve got the digital marketing skills, or start a highly targetted niche business, like selling VR headsets to the wedding market (except don’t, because that niche is taken by LiveKnot). (5)

28. Networking

There’s this legend of an Italian billionaire who was asked, “If you had to start all over again, from zero, what would you do?”

He said he’d take any job he could get that paid $500, buy a nice suit, and go to a party filled with successful people. If you’re not a people person, learn to be one.

Why?

Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Dale Carnegie (yep, the dude from How to Win Friends and Influence People) once taught public speaking to Warren Buffett. His advice? Smile, listen, be genuinely interested in other people, remember their names, and offer lots of praise.

27. Consulting

You can start off at a big 5 consulting firm (think PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Accenture) and make over $70,000 as an entry-level consultant, easily hitting 6-figs when you go Senior. (6)

Then go freelance for more freedom and more money.

Alternatively, if you don’t have consulting experience but can get a very specialized skillset, go into freelance niche consulting (financial consulting, marketing consulting, etc). Without decades of consulting experience, you’ll have to charge based on your performance – in other words, your rate will be based on the results you deliver. If you’re good, this just means more money.

26. Investment banker

Think Wall Street. Think Goldman Sachs. Think J.P. Morgan.

Banking has produced some of the world’s richest people…. if you can avoid getting thrown in Martha Stewart prison, that is.

That being said, the median salary for investment bankers is $100,000. (7) 

However, you’ve gotta hustle if you want to get to that 7-figure salary. It’s not just 40 hours a week.

It’s more like 90-100 hours most weeks for your typical analyst/associate, according to a former investment banker and author named Andrew Gutmann. (8)

To put that into perspective, that’s equivalent to a little over 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, but usually that involves coming in on the weekend as well.

Not everyone will succeed in a job with those hours.

But those that make it to a VP position can easily pull 7 figures a year.

25. Public speaker

Build a brand for yourself and a recognizable name, and you could be snagging 6-figure speaking engagements presidential-style. PublicPaidSpeaking.com is a good place to start…some of their “non celebrity professional speakers” are banking “individual profits of over $800,000 a year.” (9)

Yeah, you read that right.

24. Life coaching

If you’re that friend that everyone goes to for advice, life coaching could potentially bank you a multi-million dollar practice on the internet. The industry has been booming ever since the economic crash in 2008. (10) People in hard times will spend every last cent they have for someone who can fix their problems.

Becoming a thought leader by starting your own blog, guest blogging, writing on LinkedIn, and self-publishing on Amazon. As soon as you score your first high-profile client you can start name-dropping, and the requests will fall into your lap from there.

23. Kid-Friendly YouTube videos

How many times have you gone to dinner and seen a kid glued to their iPad watching YouTube while Mommy and Daddy get some private time?

There’s an entire app called YouTube Kids, and it gets 8 million weekly users. (11) The best part? The quality of your vids can be absolute garbage, because kids don’t care either way as long as you keep them mesmerized. One of the richest YouTube millionaires is a 5-year old who makes videos of him opening toys. Literally, that’s it. (12)

22. Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin skyrocketed in 2017, reaching almost $20,000, but has since fallen to hovering around $8,000-$10,000.

While not as big of a moneymaker as it used to be, cryptocurrency is still a promising way to make money.

There are two routes you can take depending on how tech savvy you are. If you’re less tech savvy, invest. It’s a gamble but one with potentially huge returns. If you’re more tech savvy, launch a crypto ICO. Basically, you start your own cryptocurrency and hack it via a crowdfunding technique called “Initial Coin Offerings”.

Ethereum started as an ICO, and it was priced at only $12. Nowadays, it hovers around $180 depending on the day.

Keep in mind that your coin has to have a unique, useful idea behind it. Pumping and dumping coins might’ve worked years ago, but people aren’t going to invest in random coins anymore unless there’s a compelling reason.

21. Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology that cryptocurrency uses to record transactions. It’s basically a decentralized, encrypted way of recording transactions digitally so they can’t be hacked or altered (or at least without a genius hacker).

Companies are currently developing blockchain solutions for nearly every field, meaning plenty of lucrative investing opportunities await.

If you’ve got a blockchain solution idea and you can sell yourself to angel investors, you could start your own company instead.

20. Gaming

Everybody would’ve laughed in your face if you said you were going to become a multi-millionaire by playing Doom back in the 1990s.

Fast forward a couple decades, and you now have people like Ninja making half a million for live-streaming his Fortnite sessions. (13)

You wanna make money playing video games? Playing in tournaments and being an e-sports athlete is one way, but the big money’s in streaming on platforms like Twitch and making YouTube videos because the income is much more passive.

Granted, it takes a long time to build an audience, but I mean you’re playing video games while you’re doing it, not running a blog or anything.

It’s a brave new world.

19. Podcasting

Everyone’s favorite podcaster Joe Rogan was allegedly earning $75,000 per episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast back in 2016. (14) That number’s gotta be much higher now.

To start a podcast, you’ll first need a topic, preferably something interesting. You’ll also want to decide on a name as well as the length you want each episode to be.

Aside from that, the rest of it comes down to creating your brand and planning/recording your episodes.

18. Dating apps

Almost half the population of the U.S. uses online dating now, and a third of new marriages start online. (15)

This is a huge market to capitalize on. Sure, you’ve already got your Tinders and Grindrs and eHarmonies, but there’s plenty of space left for the niche dating market.

Just look at Spark Networks, owner of Christian Mingle and Jdate (a Jewish dating site). They consistently gross over $100 million a year for matching up religious singles with other singles of the same religion.

Find a niche that’s not taken, turn it into a mobile app, and pair it with the addictive gameified interface of Tinder. You’re welcome.

17. Niche Sites

You can get rich selling products without having to manufacture them or even set up a store with affiliate marketing.

Niche sites are one of the easiest ways to go about this. You basically build a site/blog around an extremely niche topic and target ultra-specific keywords to bring in visitors that are highly likely to buy. All you need are your standard website pages (home, affiliate disclosure, privacy policy, etc), a few simple blog posts targeting your keywords, and some affiliate products.

Once your niche site pulls a decent income, you can scale by hiring writers or VAs to manage your site and pump out posts, then you can start another site and repeat the process.

You won’t get rich overnight, but as your site reaches more people thanks to your SEO efforts, more people will buy through your affiliate links, growing your income.

If you ever get sick of running your niche sites, you can always sell them for a nice profit.

16. Marijuana

Large-scale legalization of weed in the US started with Colorado and Washington in 2012, but it’s slowly spreading all over the states.

And in Canada, it’s been legalized federally.

If you have no moral qualms with your money flowing into the marijuana industry, you can capitalize on the legal acceptance of pot in two ways.

The first would be investing in marijuana stocks. As you’d expect, these are quite volatile what with all the political battles over the little green plant. Don’t worry, though, as the industry is expected to reach over $23 billion by 2022. (16)

Or, if you live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal, you could start your own marijuana business in the form of either a dispensary or a grow operation.

Neither are cheap, and starting either one requires jumping through a ton of legal hoops for obvious reasons. Plus, you gotta operate your business on an all-cash basis since it’s still banned federally.

But nearly 90% of dispensaries, wholesale cultivators (grow operations), and even companies making weed-infused products were profitable in 2016. (17)

What better way to make some green than with some green?

15. Flip websites

Imagine making $58,000 in profit over the course of 2 months just by buying and selling domain names. Well, it’s been done. (18)

Domains are basically digital real estate. Domain flipping sites like Flippa make it easy to try your luck, but if you really want to make good money, do your research and base your domain purchases on knowledge and skill. (19)

14. Amazon self-publishing

Thanks to the internet, anyone can publish a book now for free. But you have to put in solid marketing effort to make sales.

You don’t have a publishing house doing all the work for you, but you’re also raking in most of the profits. Self-publish on Amazon and sell your book for $2.99 or less, and you get to keep 70% of the royalties. (20) If you can sell 477,783 copies (indie self-publishing star Amanda Hocking was doing 100,000/month in sales in her prime), you’ll make your first million. (21)

Then if you want, start your own website and sell your books on there at whatever price you want. You’ll get to keep all your profits.

Just make sure you can handle all the admin and marketing stuff, or better, hire someone else to do it.

13. Content farm

If you’re looking for the next big thing, content marketing is already it. The industry is on track to rake in $313 billion by 2019, so get on it now. (22)

If you can learn how to write epic content that drives sales (and get your name in Forbes and HuffPo), you can charge hundreds per article.

Even better, start a content farm, hire writers off of freelancing websites, and skim passive profit off the top.

Starting a content farm will require you have the cash to pay your writers. Without it, your best bet is to do the writing yourself until you’ve got some money.

12. Instagram influencer

Grab that iPhone, download some photo editing apps, slap a filter on your selfie and post. Simple.

Instagram “micro-influencers” (10k-50k following) don’t make huge bucks…more like $50-$100 per post. But if you can grow your following up to 6-figures, you could rake in thousands for posting one sponsored photo. (23) Making a paycheck has never been easier.

11. Software development

Unlike web development, this is learning coding and development that’s focused on building software. It has a lower ceiling but a higher average income.

Learn some of the more lucrative frameworks and systems (like Spark and Cassandra) and some of the highest paying programming languages (like Scala and F#), and you’ll hit an average salary of $125,000. (24)

With enough experience, capital, and entrepreneurial skills, you could launch your own software company and maybe even become the next Silicon Valley success story too.

10. Video post-production

Video is IT. By 2020, video is expected to make up a whopping 90% of all internet traffic. It’s already on a huge upswing, having grown 71% year-over-year in 2016. (25)

You could go through the trouble of writing scripts, hiring actors, directing, and getting expensive filming equipment, or you could just start your own company that offers post-production video services (editing, adding in music, credits, etc).

That’s the part that most people outsource anyway. Once you build your name, start your own video editing training school to really bring in the passive income.

9. Web design

Websites like Codeacademy and SkillCrush will teach you web design for fairly cheap, and some websites even teach it for free. (26) (27)

Web design is the less technical, more design-oriented side of creating websites. You get to design layouts, make sure color schemes work well, and all that fun stuff. While it doesn’t pay quite as well as web development, you don’t have to learn as much code and you can still earn $75-$100/hour. (28)

8. Social media consultant

Facebook has over 3 million companies using their ads, and over 60 million using their pages to promote their business. (29) Instagram has over 1 million advertisers, and it’s bound to keep growing. (30)

If you’re that friend who’s always scrolling social media, editing photos, hashtagging, and whipping up clever captions, you can make money doing that. Get analytics and ads on lock on your skills list, and you can make good money doing what you do best.

7. Data scraping

You can do this manually without any programming skills, it just takes a lot longer. But if you come up with a good, unique idea like

Scraping emotional reactions to certain types of content on Facebook

Gathering leads from online business directories for B2B service providers

Gathering contact info for homes that were recently purchased

Scraping for keywords in user reviews of a certain product

Businesses will pay for the data if it helps them sell their products.

Now imagine if you did know how to code and could create computer programs that scrape all this data for you in seconds. You’d be making sales faster than you could keep up with them.

6. e-Commerce

Pick a niche product. I mean really niche (think “Disney coffee mugs” or “small travel backpacks”).

You don’t have to manufacture the product – you can fill orders via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), dropshipping (basically online retail without inventory), or even plain old affiliate marketing.

Kick your SEO into full gear. Once you’re #1 on Google you’ll start seeing some handsome profits with little to no effort aside from maintenance.

You can boost your sales by spending on ads (or hiring an expert to do the ads for you) once you’ve got cash rolling in. No need to if you don’t want to, but do it right and your profits will increase.

Then you can scale it by outsourcing all the menial stuff to virtual assistants. Hey, you’re creating jobs now!

5. Web Development

Again, you can learn this online, even for free.

Unlike web design, learning more advanced coding languages and becoming a web developer PAYS. One developer wrote in Business Insider of a typical job offer – $150,000 salary, $10,000 signing bonus, all kinds of freebies, from gym memberships to free meals on the daily, and flexible work hours. (31)

Of course, if you take all that coding knowledge and use it to start your own hit website (think Facebook), the sky is the limit.

Again, websites like Code Academy, Khan Academy, and Code.com (among a ton of others) are filled to the brim with coding lessons and other good stuff.

But as you know, the best way to get better is to practice. Once you’ve learned some stuff from your free online resources, you’ve got to start building websites with your skills.

4. Blogging

Bloggers don’t actually make money, right?

Nope, not a myth. If you hit it big with your blog you can clear six figures a year EASY.

Just look at Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. I mean, he regularly clears six figures every MONTH.

Sure, he’s got like 100 income sources at this point, but according to his income reports, affiliate marketing alone earns him around $100,000 a month give or take.

For more proof, just search the web for “blog income reports” and you’ll get endless lists of, well, blog income reports.

If you get really big, think Mashable, Tech Crunch, and Endgadget status (yes, they all started as blogs), you can even score a lucrative takeover. Ariana Huffington eventually sold the Huffington Post for $315 million to AOL. (32)

3. Mobile app creator

Mobile apps routinely hit 250 billion downloads worldwide this year. (33)

Platforms often pay 70% profits on your app sales, so if you’re selling an app for $4.99, that can add up quickly. Sell half a million downloads, and you’re looking at a $1,746,500 profit.

That might sound hard, but there are actually thousands of apps that have hit over a million downloads, so hitting half that is definitely possible.

2. SEO consulting

Having a digital presence is a must for any business nowadays, and the only way to get there is through SEO. Because of that, companies will pay huge amounts to someone who can provide results…I’m talking page one Google results.

The hourly consulting rate for a legit SEO specialist is $100-$300. (34)

1. Lead generation for local businesses

If you’re looking for automated, digital, and scalable, this is it. If you’re looking for a market with low competition that is almost impossible to saturate, this is it. If you’re looking for guaranteed five-figure paychecks, this is also it.

The bottom line is that this method works better and more consistently than almost any other for generating passive income. You’re building out niche websites that focus on specific products and specific locations, so when your competition is cut down to people advertising limo services in Dayton, Ohio, hitting it big is a lot more do-able.

Use SEO to get to the top and let the leads come in overnight. Once you can offer local businesses a stack of contact info for people who have already said they’re interested in the product or service, they’ll start handing you money faster than you can count it.

[thewebofslime]

The umbrella organization known as NXIVM presented itself to the public as a company with noble goals: offering self-help courses to those seeking to improve their lives both personally and professionally. But its facade fell away after the group’s founder and leader was arrested in 2018 for recruiting members of the organization into a secret society to be branded and made his sexual “slaves.” At least 17,000 people enrolled in NXIVM’s self-improvement classes throughout the course of its two decade-long history. Founded in 1998, the company, which used the structure of a pyramid scheme, would continue to grow until its peak membership in 2016. Then, in May 2018, the company put out a statement on their now-defunct website stating that they were suspending all operations. Critical media coverage of the group’s inner workings played a pivotal role in the group’s demise, helping to prevent future members from joining and ultimately culminating in an FBI investigation into NXIVM’s leader, Keith Raniere, 58, and his group. Such reports, as early as a 2003 Forbes piece, were a constant thorn for Raniere, who relied on a stream of newcomers to attend his classes referred to as “intensives” that lasted multiple days and cost between $2,000 and $10,000. Interviews with a former member of NXIVM, an ex-publicist of the group, and a legal expert on cults offer a deeper look into the twisted workings of the now-infamous organization. The content of the classes, all transcribed from Raniere’s speeches, was presented as the core of the NXIVM’s curriculum. A “twelve-point mission statement” penned by him shaped much of the philosophy behind the organization. It contained guidelines students were told to recite such as “I will not choose to be a victim” and to keep “all its information confidential.” Much of the teachings played with the moral compasses of members, and focused on breaking apart traditional male–female relationships. At a Brooklyn federal court, witness after witness—many of them former members—all spoke out against their former leader, who is facing a jury of eight men and four women as the sole defendant. Raniere faces a maximum sentence of life in prison for seven criminal counts, including sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, and racketeering. The accusations against Raniere center around the secret society—which he allegedly created in 2015—named DOS, an acronym for the Latin “dominus obsequious sororium,” loosely translated as “master of the slave women.” Prosecutors say Raniere was the “highest master” of DOS and forced other members—all women—to have sex with him. Many of the DOS members were branded with a cauterizing pen while naked and being filmed. The trial, now in its fourth week, is expected to last about six weeks. Raniere appeared calm in court, offering little reaction to witnesses breaking down in tears and speaking with visible anguish on their faces. Beginning Ascent NXIVM (pronounced Nex-ee-um) was the second company started by Raniere. In the 1990s, he had opened a company called Consumers Buyline, which was later shut down by the New York state attorney general for utilizing pyramid schemes. Before all this, Raniere was a member of the multi-level marketing company called Amway. NXIVM grew steadily, reaching its apex around 2015, NXIVM’s ex-publicist-turned-whistleblower, Frank Parlato, told The Epoch Times. Parlato said Raniere was more focused on gaining power, control, and women, over running a successful company. This sentiment was also echoed by the prosecution’s Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Hajjar in her opening statement, saying Raniere exploited the trust of his devoted followers to fulfill his own fantasies involving “sex, power, and control.” “At that point [2015], it had reached its ultimate pinnacle,” Parlato said. “Rainiere had accomplished his goals, he was absolute commander on a number of people, women were now branded, he created DOS, he had most of his enemies indicted or silenced.” Before its apex, NXIVM started with just three people, Raniere, co-founder Nancy Salzman, who would later become the group’s president, and his current girlfriend at the time, Toni Natalie. Just a few months after the group was created, Natalie quit and would become a target of Raniere. Parlato describes how in the group’s early days, Raniere relied solely on funding from members he swindled, including $8 million from member Michael Sutton, helping him fund his operations and some of his commodities at the time. But one of the major boosts to the rise in the group’s influence wouldn’t come until 2002, when Raniere attracted the help of Sara and Clare Bronfman, heiresses to Seagram, a billion-dollar Canadian liquor company. “Suddenly, the Bronfmans come in and now, he is in the hundreds of millions. Now he could fund his operation. His operation basically was recruit women to have sex with and punish his enemies,” Parlato said. “I don’t think there was any real component to save the world, that was just a shtick, a front. “He had 30 homes at his disposal, a harem, women fighting over the opportunity to do his laundry or pick up some food for him. In his own little community, he was a god, he was literally worshipped.” Clare Bronfman was affiliated with NXIVM for a long time, giving away tens of millions of dollars to bankroll Raniere. She also paid for lawyers to defend the group against lawsuits brought by its critics and also filed suits on behalf of the company against former members of the group. She pleaded guilty in April. NXIVM was headquartered in Albany, New York, before new centers and operations were opened in Monterey, California; Mexico City; Vancouver, Canada; and Los Angeles. Members from around the world were sent to its international network of “intensive classes.” Parlato said that around the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, NXIVM had “indicted,” with the backing of the Bronfmans, multiple members who had left the group including Joe O’Hara, Toni Natalie, Barbara Bouchey, and Parlato himself. Parlato was never a member, working only as a consultant. He was fired six months into the job. “It wasn’t so much the rise of NXIVM, it was always obscure,” Parlato said. “It was the rise of Keith Raniere, you can call it NXIVM because that was his alter ego. He thought that would save him legally.” The other five co-defendants in the case have all pleaded guilty; some pleas came after prosecutors added child exploitation charges against Raniere based on evidence he had sex with a 15-year-old girl. Raniere has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. But Parlato said Raniere’s inner circle of women also played an instrumental role in the group’s growth. The Inner Circle Raniere boasted that he was the smartest man in the world, and his followers believed him. Former NXIVM member Susan Dones, who first joined the group in December 2000 before leaving in April 2009, told The Epoch Times that Raniere deceived his inner circle of women first, who then tried to manipulate those below them. During her time in the group, Dones, who resided in Seattle, later became the head of the Seattle Center of Executive Success Programs, also known as ESP within the group, an interchangeable term for NXVIM. “If you question anything, they would make it all about you and how it was your issue,” Dones said of the inner circle. Some of the women who have testified said they were duped into believing Raniere, noting that he was articulate and bright. They thought he had their best interests at heart. Dones said that despite the inner circle’s strong influence within the group, Raniere was still at the top of the pyramid. She said it took her a while to see there was something going on behind the inner circle. “Keith needed a group of front-line people to make it plausible to believe anything,” she said. “It’s like an ’emperor with no clothes’ kind of thing.” Parlato described the group as reinforcing Raniere’s lifestyle. “If you had any doubts, there would be your best friends, all these women telling you that it’s your issue,” he said. “That you have misunderstood the greatness that is Keith, that his whole desire is to enlighten you.” Dones echoed other members’ testimony that nobody really made any money from the group. She witnessed Raniere’s further descent into darkness when he gained the Bronfmans’ support. “The influence they were able to gain legally, politically, made him get worse and worse,” she said. “The more he got away with, the worse he became. Once he got away with something, he had to up his ante to the next thing so he could get some kind of excitement out of it.” In Albany, the members of the inner circle varied, but usually included 70 women and about 10 men, according to Parlato. Raniere was sleeping with most of the women. Although there may have been 20 people in one class, Parlato said most of them were returning core members, who were persuaded into taking the courses again and again. Dones said inner-circle members who slept with Raniere were also part of the executive board, a major conflict of interest. “The board can’t really make a decision that’s not affected by him,” she said. Raniere’s Curriculum Dones said she was intrigued by the structure of NXIVM’s programs. It was a somewhat familiar structure, like that of other self-help classes she had attended. But instead of having one class leader, it was more of an inductive process. Those attending the class were divided into small groups and asked a set of inductive questions that were then explored as a group before they came back with answers. She said when she was attending, Salzman was the head trainer, but there was something off about the content. “For me, what was weird was how much they talked about Keith—that I didn’t like.” Dones saw Raniere for the first time on the fifth day of her intensive. Her image of him from that day never changed. “I always thought he was creepy,” she said. The programs, Dones believed, could be beneficial to some people in breaking their limitations. But she realized early on that Raniere was not as morally upright as he claimed he was. “I caught on right away that he was overly affectionate with some women,” she said. “Not all women.” Dones started asking questions about Raniere and turned to Salzman. The response she got was that they don’t talk about these things. Dones couldn’t get a straight answer out of anybody until much later. The classes served as a “hunting ground” of sorts for Raniere to use in scoping out women, according to the former member. “Keith used it for women he sexually desired,” Dones said. “They also used it as a financial hunting ground for people who had assets. They used it for free labor.” According to court documents, DOS operated as a pyramid scheme, with levels of “slaves” headed by “masters”; slaves were then expected to recruit their own slaves, thus becoming masters themselves. Dones said the group tried to get her to commit crimes and said she often felt psychologically abused. “The first thing they did was to try to get me to not pay taxes, I think they used that to gain collateral over me, I didn’t know that then,” she said, noting that she refused their request. Nancy told her later they were bringing cash over the border from Mexico centers to avoid paying taxes. The next thing they tried was to convince her to be unfaithful. “I was in long-term relationship … NXIVM’s main pimp tried to pimp me out to Nancy Salzman,” Dones said. That person was Pamela Cafritz, a longtime member of Raniere’s harem who has since passed away from cancer. Dones said that Salzman had a similar conversation with her, pushing her to have a relationship with another female member. “They do this whole divide and conquer for people in a relationship because its easier to manipulate someone when they are single,” she said. DOS members were allegedly recruited on the condition that they would give up personal, often embarrassing, information about themselves, including compromising images or videos, as “collateral.” Once inside, members were regularly required to provide additional collateral to ensure that they kept the group’s activities secret. “At some point, they [NXIVM] turned into a cult of personality,” Cathleen Mann, a court-qualified expert witness told The Epoch Times. “The product that you see today sitting in the courtroom is the product of many, many years of isolation and complete reinforcement by his inner circle.” Mann has testified in more than 40 separate cult cases. Confronting The ‘Emperor’ Over time, Dones said her concerns deepened. She described herself as “too defiant” and too inquisitive. She rarely saw Raniere since the group kept her away from him. Before leaving, Dones and a number of other women confronted Raniere. His response to them was one lie after another, she said. Dones recorded the confrontation on camera. On the second day of their face-off, the small group realized they were getting nowhere. On their third and final day, they let Raniere know they were resigning. Dones was sued by the group the next year. She ultimately won the case. Dones said she stayed in NXIVM because she thought it was “about helping people to help themselves” and not entirely about making money. She described creating a loving community at her own center in Seattle, which she headed. Members had potlucks together, talent shows, and created friendships. But the premise, she said, was ruined by Raniere and his inner circle. She described them as “toxic waste.” “Water is good, but if you finely grind up glass to where you can’t really see it and put a little bit of that finely ground-up powder to water—now all of a sudden the water’s not good. “And you can’t separate the water from the glass that you put in there,” she explained. Ten years later, Dones said she is still suffering from the effects of her time in NXIVM. She goes to therapy for PTSD twice a month. Mann said the organization was “created from power without checks and balances,” adding that it was “more comfortable” for them to function like that. She said the case teaches a lesson into how a lack of checks, coupled with isolation, can “alter and affect” a person. “It’s pretty easy to be trapped when you are being manipulated emotionally,” Mann said, referring to the women who had fallen in love with Raniere. The Fall Media reporting on the group intensified throughout the years, especially in 2010, when blogger John Tighe started regularly writing about the group’s inner workings. “That shook them up pretty good,” Parlato said. Despite a growing number of media stories critical of the group, there was no law enforcement action. In 2015, Parlato began his own blog on the group. In June 2017, Parlato said he first broke the story about the branding scheme, causing rank-and-file members to flee the organization. In 2016, an annual event called “Vanguard week,” a multi-day-long celebration of Raniere’s birthday, had 450 members attend. In 2017, two months after Parlato broke the branding story, there were only 125 in attendance. In October 2017, The New York Times wrote a report on the branding, prompting the Eastern District of New York to look into the case. NXIVM had already been on notice of criminality in the Northern District of New York for years but nothing had been done. Seven months after that, Raniere was behind bars after a dramatic arrest in Mexico, where he had fled.

[consumerratingandreview-blog]

High cost of get-rich-quick scams

Thalia Holmes 07 Jul 2017 00:00

In August 2015, Angel Mkhize* had resigned from her job and withdrawn her R750 000 pension fund. She was looking for somewhere to invest her cash. She watched an interview on SABC with a young up-and-coming entrepreneur who claimed to have pioneered a new type of software that “automated” forex trading.

“Unlike stocks, currencies can’t be manipulated,” said Myles Ndlovu. “What we’ve done is develop a system which is a forex trading robot. This automates everything.” He claimed that his innovation allowed investors to protect their capital while making tidy profits.

Mkhize checked whether Ndlovu’s company, Profit Trading, was registered with the Financial Services Board. Discovering that it was, she decided to take the leap and invested all of her savings with Ndlovu.

She was told to expect annual returns of between 7% and 14%. She would need to give 21 days’ notice and then could withdraw her capital and interest at any time.

“It was about a year ago that I asked for my interest,” said Mkhize.

After the company was not forthcoming with the requested payment, “I called them and they said: ‘No, there’s been delays.’ I said: ‘What kind of delays?’ They said: ‘The bank is dealing with high volumes of clients.’ ”

After a few months of this treatment, Mkhize decided to exit the scheme. “I told them I want all of my capital and my profits,” she said.

The company promised her it would pay out by December 1 but seven months later, she says she hasn’t received a cent.

Meanwhile, she can no longer pay for the medication required for her hypertension. “My medical aid has been cancelled and I can’t pay for my chronic illness. There are debts I need to pay. I need the money now, now, now.”

Ndlovu was arrested at a swanky Sandton hotel last month. He recently appeared in Johannesburg’s commercial crimes court for allegedly swindling investors out of an estimated R5‑million between 2010 and 2015, although some believe the amount to be much higher.

The Financial Services Board confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that Profit Trading’s licence had been withdrawn for “no longer meeting the fit and proper requirements”.

A few years after lending him legitimacy by introducing his product to the public, media houses are now sharing the story of his deception and fall from grace.

For Mkhize it’s too late: there’s a long, costly battle ahead before she sees her money again, if ever.

Mkhize is one of thousands of South Africans who are caught up in a plague of financial scams sweeping the country.

Trevor Hattingh, the spokesperson for the National Consumer Commission, said: “The primary objective of these schemes is to take money from someone and not guarantee any value or any return.”

Some are sold as get-rich-quick schemes, offering returns of more than 20% interest a year. Others —like Profit Trading is alleged to be — are classic Ponzi schemes, which take money from one investor to pay out another. They work by paying out the early investors with great sums of cash, thereby earning the trust of the public, but eventually bottom out as their popularity dwindles, leaving members unpaid.

The Reserve Bank has a mandate to investigate schemes that conduct “illegal deposit-taking”. Between January 2012 and December 2016, the Reserve Bank’s banking supervision department investigated 63 cases of illegal deposit-taking schemes. Last year, eight new schemes were investigated and six investigations were finalised, according to the department’s annual report.

More than 5 000 suspected financial scam schemes have been reported to the Reserve Bank over the past five years. But many others fall between the cracks.

Ponzi schemes often “don’t have directors and are not registered companies”, said Hattingh.

“The Consumer Protection Act, which the National Consumer Commission enforces, regulates legitimate businesses. The pyramid schemes are never even registered as legitimate.” For that reason many of these schemes are difficult to prosecute — and it’s difficult to take legal recourse if things go belly-up.

“An apparent willingness of the general public to participate in these schemes makes it relatively easy for perpetrators to start up new schemes as soon as an older scheme is investigated, closed or reported,” the Reserve Bank’s Jabulani Sikhakhane told the M&G.

But it’s important to know that any participation in these schemes is illegal (see “There are different ways to get duped”). So, it’s worth identifying how to spot an unlawful get-rich-quick programme.

The Reserve Bank launched a three-year awareness campaign about these issues in September. The bank’s governor, Lesetja Kganyago, said the campaign, titled Easy Come, Easy Go, draws on the adage that “if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is”.

The Reserve Bank recommends that consumers follow a three-step process when evaluating potential investment opportunities:

Stop for a moment and ask yourself some basic questions such as, has someone offered you “guaranteed” profits for little or no financial risk? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Check to see whether you are being targeted and avoid becoming a victim. For instance, one of the biggest telltale signs of a scam is that the offer is completely unsolicited.

Report it. Spread the word and help others to stay vigilant. If you’re a victim of such a scheme, open a case with the police.

Hattingh warned that several Ponzi schemes masquerade as stokvels. Stokvels are made up of social groups pooling their money, whereas Ponzi schemes are often run by “nameless, faceless individuals on the internet who are difficult to track down”.

To legitimise their offering, some schemes rely heavily on peer testimonials. Visit the South Africa MMM website, one of the largest alleged Ponzi schemes in the country, and you’ll find 50 videos recorded by happy users on its landing page.

“They put out these videos to further manipulate people,” said Hattingh. “But they’re playing with people’s minds because the individual that this appeals to doesn’t think to ask: Where’s the head office; where’s my documentation; where is the company registered?”

* Not her real name

There are different ways to get duped

According to the Consumer Protection Act, it’s illegal to join, enter, participate in or promote any of the following schemes. If you fall prey to a scheme and want to press charges, you will need to open a case with the police.

Multiplication scheme: When a person offers, promises or guarantees to any participant an effective annual interest rate that is at least 20% above the repo rate determined by the South African Reserve Bank as at the date of investment or the commencement of participation.

Pyramid scheme: Where participants in the scheme receive compensation derived primarily from recruiting others as participants, rather than from the sale of any goods or services. But do not confuse this with a network marketing scheme, which simply involves growing your wealth by amassing a network of users willing to buy a product (think Amway and Forever Living products, among others).

Chain letter scheme: Where a new member makes a payment or donation and then moves up the “ranks” of the scheme, receiving payments or donations as they progress up the hierarchy, and are eventually removed from the list when reaching a certain point.

These definitions have been slightly simplified. To read the full definitions, see section 43 of the Consumer Protection Act of 2008. The Banks Act prohibits illegal so-called banking activities or illegal deposit-taking. Any entity that participates in this is liable for investigation by the South African Reserve Bank. To find out more about this, visit easycomeeasygo.co.za

Thalia Holmes

Thalia is a freelance business reporter for the Mail & Guardian. She grew up in Swaziland and lived in the US before returning to South Africa.She got a cum laude degree in marketing and followed it with another in English literature and psychology before further confusing things by becoming a black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) consultant.After spending five years hearing the surprised exclamation, "But you're white!", she decided to pursue her latent passion for journalism, and joined the M&G in 2012. The next year, she won the Brandhouse Journalist of the Year Award, the Brandhouse Best Online Award and was chosen as one of five finalists from Africa for the German Media Development Award. In 2014, she and a colleague won the Standard Bank Sivukile Multimedia Award. She now writes and edits for various publications, but her heart still belongs to the M&G.      Read more from Thalia Holmes

@ThaliaHolmes

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