In my continuing quest to find
truth in marketing, advertising, and money-making systems I’ve
sacrificed myself once again to explore behind the curtains. I
put aside my duties at Dreamscape for a while to gain first-hand
experience of various work-at-home systems. What I tried this
time was home-assembly. And no, that doesn’t mean I built a
house.
You’ve seen the ads: “Make
Money in Your Pajamas”, “Assemble Products and get Rich”,
“Get Paid for Everything You Make.” Well, that’s what I
tried. Let’s take an inner look from someone who’s been
there and seen what these programs are all about.
First off, before I cast
aspersions on an entire industry let me set it in stone that
there is nothing wrong with making products at home. Millions of
people are doing just that and selling their wares on their own
websites, eBay, etc. But this is NOT the same thing as a program
that touts itself as a money-making system whereby you can get
rich making products for other people. In fact, in my experience
these are some of the worst scams I've seen.
One of the plans I signed up
for cost me $30 for which I received a box of doll parts and a
list of addresses. I was supposed to put the dolls together
myself then contact people on the address list and sell the
dolls I made to them. And all the selling in this instance was
done without the help or advice of another, on my own and at my
own expense. Moreover, the dolls themselves were terrible. Not
even the neediest child would ever want one so how I was
supposed to sell these to other people is beyond me.
And that also uncovers the
major flaw with this first plan: it's based on a lie. The lie
was that a person can get rich by making products at home. The
truth is you get NOTHING for making the products, only for
SELLING the products.
I gave up that program, hoping
it was a fluke, and tried another program, then another and
another. Each time I was making products out of supplies I'd
just paid for: beaded bracelets, dolls, wooden toys, etc. Some
of the products were absolute trash and some took hours and
hours to make just a single one. And that is another failure
point of these programs.
See, the concept of profitable
business is that you sell something that is DESIREABLE to
someone who wants it, repeating the process enough times to
justify production costs and time. But the products you make on
these programs are terrible. You'd be very lucky to sell them on
eBay for twenty-five cents and if you did you'd probably get bad
feedback. And if it takes six hours to make just one of
them...well, you can see the math just doesn't work out.
