With seven billion people inhabiting this poor, overwhelmed planet, the old dictum of “there’s a sucker born every minute” might have to be revised to seconds or even microseconds. However, this suckerization of the world is not so much related to the booming birth rate as it is to the continuing gullibility of netizens who keep falling into the traps laid by the spammers and snake oil salesmen who keep barraging us with assurances that we can bank $23,487 a day by using their secret online marketing strategy for just three minutes a week…. of course for the low low price of $49.95. A fun article by Lilach on Sociable entitled 3 Myths Other Internet Marketers Don’t Tell The Truth About outlined some of the most popular web chimeras and they’re worth examining if for no other reason but to determine whether the overall average IQ of our species has increased at all since we huddled in the trees to escape the saber toothed tigers.

Trade in the Commute & Grumpy Boss

Even most of the lucky people that still have jobs in the United States would like nothing more than to ditch the commute, the office gossip mill and the grumpy boss in exchange for getting filthy rich by doing nothing more than tapping their keyboard in their shorts, in the comfort of their beachfront mansion in Fiji. In the article, Lilach explodes some of the more pervasive myths:

Work at the beach – Anyone can waltz into a luxury tropical resort and have a photo taken of themselves sipping Cristal while their laptop seems to be busily piling cash into their Paypal account… and many of these online weasels do. They will even rent Ferraris and Bentleys for a couple of hours and park them in front of some palatial estate in order to fool the feebleminded that they earned all of that on the net. These outright scams are a far cry from actually being able to adopt that sort of lifestyle on a full time basis. Besides, Lilach notes how difficult it is to get sand out of your laptop!

Work a few hours/minutes a week/month – Lilach notes that top entrepreneurs work crazy long hours, so the illusion that you can set up some sort of automagic money creation machine is nothing more than a three card monte trick. The more money they’ve made the longer they’ve worked, and it’s not because of workaholicism, but because there are no shortcuts to wealth. For every acne-faced 19 year old wunderkind who IPOs his social media Rube Goldberg website for a few billion bucks (on paper anyway), there are countless millions who will toil at online marketing schemes while barely being able to make the rent.

Work to get rich quick – There is a way to get rich quick, and it’s by winning the lottery. Every other method is nothing more than a mirage in the desert of utter poverty. However, that factor does not handicap the scammers in any way to keep deluding the deluded into thinking that they can not only pay off their maxed out credit cards before the next billing cycle but they can buy out their about-to-be foreclosed mortgage in cash too! Bridges in Brooklyn and dry swampland in Florida, anyone?

A Much Needed Dose of Reality

Lilach provides a much needed dose of reality to an industry that “is viewed through very rose tinted glasses.” By noting the old saying that if it was this easy then everyone would be doing it and getting rich overnight by doing next to nothing, the author proves that there are no shortcuts to wealth. Anyone who promises you riches beyond your wildest dreams belongs behind bars and away from the susceptible and unwary masses.

Yes, one of the takeaways of the article can be “how stupid can some people be who believe such ridiculous nonsense?” but the fact is that every second of every minute of every day some new sucker gets taken in by these outright criminals. So keep on making money the old-fashioned way: Earn it!