Published 3/12/08 (Modified 3/8/11)
By MoneyBlueBook

I often work on the computer late into the evening and most of the time I keep my television set on as background noise. Usually there isn't much programming going on in the wee evening hours - that is, except for the inescapable torrent of Girls Gone Wild commercials which seem to flood their way onto the airwaves after midnight whether you like it or not. The other types of shady programs that seem to craw their way onto my TV screen at night are the sleazy late night infomercials selling all sorts of silly products from male enhancement pills, to expensive audio tapes on how to get rich quick while working in your pajamas. While some of the commercials are tastefully done, hyping somewhat useful products like fruit juicers or portable infrared ovens, most them are repetitive scams designed to get you to part with your money fast.

Exposing Money Making Get Rich Quick Infomercials

When most people have gone to sleep, the roaches come out to play. The vast majority of late light commercials fall into the slummy get rich quick category. Most are slickly produced sales pitches for useless packages containing rehashed literature and DVD tapes about how to earn big bucks flipping houses, dabbling in cash flow notes, or making money on eBay. Of all the late night infomercials, the one that really sticks in my mind is the so-called Shortcuts to Internet Millions gimmick being hawked by a guy named Jeff Paul. It's not the fact that he is selling information that can easily be read and obtained online for free that makes me mentally nauseous and annoyed, it's the gratuitous visual sales tactics that he uses to sucker gullible consumers into buying his promises of money making fortune. His commercials are full of ridiculous and extremely misleading assertions. Simply after watching his commercials for a few minutes, I felt my own IQ slipping down a few notches.

Without a doubt, it's mostly the targeted male viewers, who despite their better judgment and gut instincts, still blindly succumb to the song of the financial siren. I guess many men find it hard to resist the message and promises of making millions when they are being flirtatiously whispered by beautiful curvy women surrounded by other attractive visual displays of lavish pools, opulent mansions, and luxury vehicles. Despite a world where society and the media continue to be pressured toward political correctness, in the world of advertising and product promotion, several sad truisms still ring true - "there's a sucker born every minute" and "sex sells." Much of these tactics are keenly and specifically demonstrated by the Shortcuts to Internet Millions infomercials.

Here are five of the more exploitive (but very effective) infomercial tactics used:

1) The Use Of Flirty Female Hosts To Mesmerize and Make The Sale - Without a shadow of a doubt, the use of sexual imagery is very effective at capturing the attention of the mostly male target audience. For the record, I want to make it very clear (to minimize email complaints), that I am moderately liberal in my social views. I don't think there is anything wrong with women dressing up the way they want in real life. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is the use of this sleazy and blatant form of exploitation and allure to sell a product that frankly has nothing to do with the associated imagery - something I feel insults my intelligence.

The Shortcuts to Internet Millions infomercials feature two noticeably attractive and perky hosts, Kelly Britz and Tina Milano, as they gush and chat about how much money they are each making on the internet using the program. They go on and on about how it's so easy and magical, and how all their (presumably very attractive) girlfriends are all logging on and getting into the online affiliate money making business without so much as breaking a sweat. Right......

The attempt at sexual innuendo is not even subtle. It's not merely two attractive women sitting on sofas having a pleasant discussion about their unbelievable passion for internet marketing. We are talking about two very, very, very prominently endowed women bearing their bare cleavages, while gushing about how easy it was for them to make thousands of dollars a week through eBay with just a few mouse clicks - without having any knowledge or prior experience with computers or the internet. It's like Jeff Paul swiped two girls from the preceding Girls Gone Wild commercial and handed them microphones so they can blab away about how they magically made money on this thing called eBay. Wearing extremely low cut tops as they chatted away on screen, the stereotypical bombshells offered zero credibility in my eyes and likely in the eyes of most serious consumers as well. However, in a warped way, their mere presence got my attention and likely the focus of many male viewers, and sadly, perhaps even luring a few into handing over their credit card numbers to order the ridiculous product.

2) Obsession With Associating Everything With Magic - Why do they insist on making the attractive female hosts seem so naive and brainless? "Do you really know how your e-mail magically appears on your computer screen?" one of them quizzes. The female genius then offers a few more "magical" references, concluding her powerful and persuasive argument of, "If you can type on your keyboard and click your mouse you can do this."���� By golly, she's right!

In the world of the Jeff Paul Shortcuts to Internet Millions' infomercial, everything seems to magically appear - especially with the program's so-called "3 Clicks To Cash" process. You type in your information and voila, your new business website "magically appears on the internet". You send an email, and the words get "magically sent". You don't even need to do any work or online promotion because money will just "magically get earned" and checks will "magically come flying to you". After all, the internet is just one magical fairyland where everyone magically makes money right? Try telling that to all the multi-million dollar dot com startups that went bust in 2000.

3) The Joke That Computer and Internet Illiterates Can Still Become Online Millionaires - I'm sorry to burst the combined delusional bubbles of Jeff Paul and his two babes, but making money on the internet requires a lot of computer and internet knowhow. Getting started online is easy - anyone can start up a basic template website. But to truly become a successful online entrepreneur requires substantial amounts of trial and experience, as well as committed dedication towards effort and learning, whether it be with eBay or any other online medium. It can be done but the process requires skills beyond mere flipping through a few book pages or clicking a few mouse keys to get your simple turnkey website on the web. To successfully promote your site and make money, you have to rank high in the search engines, particularly Google, which is a competitive and time consuming task. It requires that you not only roll up your sleeves, immerse yourself in the subject, but also dedicate lots of time to developing the business. No one makes money on the internet overnight. Those who think they can will be taken for a magic carpet ride that ends nowhere. If we were to buy into the program's sad and misguided logic, then even computer newbies like my mom and dad could easily become internet millionaire tycoons with just a few instant mouse clicks.

4) The Idea That You Don't Need To Have Your Own Line Of eBay Products Because You Can Easily Make Money From Drop Shipping - It's so sad that people fall for this particular sales pitch. Drop ship products are merchandise that the manufacturer agrees to ship directly to the consumer without the merchant having to take possession for shipment. The fallacy is that it is lucrative and allows anyone with a website to make a ton of money. The reality is that drop ship products are the absolute worst when it comes to profiting from eBay sales and making money online. Sure it's convenient, but because there is little buying risk to you as the eBay merchant, the so-called wholesale prices you obtain are not really wholesale at all. As such, profit margins are virtually non-existent and in fact, after eBay fees and transaction costs, you will almost always lost money or simply break even if you're lucky.

Furthermore, most of the drop ship products are items that already face saturated competition on the internet and eBay, further driving down the selling price and negating any profit potential. Most of these drop ship products are also pretty lame and you will almost never find any hot products like top of the line electronics for drop shipment. To truly get eBay wholesale product prices, you need to buy in huge bulk from the manufacturer, which obviously requires tremendous upfront capital investment and the unavoidable carrying of substantial inventory risk.

5) The Sales Gimmick That Revolves Around the Giving Away Of Free But Traffic-Less Websites - The Shortcuts To Internet Millions program seems to be feel that they are providing the buyer a great offer by giving away ten supposedly free websites as incentives. The reality is that most of these sites are template turnkey sites that can be easily and instantaneously cranked out and given away - a million of them at a time. Without organic internet traffic, which takes weeks, months and even years to build, they are useless.

Do the hosts ever talk about how the new website owner is going to successfully drive online traffic to the site? Of course not. Because if consumers knew how much work they would have to put in, they would lose their greedy interest. Free websites are worthless if you don't have the knowhow to generate links and build online traffic. Big companies spent thousands and millions of dollars promoting and advertising their sites all over the web. Do you think a simple consumer with 10 free template websites is going to somehow trump them all and rake in the sales overnight? Of course not.

There is a reason why although thousands of new online entrepreneurs jump onto the internet money making bandwagon every second, only a tiny percentage of them ultimately survive. Internet success takes a massive amount of online advertising and social link building to generate traffic. It takes a lot of time to investigate, research, and learn from others as well. Having a new commercial website without traffic, even one given to you for free, is nothing more than taking on a piece of trash. Even if the infomercial promised you a thousand free websites - all you would be getting in your possession, without weeks and months of computer training and internet expertise, would be a thousand heaps of trash - nothing more.

My Recommendation If You Really Want To Make Money Online Or Become A Successful eBay Entrepreneur

For one thing, you should stay away from the late night infomercials. Watch them for the eye candy entertainment whatnot, but don't even think about buying products through those late night shows. With the wealth of free information that's available on the internet, there is no need to buy the information from some late night salesman. Please don't be gullible and let your sense of greed cloud your better judgment. If you want to learn something about making money on the internet or want to know more about internet marketing strategies, you are better off following the blogs of proven online entrepreneurs such as John Chow, Darren Rowse, or Shoe Money. You'll learn more about affiliate marketing, online blogging tips, and search engine optimization tactics from them than from any product toting guy or hot female hosts on TV. At least you won't have to deal with the subsequent and continuous upsell attempts to get you to buy more expensive package upgrades, paid training, or costly mentoring services prevalent among these get rich quick infomercials. If you must throw your money away, buy one of those As Seen On TV Magic Bullet fruit blenders or something. :)