Roadmap to Riches Review and Warning

Roadmap To Riches - Yet Another Insidious 2-Up Program

Have you come across "EDC Gold" or "Passport To Wealth?"

If you have you can now add "Road Map to Riches" ( R2R ) to the list of online money making scams and if you are unfamiliar with these 2-Up programs let me fill you in.

The key identifiers of a pyramid scheme include the following:

* A highly excited sales pitch (sometimes including props and/or promos).
* Little to no information offered about the company unless an investor purchases the products and becomes a participant.
* Vaguely phrased promises of limitless income potential.
* No product, or a product being sold at a price ridiculously in excess of its real market value. As with the company, the product is vaguely described.
* An income stream that chiefly depends on the commissions earned by enrolling new members or the purchase by members of products for their own use rather than sales to customers who are not participants in the scheme.
* A tendency for only the early investors/joiners to make any real income.
* Assurances that it is perfectly legal to participate.

The key distinction between these schemes and legitimate MLM businesses is that in the latter cases a meaningful income can be earned solely from the sales of the associated product or service to customers who are not themselves enrolled in the scheme. While some of these MLM businesses also offer commissions from recruiting new members, this is not essential to successful operation of the business by any individual member. Nor does the absence of payment for recruiting mean that an MLM is not a cover for a pyramid scheme.

The distinguishing characteristic is whether the money in the scheme comes primarily from the participants themselves (pyramid scheme) or from sales of products or services to customers who aren't participants in the scheme (legitimate MLM).

( From Wikipedia )

"EDC Gold", "Passport To Wealth" and "Road Map To Riches" are all forms of this "legalized" pyramid model. They have products for sale but are never sold and only vaguely mentioned, if at all, on the hyped up sales pages to join these programs.

There is only one thing really being sold - grotesquely high memberships into the program. ($997 - $999 )

Once you join it is your job to sell the program to two other victims and then pass the money up the chain to your sponsor. If you manage to make a third sale you get to keep the proceeds and the person you duped now has to send you their first two sales. And on and on it goes until saturation sets in and the people on the bottom can't give away a membership much less sell it. They could of course try and sell the "products" but quickly find out that these products are available for free or at substantially reduced prices all over the internet. At this point it occurs to them that they spent $1000 to sell the same products that anyone else can sell using clickbank for free.

These programs are full of competing "Teams" ( in reality just the people who want you to sign up under them so they collect your first two sales ) - who will tell you that they are a "Marketing Specialist" and that they have a great training program to help you succeed. The training ends about the time you send them the second sale and the training program is laughable. Check out my article concerning these so called "teams" here.

Here is your training in a nutshell.

- join every "Money Making" forum you can find.

- start a thread on each forum hyping your program.

- tell people you are a "Team Leader" and a "marketing Specialist" and you're only interest is helping others make money.

- bash every person who has anything negative to say about your program.

- start an adwords campaign with links pointing to your affiliate canned webpage. You will then see this listed in Googles sponsored links along with the other dozen or so campaigns started by your fellow "Specialists" and keep in mind you will also be competing with the head honcho who started all this and who took your money.

Google - Road Map To Riches
Google - Passport To Wealth
Google - EDC Gold

- make sure to repeat over and over that people can make $1000 a day.

- avoid any discussion of your products and when pressed be as vague as possible - don't mention anything by name as people will quickly find out how absurd it would be to pay $1000 to join a program in order to sell crap that anyone else can get for peanuts. Always get the sales pitch focused on how people can earn $1000 a day selling memberships - not on how they can make $7 a day selling a crappy product.

These programs are notorious for producing "Cheerleaders" who spend every waking hour patrolling the forums - "Forum Lizards" - looking for fresh meat. You will see a common thread with all of them. They are new to the forum in question and never post about anything other than the program they are hyping. You will notice that they are 1 post wonders who just happened to see the thread and wanted to drop in and say how wonderful the program is. You will also notice that the same people show up on all the forums and spout the same crap.

The sad fact is that these programs keep popping up to take advantage of the inherent greed we all possess to one extent or another. This is the kind of greed that convinces us that we don't mind taking a $1000 bucks off of some loser who should know better. Actually most of us have a conscious and don't feel good about this but the "cheerleaders" are like fanatics of all stripes. They convince themselves that this isn't a scam because they are making money at it and if others weren't so lazy they would succeed to. The problem is that this isn't a sustainable business model - the chain will end when market saturation sets in and the last to buy will get screwed. There are always a lot more people screwed on the bottom of the pyramid than winners at the top.

The bottom line is this;

These programs have no end user value - they only work as long as new members are recruited. The business model can not sustain itself and never does. Earnings end when memberships end even though there are supposedly products for sale.

Passport To Wealth had its run.

EDC Gold took its place.

Road Map To Riches is about to replace EDC Gold.

In a couple of months there will be a new $1000 membership program to take the place of Road Map To Riches.

Do not get sucked into any of these programs - if you really want to piss away $1000 then send it to me - I'll at least kiss you first.

nuff' said.

Grizzly

Additional Info

If any of you have been scammed by one of these programs here is a link to the complaint form for the Federal Trade Commission. ( You don't have to be an American to file a complaint.) FTC Complaint Form

For more on definitions of the types of schemes propagated on the net see; Wikipedia Pyramid Schemes

Roadmap to Riches