A curious thing about questionable services is that people quickly try to capitalize on the questions. Specifically in the case of the BlastOff network, it comes as no shock that people Google for things such as “blastoff scam”. The scary part is that people involved with the BlastOff network are trying to profit from this due diligence. For example, when you search for “BlastOff scam”, you will find such websites as blastoffscam.com and blastoffnetwork-review.com.
You’ll notice a common theme across these sites. The authors position themselves as independent, objective reviewers, but alas, they inevitably invite you to join their network. You must ask yourself how they could truly be objective if they are trying to profit from the network. I call this the BlastOff scam scam.
These people will go so far as to register key phrases at popular, human editable websites such as Squidoo, Wordpress, and Blogspot. They will then link from these sites to their other offerings, posing as an interested 3rd party. In some cases they will try and sell you right there. The results at all major search engines are clogged with these bogus reviews, making it hard to get to the truth.
With this being the case, how can anyone actually research the MLM scheme, the companies behind it, and their investors? Shady tactics indeed.
I will offer one way to help this situation: link to this site. Google orders it’s search results by several criteria, the most important of which is the number of incoming links. Thus, adding a link to this site will help it rank higher in search results, helping people find the truth. You’ll note that I don’t link to the above “independent review” sites since that will only increase their visibility.
To link to this site from your blog, forum, or website, just cut and paste the following HTML:
<a href='http://blast-off-scam.com'>BlastOff Scam</a>
Fight the scam!
Thank you for doing this. I posted on my facebook. This is a total scam and it’s nice to know there are a few rational people left on the planet that aren’t quitting their jobs to make free money. Fight the good fight.
This practice you list as a scam is used by virtually every online retailer on the market. Shame on you for suggesting its some kind of deviant scheme that Blastoff invented, or suggesting that because they use this very common practice their network is a scam.
Report real data, please. I want to know whether Blastoff is breaking its commitments or promising? Advertising things that are not true? Doing something that takes advantage of those who join the network?
Do you have anything to report to this end?
Thank you.
“Thank you for doing this. I posted on my facebook. This is a total scam and it’s nice to know there are a few rational people left on the planet that aren’t quitting their jobs to make free money. Fight the good fight.”
Sounds like a very “rational” thought. You might want to do a bit more research, my friend, as you have NO evidence here that a “total scam” exists, unless of course EVERY online business that uses search optimization tactics are also scammers.
Ever since I’ve been approached to join this (which I promptly said no to, but continued to receive spam anyway) I’ve done a ton of research on this site and have been checking on sources every few days to keep up with what looks like an endless amount of technical problems ever since their launch. First of all, for the millions of dollars they claim to have invested in this venture, and for the team of 8 developers they claim to have on their About Us page, I’m really surprised that they’d have so many technical issues. Seems fishy to me.
JULIE, they have decieved the pre-paid legal people by touting it as “the next best thing to hit the internet”. How can it be the next best thing when it’s already been done- affiliate marketing that is. The deviant part of all this is how they are leading people to believe they are going to make tons of money in cash-back rewards. When really what this is, is a middleman between you and the middleman. The first middleman being being the affiliate marketing host, such as Commission Junction. And the second middle man being Blastoff.
Blastoff isn’t specifying upfront what percentage mall users will actually get of from the commission that Blastoff makes from Commission Junction. That’s deceitful. And I can say this after having watched the Track My Rewards video showing what an account page looks like listing (false no doubt) sales totaling $9,642 within a pay period. Really?! Please Julie, let us all know if this is what your first paycheck looks like!
To this day I have yet to see any reports on anyone receiving their first paycheck, so JULIE, how can you believe so fiercly in something of which you have yet to see tangible results (ie your first paycheck)? Speaking of that, I’ve seen conflicting accounts all over the place about how people are supposed to get payouts. So I know you haven’t been paid yet. That alone raises the scam flag.
Furthermore, since there is an obvious tie with Pre-Paid Legal, this further screams scam since Pre-Paid Legal is about to fall apart. They have been around long enough (staying in business by paying off the right people and quietly settling disputes out of court) that they have pretty much saturated the market. For one thing, it is getting harder to convince the public to sign up for these MLM schemes, and secondly PPL loses money in loss of membership. My point being that PPL is using Blastoff as a ‘front’ to get more people in their network, drumming up more business to stay afloat. Read more about PPL’s imminent collapse here: http://pyramidschemealert.org/PSAMain/resources/PPL.FitzPatrick.Report.2008.pdf
Nice post by the way, Grandma.
If I may add:
Please sign the Petition for Consumer Protection Against Pyramid and Ponzi Fraud
http://www.pyramidschemealert.org/PSAMain/action/action.html
[...] First let me say a few things- I’m a real person. I live in Florida and like to lay at the pool drinking beer and watch cartoons on the weekends. Secondly, I don’t care what you do. There are dozens if not a hundred of websites that will tell you how great this blast off network is and that’s because they want to sell you on it so they can make money. I don’t use the service so I can’t sell you crap. Even the sites talking you away from thinking its a scam, end up posting their personal link to the site so they can make money off you. I found a blog about this here- http://blast-off-scam.com/anatomy-of-a-blastoff-scam-scam/ [...]