Dissecting an offer: $99 + one day -> ROI greater than 400% ?

Although I am not a biology student, today I got fascinated by dissection. First, I wanted to dissect the goose with the golden egg and now my attention is on an offer that is supposed to be compelling.

Here is an offer to consider:

The ad says – “Now Hiring Home Typists: $99 One Day Training Program. Earn $1000 – $7000/Week At Home!

Digging deeper, I saw that this is from a training institute that will teach you data entry and working a couple of hours a day, you can make money starting from $1000.

Here’s a simple way to disect this offer:

1. First observation is that this offer is too good to be true. If the first impression is that it is too good to be true, it is.

2. This offer is coming to us as a Google Ad – meaning that the advertiser has paid for this. Let us take a conservative estimate that the advertiser is paying about a dollar per click. If the conversion ratio is 2%, then the cost of acquiring a client for them is about $50. Meaning, they will make about $49 per client. If they have to make any money, they have to “serve” tens of thousands of clients as google adwords is not the only cost for them. This leads me to believe that $99 is just a marketing ploy to get someone engaged. The real money will be made by upselling something very expensive.

3. The claim is questionable. The current claim is that a person should invest $99 and one day (valued at lets say $800) and at a minimum, the person can make $1000 per week or $4K per month. So in month the ROI is more than 400%. Too good to be true? You bet! (Remember: You are only working 2 hours per day – meaning in a month you work about 44 hours. Sounds like a deal!!!!)

4. Let us think as if we are the company making this claim. If there is any sense of truth in this offer, it would make sense for us to just keep this a “top secret.” Why should we spend money on Google to spread this knowledge? We might as well make all the money.

I am sure none of us even look at these kinds of offers. However, the fact that these advertisements continue to appear (just like those Nigerian scams) almost everyday, something seems to be working for the advertisers. So, whatever we can do to raise awareness on “how to think through such offers” we got to do.

Have a great Wednesday all of you!