While researching our recent problem with the PlayStation 3, I found lots of people eager to make money on the Internet. Here’s one method that nearly worked on me:
- Identify a real problem, such as the Blinking Red Light of Death on the PS3, that costs time and money to fix.
- Assemble a repair guide for the problem. It could be real or fake, whichever you prefer.
- Build a website to sell your repair guide.
- Post fake reviews around the Internet that make your repair guide sound like the only good solution. Use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to ensure that your site rises to the top of the search results.
- Recruit other greedy people to repeat Step 4 for you. Promise them a 75 percent commission for every sale. Provide them with fake reviews, banner ad graphics, web forum signature links, and other tools to help them drive traffic to your site.
- Anticipate that people might wonder whether your repair guide is a scam. Post more fake reviews specifically affirming that it’s not a scam. Use SEO to ensure that these reassuring fake reviews are near the top of the search engines when a user searches for “is [your product] a scam?”
- Watch the money roll in.
The site in question, or one of them at least, is http://www.ps3lightsfix.com/. After learning about the darker side of this “product”, partly through their hidden “affiliates page“, I decided to keep my $37. Honestly, I don’t know whether this repair guide is any good or not. It might be wonderful. However, its shady marketing techniques make me suspicious. I can’t even find a real review of it because the author and his minions have posted so many fake ones.
Instead I found a free video guide that a kind and helpful person named Gilsky posted on YouTube. I tried it, and it worked. Unfortunately, since I am an amateur, I damaged two other components in the process, so our PS3 is still unusable. I’m probably going to sell it for parts and use the money to replace it at some point.