Following on from the success of MillionDollarHomepage.com a number of clones have no surprisingly sprung up. I have to admit that when I saw the story even I did a quick search to see if millionpoundhomepage.co.uk, milliondollareuro.com etc was available.I’ve just come across a new clone, PixMeUp.com and I’m posting about here to try and dissuade anyone who reads this article from getting sucked into investing in what is basically a Pyramid Scheme. Lots of people are going to get hurt and I want to do what I can to stop that happening.
I received an email yesterday inviting me to buy advertising on pixmeup.com, and I popped over for a quick look. I was horrified to see that it was nothing but a glorified pyramid scheme. Here’s how it works:
- ‘Advertisers’ buy pixels for $0.25 per pixel. These pixels get placed in a grid. If you buy multiple pixels you get multiple grids.
- When other people buy pixels they get placed in a grid below you. Once a certain amount of levels below your pixels are filled then you get commission cheques. If a whole grid is filled then a payout of $9.5K is ‘possible’
So, basically the whole system is funded by more and more people buying pixels, filling up the lower level pixels, and the money filtering up the ‘pyramid’, with the site owner skimming some cash off.
It even has a classic pyramid scheme feature in that if the user recruits the people who fill up the pixels below theirs, then they get a 20% bonus. If those people then recruit people themselves, the top guy gets another 5% bonus. Pyramid schemes adopt these tactics as no-one is better at recruiting new people than their friends.
Like every pyramid scheme, the people at the top do quite well out of it initially, but eventually the whole system will collapse like all other schemes as pyramid schemes require an ever increasing amount of new recruits to keep them going by pumping in more cash. Yes, the people at the top will do ok out of the site, but there will be loads of people at the bottom who won’t get their $25 back.
You may think that potentially losing $25 to get $9.5K back is worth the risk. The problem is, a lot of people will think ‘Why not buy 10 pixels?’. Greed will encourage some people to buy even more pixels – potentially thousands of dollars worth of pixels.
I have personally seen the disastrous effects of pyramid schemes. In 2004 a lot of my family and friends got involved in a scheme, some investing thousands of pounds despite my efforts to talk sense into them. Greed took over and they paid big time – some are still paying now because they leveraged up to raise more cash to invest.
Please please please don’t invest in these schemes. Unfortunately, it looks like it is too late for hundreds of other people as PixMeUp is now filling up it’s fourth page of pixels…..
