Is Pat Flynn a Scam? A Critique of his Passive Income Claims

[C.J.]

Yeah, in the age of the internet, so-called experts get the most non-wageslave money. However, you can be an expert on ANYTHING, even about a simple fact on the internet. All people care about is making themselves rich, and if you can help them(or make them THINK you can), you'll get popular quick.

I see many "gurus" on the net, and 99% of them are scam artists(you can argue that even Steward Swerdlow isn't worth talking about), either through their money-making schemes or through their lack of actual importance. The point is that they're making lots of money off you. Are you making even HALF of their income from them? Of course not. That'd mean they'd go out of business from lack of product. It's all about selling something to people.

Money is finite. So it would make sense to get as much out of your customers as possible, without spending a whole lot to do it. When you can do that, then you profit. Those who actually share their strategies know that the battle is already won.

[mikimike]

There are a lot of scammers. So before taking help from any SEO consultancy firm go for experienced and trusted ones. I am using claimbrand.com where you can pay after you rank

[Winston]

Check this out. A lot of Pat Flynn's followers found my blog article attacking him and have come to defend him in the comments section, while attacking me at the same time. lol

http://blog.happierabroad.com/2011/12/p ... ncome.html

"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches." - Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists" - George Bernard Shaw.

[Winston]

Check out this interesting letter I got about my Pat Flynn blog article, which has received a lot of flak from his fans.

"I was reading the blog and his connection to other blogs. It seems all too fishy. Most of it is just about making money out of thin air. Really, they make money by telling you how to make money. No different than stock traders -- making money off your trades vs. you making money off investing. They trade on fear, desperation, and hope; intellectual and psychological, scammers. That's all they are. Instead of pyramid schemes they prey on the desires of those have fallen by the economic crisis.

I need to stop being so desperate. My business for 10 years is falling apart -- the need for the technology is dying (will explain more if you are curious). I went from 600 customers and now I'm down to 100. =(

The problem is those kinds of sites are feeding on exactly what I want to read and believe. I wish Santa Claus was real as well. I am feeling extremely low in self worth -- worse than I can explain, but I need to chin up and still think skeptically. I'm so glad I googled and found your blog. Better to be poor, sad, and honest, than a rich con-artist without any sort of moral center.

I just need to figure out a way to tap into my current customer base and find something to offer -- substantial, useful, and something I can believe in *thinking out loud*

Thank you."

And a commenter in the blog pointed out these discrepancies about Pat Flynn:

DerekHillsOctober 17, 2013 at 9:53 AM
Two things have done it for me on why i think he is 'loose' with his income claims:

1: He got laid off in the architecture industry, because there wasn't much demand in a recession for new buildings. Yet, THOUSANDS of people apparently wanted to enter it as they purchased his guide.
2: He recently laid off two of his virtual assistants. This STINKS. Surely, he would be taking MORE on rather than laying them off.

I have no doubt flynn makes good money from his blog, I just think he cooks up the figures big time.

[xiongmao]

How does Flynn make money? His security guard site example site makes money because of his personality. Nothing more, nothing less.

My old business is also dead, simply because of a Google algorithm change.

I used to pay the UK government tax at 22%. Google pay effectively 0%. Yeah, there's been a conspiracy at work.

[Winston]

Wow that Pat Flynn page in my blog is one of the most active pages in my blog now, with tons of comments. If you Google "Pat Flynn" it comes up on the first page of results at the top now!

Here is a recent comment in it about how Pat Flynn probably "faked it til he made it" which makes sense and sounds probable.

http://blog.happierabroad.com/2011/12/p ... ncome.html

smarthelpingJanuary 3, 2014 at 10:25 PM

Yes, 100% Pat did the "fake it till you make it" sales pitch to a perfect T. I know this for a couple of reasons. First of all I tried to do it for the past 8 months in a different niche and every single response he has given to these questions you guys have for him are the same responses I thought of to say to skeptics. It's a house of cards that has now made him money because of the shock factor.

The truth is 99.99999999% of people that try to make money the way Pat is explaining it will probably fail. The only way you succeed with a website and passive income is if you build your own company with real products and services that people like.

Then, you hire executives to run it and you just do what ever the hell you want because you are the owner and truly make passive income, if your company becomes successful.

Every single thing that Pat is soft selling on his website is to make him money and that is it. Also, there are so many factors that a professional internet marketer sees about Pat's operation that scream "fake it till you make it".

He is using the law of attraction to get people to buy into the dream. I am telling you I wish he did a success rate of people who sign up to his web hosting. I am guaranteeing less than 1% of people are living a comfortable life or making anything at all from the website they tried to build after going through Pat's "smartpassiveincome" blog.

You have to be the first to do something. Pat was the first to do this web hosting sales pitch very well. All of his work goes into maintaining the image so people keep buying into it. I don't mean to be sooo negative, but I hate seeing people waste 5 to 10 years of their life trying to make the kind of money Pat claims he makes.

If he just had the content value on his blog and didn't say how much he was making, none of us would even be talking about this right now for a few reasons and Pat would not be making as much money.

I believe he is making money now, but it's only because of the big numbers that are very very unrealistic for almost everyone.

If only I were his accountant, there would be some fun things to share I bet.

[Devil Dog]

There are some spot-on posts on the xsplat blog discussing entrepreneurialism and these sites which supposedly sell the secrets of making big bucks online.

The gist of the discussion of the sites is this: Nobody is selling legitimate current info on how to realistically make money online. What they are selling is the methods which used to work.

Of course some people want to believe, so badly that they can convince themselves of lies. Years ago a real estate sales agent who worked for me was on a Carlton Sheets television infomercial. This guy was 100% full of shit about the cash flow and equity position which he had on his investment real estate properties. I know for a fact that he was lying about the numbers. Funny thing is I think he believed his own fabrications.

[Winston]

Yeah that makes sense Devil Dog. If there were a real secret, no one would be selling it. They'd be using it. If you found a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you wouldn't tell anyone about it or sell its location to others. lol. Get real.

Yeah if you lie often enough, you will probably begin to believe in your own lies. After all, your mind has to cope with being a liar and justify it somehow, so believing the lies yourself is one way of doing that I guess.

[xiongmao]

Pat Flynn used to use shady link building techniques, that's how his older sites got popular.

Now if he reveals his URLs then he gets 1000's of people linking to them or Googling them, which artificially boosts their popularity.

He does however have some good posts sometimes, like how to do a podcast etc. etc.

[Winston]

Check this out. Pat Flynn claims to have made $83,000 last month, and he's flaunting it at the top of his home page! lol

http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/

Also, look at his smile and photo below. Doesn't he look so authentic and down-to-earth, like a man whom you'd believe anything that came out of his mouth? lol (sarcastic)

[C.J.]

One of the first things you have to do become a great seller, is to BELIEVE that your product works, to the point where it hurts.

But making craploads of money isn't hard to do. You simply abuse the markets until they explode, or you're the only brand anyone even knows. That's what ALL real money-makers do, those who actually know how money and quantum physics really works.

[WorldTraveler]

One thing I'm sure is that this guy is not making $83,000 in a month. That is about ONE MILLION DOLLARS in a year. Impossible. You can estimate how much he makes. How much does one of his products he sell costs. Then multiply it by any number of people he could have sold it to. He's not going to come near that much money. I'm sorry to inform you there is no 4 Hour Work week to big money either!

[C.J.]

One thing I'm sure is that this guy is not making $83,000 in a month. That is about ONE MILLION DOLLARS in a year. Impossible. You can estimate how much he makes. How much does one of his products he sell costs. Then multiply it by any number of people he could have sold it to. He's not going to come near that much money. I'm sorry to inform you there is no 4 Hour Work week to big money either!

I do know that after a couple years worth of products lined up, you can make as much as $4,000 a month from independent game development. If you live on the minimal, that's a nice paycheck.

But that's also a lot of hard and thankless work.

[WorldTraveler]

No way! He's selling a dream to naive dreamers!!!

[Winston]

Any of you ever hear the term "fake it til you make it"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_it_till_you_make_it