Have you ever seen an advertisement claiming you can make huge sums of money online by ‘processing emails’? These adverts have been circulating for years, the companies seem to change name, but the general offer is still the same. We decided it was time to write a streetonomic review of email processing. We want to know how it works, and if it is a legitimate money making opportunity.

The most prominent of these systems at the moment is called ‘Email Processing 4 Cash’, this is who our review is focused upon. We did find references to other companies such as. ‘Email Processing Jobs’, Email Processing System, who seem to offer a nearly identical system, so we hope this information will be applicable to all email processing systems.

Email Processing 4 Cash has been around since 2010. It is being promoted as an online work from home opportunity. We found it on an Australian job search website under the title ‘work from home data entry staff needed’. It went on to claim that average reps were earning from $500 to $2,500 per month, working from home in their spare time. All you had to do was go to a website and register… It all sounded a little too easy!

We followed the link from the employment advert, and found the online version of the hard sell. It was a website full of videos and graphics showing us how much money we can make with Email Processing 4 Cash. The website purported that we could earn $25 per email, and inferred that it was a guaranteed income. The image below is an example of the type of claim you'd find on their website:

Image created by The Finance Guy for hypothetical use, not a legitimate offer

How Does Email Processing 4 Cash Work?

The website we visited had very little information about how the system actually works. It claimed we could earn $25 per email, but did not explain what we needed to do in order to earn the $25. It said we’d get all the information we needed from the members area, after we signed up.

To become a member, there was a once off joining fee, which was $25. At this point it became apparent, that Email Processing 4 Cash, does not involve the processing of emails, and it is not a data entry opportunity. It involves selling memberships in a structure similar to Multi – Level Marketing. It’s no secret that our opinion is that you can’t make money with MLM.

The website we visited, belonged to someone who had joined the system, and the $25 membership fee would have been their commission. The members area would have given us the tools to build an identical website for ourselves, and place identical advertisements to attract ‘data entry’ jobseekers.

Is Email Processing 4 Cash an Illegal Pyramid Scheme?

To the best of our understanding, this is not an illegal pyramid scheme because the service being sold through membership it the right to use the Email Processing 4 Cash templates. When you join, you are buying the rights to use their content which is under copyright. Members make their commission from selling the same rights to new members.

Email Processing 4 Cash might not be illegal, but that does not make it ethical. It is promoted in an extremely vague and misleading way. First is the name, it hides the fact that this is a commission based sales deal. We believe that promoting this system to jobseekers, looking for an hourly rate, is irresponsible

If you were offered a job as a typist, would you be happy if your boss told you that your role involved sales not typing and your pay was completely commission based? Promoting Email Processing 4 Cash in this way, may not be illegal, but we definitely feel it is immoral.

When someone pays their $25 through your link, you will get the $25, and an email with their details. You are then supposed to email them back a cut ‘n’ paste welcome email, which gives them access to the members area. This may seem like a strange and unusual step. Why not just have the system generate an auto-response once they’ve paid? We suspect there is a strategic reason for this seemingly archaic step.

By delegating this manual step to you, Email Processing 4 Cash, can claim that ‘you are getting paid $25 for every email you process’. This technically means that the claims made in their promotional materials are true. You can make $1,250 in a day if you process 50 emails. The only problem is that you'll need to make 50 sales in a day before you have any emails to process. The promotional material is misleading, even if it isn't completely untrue.

Can You Make Money with Email Processing 4 Cash?

Email Processing 4 Cash only asks for $25, and if you avoid the upsells, then you won’t have to part with any more of your own funds. This does not mean that the system does have financial risks. You might not make any sales, which means that the hours, and any additional dollars, you spend promoting your site will be for little or no reward.

We believe that making money in this system would be extremely difficult. It is unlikely that new members would be able to generate significant income simply by using templates and following the cut ‘n’ paste system. The problem with using templates, is that there is too much competition.

If you follow the templates then you will make just another carbon copy of the Email Processing 4 Cash website. This is something search engines do not like. If you are not creating original content, then you will not rank well in searches, and will not get organic traffic. The algorithm recognizes duplicate or ‘spun’ content, and pushes these pages down in the search results.

Most of the pages that come up in a Google search for Email Processing 4 Cash, are more than 2 years old. The sites being built by new or even recent members, are not showing up. This emphasises our point that generating traffic to your new link will definitely not be a passive process. You will have to work for every click.

When it’s time to promote your site, you’ll be competing for new customers with the person who signed you up, as well as all the other existing members. To make things worse, every time you sign up a new member, they too will be competing with you for future customers. The continual expansion of the sales force makes it increasingly less likely that new members will find their way to your link. You will only make sales, if you put in several hours of promotional activity.

We all know that obtaining new customers is the hardest part of sales. Once you have a good customer base, generating regular income from repeat customers becomes a little easier. This system does not facilitate this type of customer growth. There will not be any repeat business or ‘residual sales’, because there are no additional sales to be made.

What if You Create Your Own Promotions?

If following the templates gets you buried in competition, then why not get creative and develop your own ways to promote Email Processing 4 Cash? This is certainly an option. Once you have your link, you can use your own strategies to promote it. The real question is why would you want to? Surely you could find a more profitable and more honest way to use these skills.

Even if you wanted to be part of something like this, then there is no point joining Email Processing 4 Cash. You could save yourself $25, create your very own system, and sell people the right to use it. Let’s face it, the content isn’t exactly difficult to create. We created all the images in this post with only a simple knowledge of how to use Gimp and Paint.

You could even make some tweaks and improvements. Think about the $25 sign up fee, (and commission per sale). If you were setting up your own competing system, then consider increasing the price to $30. Most people willing to risk $25 on something like this, would also be willing to risk $30. It’s only an extra $5!

Increasing the price would also increase the potential income by 20%, so your adverts could offer potential fortune seekers even greater returns. This could make the more expensive version more attractive to new members. We knocked up the table below in around 4 minutes on excel, so creating the adverts shouldn’t take too long.

Image created by The Finance Guy for hypothetical example, not a legitimate offer

Should I Join Email Processing 4 Cash?

If you are looking for a legitimate way to earn honest money for honest work, then this probably isn’t the best system for you. If you don’t mind skirting the edges of legality and using misleading tactics to get people to part with a few dollars, then maybe it’s worth considering.

If you do decide to join Email Processing 4 Cash, then don’t expect to make significant income. We do not believe this system can be used in place of a real job. If you are in need of extra money to pay bills, then don’t bother with this system. You are more likely than not to lose your $25 and get nothing in return.

Email Processing 4 Cash promotes their system in a way which leads new members to believe that all they need to do to make money is process emails. In reality, this is only a small step at the end of a sales process. The number of emails you can process in a day depends on how many sales you can make per day. Does this sound like something you'd like to be a part of?

What do you think? We’d love to hear from you in the comment section below. Have you joined this or a similar system? If so did you generate any income from it?