Although John Chow dot Com is mostly about making money online, the root of all evil is also interested in other ways that you can rake in the cash. He’s talked about trading money online through Forex, for example, but what about a completely different way to invest your money? Vu Le of TripleCD Investments ordered this ReviewMe request so that he could tell you about their unique way to GUARANTEE a 15.5% annual return. What’s more, you get some link love out of the deal too.
How Does It Work?
TripleCD Investments isn’t going to teach you their methods. They’re not going to set you loose into the world to use their strategies so that you can make some crazy money on your own. Instead, you’ve got to go through them. Sounds almost like the secret Adsense algorithm, doesn’t it?
When you look at the How It Works page, not much is told except that you will “earn a guaranteed 15.5% annual return on your investment while driving traffic to your website.” I’ll get to the second part of that in a second, but I think most of you are more interested in the first part, right? Well, you’ve got to go to the About Us page for that information.
In a nutshell, you hand over cash (via Paypal) and get TripleCD to “invest” it on your behalf. I use the word “invest” loosely, because what they’re really doing is sports betting.
We apply stock market principles to professional sports betting and are backed by over 10 years of experience. Our approach is best described as moderately conservative. We invest in major professional and college sports, and constantly perform due diligence to capitalize on emerging opportunities.
That’s right. You’re the seed money for their gambling habit. That said, they guarantee a 15.5% annual return. This is paid after the 365 day term expires, again via Paypal.
Why is It Called TripleCD?
The reason why they decided to call their company TripleCD Investments is because the 15.5% APY is “approximately triple (3x) the highest yields offered by institutional banks for one (1) year term CD’s.” In case you’re not familiar, a CD (not compact disc) is a certificate of deposit. It works much like a savings account except there is a fixed term and a fixed interest rate.
To prove to you that 15.5% truly is triple the average one year CD, the website provides a link to Bankrate.com, showing the going rate. Looking at this page, the typical APY is anywhere from 4.50% to 5.65%.
What’s This About Website Traffic?
When you “invest” your money with TripleCD, you get the fringe benefit of owning a certain number of pixels on their homepage, much like the Million Dollar Homepage. For every $100 (US) that you invest, you get a single gray block and you must reserve a minimum of 2 blocks. You can use these blocks to link to whatever website you’d like, so if you want to link back to your blog, that’s fine. Want to link to a particular affiliate deal? That’s OK too.
As you can see from the screen capture above, it seems like TripleCD has only elicited two investors thus far. One links to Lunarpages Web Hosting and the other links to The Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation. But wait, what’s this link I find in the footer?
There’s some linked text reading “Where should I host my website?” Guess where that leads? Yup, Lunarpages. I suspected that both links are affiliate links and a click-through confirmed my suspicions, though the affiliate part of the link disappears pretty quickly. I did manage to do a screen cap though.
Financial Tips and Google Adsense
The other main page on TripleCD Investments is a list of Financial Tips. These aren’t original articles. Instead, they link to external articles on Investopedia, Yahoo! Finance, and BusinessWeek, for example.
Interestingly, TripleCD does feature several Google Adsense blocks: a skyscraper on most pages and a leaderboard banner in the footer. Couple this with the financial tips mentioned above and you’ve got to wonder why TripleCD would want to drive traffic away from their site.
Will It Work? Can I Trust TripleCD?
It’s hard to say. There appear to be zero legitimate sales thus far and even if you do invest, it is being “invested” in sports gambling. Until someone tries these guys out and actually realizes the 15.5% annual yield, I can’t say for sure how trustworthy TripleCD Investments really is.
They say that you’re covered under Paypal’s merchant agreement, but I thought Buyer Protection doesn’t extend for a full year. Does it?
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