In the first part of this article, I wrote about a program that turned out to be a dud. In the advertising materials, they said that every person you sign up can make you thousands. Indeed. If I hadn't wised up, that's exactly what I would have made for the person who signed me up.

In this part of the article, there will be some strategies to help you figure out quickly if a program is worth the investment before you pour too much money into it. After all, it might be for real. But then again, maybe not.

So here's the third rule: Check on their promises.

The program I fell for had promised two major things: One of them they delivered: my very own fabulous website, complete with my name on it. But they also promised a pre-programmed auto-responder series that would follow up with anyone who signed up for information. I should have checked into that a lot more quickly than I did.

After a couple of months of paying for all sorts of upgrades and getting zero results (hence the embarrassment). I finally went to "my" website and signed up for info with one of my assorted "other" email addresses, just to see what would happen. And eagerly awaited "my" pitches. None came. Absolutely none. Zero. Zilch. Instead, I got spam from several other, similar programs. So I wrote to the place where I had originally signed up to find out how come I didn't get the expected emails and got no response. None.

I should have done that sooner. At least it's better late than never. The next task was to get everything to stop billing me. Interestingly enough, some of the sub-affiliates were very helpful. Two of them even volunteered a refund for the last month's fee. Clearly, I wasn't the first person with a problem. One thing I'm glad about: I didn't actually sucker any of my friends (and hardly anyone else) into that program. I suppose that might have helped my profits, but maybe not, considering the non-existent auto-responder.

And why didn't I? There was that icky gut-feeling I had whenever I tried to post some fliers. I just couldn't make myself do it. I kept thinking, what if it's a scam and someone finds out I sent them to it? That should have told me something.

So here's the ultimate rule: if you have a bad feeling about something, at least check it out more carefully before you tell others about it, and preferably before you sign up for it yourself. Not only may you save money, but you might also save yourself a heap of embarrassment.

Oh, and if you do sign up for it, at least check right away if your auto-responder actually delivers the goods.