Scam or Not a Scam?
Two ways to use this. Point it at the pitch that landed in your inbox, or point it at the one you're about to send. Same test. An honest pitch welcomes it; a scam can't survive it.
The one law
Real value can afford to be found slowly, because it survives you checking it — so it waits. A scam can't, so it rushes. That's the whole tell in one line: the early pitch is a confession. Speed isn't enthusiasm; it's the countdown before the mark gets smart. So you don't actually have to know if it's a scam. You just have to slow it down — the one thing every scam is built to prevent, and the one thing an honest offer never fears.
A pitch that can't survive being checked was never for you. If it's yours, it was never honest.
The seven tells — ask each one both ways
1Did it pitch before it earned anything?
Theirs Leading with the ask, before any trust or value, is the confession — nothing to find if you peel it, so they never let you peel.
Yours Are you asking before you've handed over the gold? Bones before money. Lead with the thing that's real; let the ask come last, or not at all.
2Is there a countdown?
Theirs "Act now," "24 hours only," "spots filling." Manufactured urgency is the con's timer — it exists to stop you from checking.
Yours Are you inventing scarcity you don't actually have? A real deadline is fine; a fake one is the first lie.
3Who gets paid, and for what?
Theirs Affiliates get paid on the click, not on whether it helped you. When the incentive is your conversion and not your good, the relationship is a cost to them, not the product.
Yours Is your payout aligned with the reader actually being better off? If you only win when they click, you've built their inbox's enemy.
4Does it peel — or get vaguer the harder you look?
Theirs A scam hides in the vague, because nothing specific enough to pin is specific enough to lose. Specifics that dissolve under a question are the tell.
Yours Does your claim get more solid when checked, or do you retreat into fog? Write the version that survives the follow-up question.
5Is the authority doing work the fact doesn't need?
Theirs "According to X" wrapped around a claim that wouldn't need an authority if it were true — the citation propping up the sentence is the Tell.
Yours Are you borrowing a logo or a name to carry a claim your own record should carry? If the fact is real, let it stand on its own.
6Is it too good to check?
Theirs The reward is sized precisely to stop you from checking — the free thing, the guaranteed return, the too-clean number. Awe is the anesthetic.
Yours Are you over-promising past what's actually close? Promise nothing that isn't near; aspirational marked aspirational.
7Does it take before it gives?
Theirs Card, credential, or payment up front, before any value has changed hands — the whole model inverted, take-then-(maybe)-give.
Yours Have you given the gold away free before you ask for anything? The most trustworthy pitch is the one you could ignore and still keep what it gave you.
Scoring it
No math, no threshold to memorize. Any single one of these earns a slow-down, and the slow-down is the whole test — because it's the one move a scam can't survive and an honest offer never minds. Two or more, pointed at something asking for your money or your data, and the answer is not yet, and not without checking.
Turned on your own pitch, the tells aren't a scold — they're a self-audit. If yours trips a few, that's not a marketing problem to bury; it's a signal to fix the pitch, or fix the offer under it. The honest fix is never a slicker line; it's a realer thing to point at.
The turn
This isn't paranoia, and most pitches aren't scams. The same seven questions that catch the con also tell you which honest offers deserve your minute — and make your own outreach the kind that survives being checked. That's the whole house in one tool: the honest pitch is the one that says "check me" and means it. It doesn't chase; it gets findable, and lets the checking survive contact.
Heuristics, not proof — and not legal or financial advice. A pitch can trip a tell and still be honest, or pass all seven and still be junk; the test buys you the pause to look, nothing more. Report anything that looks like fraud to the real authorities (in the US, reportfraud.ftc.gov). The one rule the whole house runs on: no lying.