Currently, there is a wave of platforms that claim to offer earning opportunities through tasks, and it has captured the attention of Nigerian youths. These platforms keep appearing and disappearing quickly. Recognizing the malicious nature of these platforms, especially in their exploitation of the economically vulnerable, we have undertaken an investigation. Below, we present three such platforms and our analysis of their connections.
Before we delve into the details, let’s briefly define what an “earn through tasks” platform entails. These platforms are websites or apps that enable users to make money by completing various small tasks. While the nature of these tasks can differ, in our clime, they often involve activities like sharing ads on social media, transcribing audio, tagging images, or rating products.
L-EARNIFY (learnify.ng)
A visit to the about page of L-earnify didn’t inspire much confidence as we found dummy text still on the page
To discover how the platform worked, we navigated to their “How it works” page which is riddled with spelling errors. There we saw the following:
“LEARNIFY is an innovation created to equip its members with essential digital skills and endless opportunities to make money. When a user signs up on learnify, he/she enjoys all L-earn benefits which is accesible with a one time registration fee of N4,500.”
EARN WITH AFFILIATES
“You get paid a whopping N3500 per friend you inivite to learnify with your refferal link after a succesful registration, when your dowline refers you earn N300 per person and also when your downlines downline refer, you earn N100 per person.”
Note the “EARN WITH AFFILIATES” feature. For the fact that you earn when someone you invite joins the scheme, and you earn again when your invitee gets another person to join, shows that this is a pyramid scheme. The earning thorough daily tasks feature is a smokescreen to hind that this platform is a Pyramid scheme.
Also, in a post on the 19th of June, they make the outlandish claim that within three weeks of launching the platform, they had made twenty millionaires.
N THREE WEEKS OF LAUNCH, LEARNIFY HAS MADE 20 PEOPLE MILLIONAIRES AND COUNTING 💜💜HERE ON LEARNIFY WE SET RECORDS FOR OTHERS TO FOLLOW💫 WE HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED ANYTHING YET, MORE GOODNEWS AND FEATURES TO EARN MORE COMING UP VERY SOON 💜💜💜WITH JUST N4500 REG FEE YOU CAN BECOME A MILLIONAIRE HERE 💌🤑
Obviously, this is an outlandish claim geared towards appealing to the credulous and unsuspecting. Think about it, how can a company just three weeks old make twenty millionaires from an initial deposit of 4,500 naira? Learnify has no address stated on its website nor the founders or operators of the platform. But there is a page that lists WhatsApp contacts where you can purchase “activation codes.”
So, we did a background check on all the vendors listed, and it turned up interesting results. We found a post by the “vendor” PinkSnow on another platform called SmartNetwork.
Why is this significant? It is once you consider that SmartNetwork is remarkably similar to Learnify.
Table of Comparison
| Similarities | Learnify | SmartNetwork |
| Cashbacks | Immediately after registration, each user get N2500 welcome bonus cashback on his/her dashboard instantly | You get a whooping sum of ₦2,000.00 for Smart Network Diamond Package users or ₦4,000.00 for Smart Network Super Package users, back to your dashboard immediately after registration. |
| Earnings from Direct referrals | You get paid a whopping N3500 per friend you inivite to learnify with your refferal link after a successful registration | By telling your friends and family about Smartnetwork and getting a whooping Commission of ₦3,000.00 for Smart Network Diamond Package users or ₦6,000.00 for Smart Network Super Package users, as a bonus per person. |
| Earnings from Downlines | when your dowline refers you earn N300 per person and also when your downlines downline refer, you earn N100 per person. | You get another Whooping sum of ₦300.00 for Smart Network Diamond Package users and You also get another ₦100.00 for Smart Network Diamond Package users |
| Lucky wheel | You can spin and win amazing prices with learnify lucky wheel daily. | Our spin and Win features contains a lots of cash prizes which can be converted to affiliate earnings and can be withdrawn to your bank account. |
| Marketplace | Users can upload thier products or courses on Learnify and get buyers easily | This e-commerce feature enable our smart users to directly post their Products/Goods on our website in exchange with little of their activities earnings earned from the site. |
| Use of WhatsApp Vendors | Yes | Yes |
Due to the similarities between the two platforms, we suspect that it is the same group of people running both. The extra features unique to each platform would be to help differentiate them so that similarities would not be so easily discerned, but underneath both are using products and other features to try and masquerade the fact that they are pyramid schemes.
A further probe of the social media handles of PinkSnow, led to another Pyramid scheme called “MegaWave.” Below is a screenshot from the Twitter Handle of Pinksnow promoting the platform
Again, the platform bears striking similarities to the two above
From all the above, we can conclude that all three platforms are the products of a particular syndicate. The lessons here are not to be taken in by stories of people making money. The next thing would be to do your due diligence, do a lot of research. Part of the research is reading reviews and asking questions. Beware of platforms that ask for a sign-up fee, a legitimate affiliate program will not ask you for a sign-up fee. Most importantly, be on the lookout for a pyramid component, if you are getting paid for bringing other people into the platform instead of being paid commission for product sold, know that you have been suckered into a Pyramid scheme.
Our advice is to avoid Learnify, SmartNetwork MegaWave and all other earn through tasks platforms with similar features.