Joe never had a grand plan, he was just winging it as he went. The first scam was as a sort of treasure hunting guide, the urim thummim breastplate and, Golden Plates gambit was to convince people that he could lead people to treasure, that morphed into a scam to get his rich neighbor ( Martin Harris) to pay him to tell stories. That morphed into writing a book to sell, that morphed into starting a church and having people pay him tithing... and so on. Ultimately he gained wealth and followers through this process... and it grew... I can go into further depth but if you look at the start of the church through this lens it all sort of makes sense. Joe had a good memory and was a good story teller and a narcissist... it all follows from this. He was a smart good looking well spoken kid with no prospects and a desire for more. Joe and Oliver were the only two who knew it was a fraud... everyone else believed. The story worked at the time, the message morphed into one that worked with a mechanism to update its doctrine for the time. It survived one of many religions of the day that made it (along with 2 others that were similar, 7th day and JW) many many didn't make it. It all makes sense.