See original post here: Internet Money III – Paid Surveys by Scam Free Internet

Internet Money Part I: MLM
Internet Money Part II: Clickbank – Scammers’ Haven. What’s Wrong with Online Affiliate Marketing
Internet Money Part III: Paid Surveys

What are Paid Surveys?

In order for companies to increase response rates of surveys for their market research, they pay participants for their opinions. You will find simple online surveys, focus groups, or phone surveys.

Paid surveys are one of the first money making opportunities you will come across on the net as you look for some internet money.

Although it should be quite obvious to most people that one can’t make a full time salary doing online surveys, people are still intrigued because it looks like an easy dollar or two.

Argh~ So Many Paid Surveys to Sign up For

You will, early on, realize that you can’t rely on one or two survey providers. What you end up doing is sign up to all the survey sites you can find. You will spend a lot of time signing up, and then clicking on another offer. Sign up to that one, and then click on yet another survey offer, and so on. You may have even signed up to one of those PTC programs.

There are things you need to watch out for. Most importantly, don’t pay for surveys.

Also, you are likely to stumble upon a few “get paid to try an offer” type of programs where they promise to pay you a couple of dollars – sometimes $10+ — to try out a third party product or service. Don’t bother with these.

What ends up happening is this.

1. You sign up for the offer.
2. Give them your personal information including credit card numbers in many cases.
3. You will lose track of which ones you signed up for; thus, failing to cancel the trials before you start getting charged.
4. Receive lots of DVDs you don’t want.
5. You get spammed from places you didn’t know you signed up to. But you probably used a spam email account. So, this wouldn’t matter much, right?
6. Ends up costing you way more than the $2 you made trying out the offer. And, this doesn’t include all the time you spent.

Problems with Surveys

Well, the above problems will arise if you don’t stay focused on surveys. Let’s say you signed up to only the good ones. Still, it’s not going to be what you expected.

1. Your profile will not qualify for many surveys, and you won’t receive all that many. I can imagine that mid/upper-income class housewives with children will likely qualify for the most amounts of surveys. If you’re not in the US, forget about it.
2. With number one being true, if you are someone who is looking for an online opportunity as your main source of income, you are likely out of luck.
3. It will be the worst hourly wage you will earn. These surveys are long and tedious. A 30 minute survey that pays $1? No thank you. Moreover, it’s not like you get a constant supply of surveys.
4. You can spend your time more productively. If you are jobless like so many people right now, you are better off spending your time searching for other opportunities. Like I mentioned, you are not going to qualify for many surveys (well, unless you make up a phony profile).

If You Still Want to Do Surveys

I’ve given you many reasons not to bother with surveys. But some people say that surveys are a hobby and a small side income. I don’t know how you can enjoy such a thing, but whatever makes you happy. Maybe, you are a mid/upper-income class housewife with children and a baby.

If you want to try it out, I might as well help you to stay on the best path possible.

I found the two links below. You’ll find helpful information and good sources of surveys. Good luck to you.

• http://www.freesurveyplace.com/
• http://itsfree.proboards.com/

See original post here: SEOGalaxay.net Employment Scam by Scam Free Internet

There is a yet another scam website in town. The website is seogalaxy.net – not to be confused with seogalaxy.com. This isn’t just another make-money scam. It uses false employments to carry out their criminal activities.

CTV Calgary ran a story on one of the victims a couple of days ago.

A Calgary woman, Peggy Weidinger, was looking for a job online and came across seogalaxy.net. She did her research on the company before going ahead, but it turned up no red flags. She took the job.

The job involved helping small international companies advertise on North American search engines like Google.

SeoGalaxy told Weidinger to open a bank account so it could deposit funds to buy ad space and $4500 was electronically deposited into her account.

After calling the bank to make sure the funds were there, Weidinger wired $4200 supposedly to a Russian advertising firm to purchase “Google ad vouchers” which she would use to buy advertising space on Google.

Several days later her bank called and said the $4500 had actually come from an innocent person’s bank account that the scammers had somehow gained access to.

The bank said that they expected Weidinger to repay the $4200 that she’d wired out.

…

Fortunately, the bank changed its mind and told Weidinger that in light of the facts, she would not have to repay the money.

This home work scam was well conceived and the website, employment documents and even the job itself all appeared to be legitimate.

A spokesperson for Google said that they didn’t have details about this particular scam but that the company does not provide or endorse anything called “Google ad vouchers.”

CTV Calgary

The funny thing is this criminal company advertises itself as “SeoGalaxy.com” a completely unrelated company. Their site title is, “SeoGalaxy.Com – Website Optimization, Google Site Promotion, Advertising Campaign Optimization, Banner Advertising, White SEO”. If you visit seogalaxy.com, this is what you see on the front page.

If this fraud is causing a significant headache for SeoGalaxy.com, you can imagine how many poor job seekers were taken advantage of by SeoGalaxy.net.

I don’t expect this website to last long. Once they’ve milked the business for a while, they’ll get shut down or the operators will, themselves, move on to another domain.

I have to say, though, it is impressive how fast these criminals get visitors to their websites and have a high conversion ratio within such a short period of time. The domain was only created on September 3, 2009.

With all the new, never-seen-before, scams popping up, you can’t simply rely on a Google search. You have to be able to analyze the business for yourself. In this case, they wanted Weidinger to open a bank account for transfer purposes; this is always a red flag. Criminals securely move their funds this way.

Also, research not only the company but the job itself. If she had searched for “Google ad vouchers,” she would have realized something was up.

It seems scammers are putting more time and effort into designing their websites. Take a look at the screenshot. It’s very professional looking.

Job searching is stressful as it is. Now, these ass-holes are adding to the stress. I have more sympathy for people who fall for these scams because they are looking for legitimate jobs unlike others who are looking for that “no experience needed, work 3 hours a week, make thousands a day” opportunities.

UPDATE (Oct. 30, 2009): It seems seogalaxy.net is no more. However, a new one has popped up. “SEOMOSAIC.COM” –> This one is likely run by the same criminal group. Identical scheme… avoid.

See original post here: Internet Money Part II – Clickbank: Scammers’ Haven by Scam Free Internet

Internet Money Part I: MLM
Internet Money Part II: Clickbank – Scammers’ Haven. What’s Wrong with Online Affiliate Marketing
Internet Money Part III:  Paid Surveys

Hello there.

This is the second article of the make-money-online scam series focused on guiding online entrepreneurs to choose the right paths and also to help consumers to be on the lookout. MLM was the first article if you missed it.

This article will cover affiliate marketing and focus on Clickbank. So, what’s wrong with Clickbank and online affiliate marketing?

Have you seen one of these screenshots before?

If you are interested in internet affiliate marketing and have been searching online for various opportunities, you should recognize that screenshot. You are bound to have clicked on one of the ads that promise hundreds or thousands of dollars a day.

It’s the earnings report of someone’s Clickbank account (likely Photoshopped). As you will see time and time again, when someone promises to make you a rich affiliate marketer, they are all talking about Clickbank.

What is Clickbank?

So what is Clickbank? It is an affiliate network – or you can say it’s a marketplace – where vendors and affiliates meet. Vendors put out their products for sale and affiliates choose which products they want to promote. After that, affiliates can promote their chosen products via affiliate links in this form: http://xxxxxxxxxxx.hop.clickbank.net/, where xxxxxxxxxxx incorporates the affiliate’s ID as well as the vendor and product information. It is a tracking code.

What’s Wrong with Clickbank?

Products

Most products you see on Clickbank are scams and rip-offs. Let me show you. I’ll click on a random category in Clickbank marketplace. I clicked on the ‘Fun & Entertainment’ category. Honestly, it really was random. Below is the screenshot of the first page with default sorting (by popularity).

See those three satellite / internet TV products? I wrote an article on satellite tv for pc scams, and I can say for certain that every TV on PC product you see on Clickbank is a scam. Read the satellite tv on pc article for more information.

And those DIY solar and wind generators? I did a quick research on this, and it seems like nothing you can’t learn for free. Head over to Youtube and search for “DIY solar panel”; it’s all there. Some of Youtube videos are from the same sellers so don’t believe everything you see.

They emphasize how much money you can save by following the $50 guide. Of course, you will save money by doing it yourself, but building a wind generator is not as easy as putting together an IKEA furniture. The solar panel, though, looks like a neat little project if you want to do it on a small scale. Anyhow, DIY guides listed on Clickbank all look like rip-offs to me.

Tattoo Me Now seems to be the most legitimate product there. ^^

As you can see, Clickbank is littered with worthless crap.

Clickbank specializes in downloadable digital products, and top products are satellite TV software, registry cleaners, and of course ebooks – especially on how to make money.

I am sure there are good products on Clickbank, though I haven’t seen any. The legitimate ones are probably buried below all the scams that actually have better sale conversion rates.

Types of Marketing Used

So, why are all the scam eBooks and software taking top spots on Clickbank? It’s simple. Vendors and affiliates lie and trick customers. No legitimate, image-conscious business is going to use false advertising to the extent you see with scammers.

Three examples:

1. Registry cleaners – The very first article on this blog was about registry cleaner scams. Affiliates and vendors use fake review pages and fake endorsements (i.e. 5 star Tucows rating) and scare tactics to make people buy their utilities.
2. Satellite TV for PC – As described in the aforementioned article, channels aren’t satellite and you are not going to get HD movies and sports for a onetime fee. What they sell is free anyways. Huge exaggerations and lies in their ad pages lure people in.
3. How to make money eBooks – We’ve all seen the false testimonials and fake cheques and earning reports.

First time newbies will easily get swindled. Customers need to educate themselves on all the lies internet marketers use.

Ignorant Affiliates and Marketing Tactics

Most affiliates will sell anything as long as there’s money to be made. They don’t care what they are promoting. Only thing they pay attention to is, “what’s selling right now?”

If you take a look at the Clickbank’s own recommendation, article marketing, niche sites and blogs, social media marketing, and search engine marketing are recommended as common ways to promote products.

Article Marketing

You definitely see a lot of article marketing. Places like Ezine Articles and ArticleBase are full of promotional articles advertising their websites which advertise their affiliate links or websites that advertise another website that advertises the Clickbank link.

This kind of article spamming not only lowers the level of quality of “internet information,” it confuses and manipulates information-seekers using search engines.

Niche Sites and Blogs

All the marketing tactics are often combined. Because places like Ezine Articles and Article Base forbid the use of affiliate links, affiliates usually have their own domains. The majority of affiliate marketing focused blogs don’t have any valuable content. It just clutters the web space with more junk.

Social Media Marketing

Social media spamming is constantly reaching its new peak. It’s very annoying to see affiliate link spamming in Facebook, Twitter, message boards and forums.

Search Engine Marketing

This includes search engine advertising. There are so many affiliates advertising same things, often you click on two different addresses and you’ll end up at two identical looking pages.

You combine all the garbage created by the above marketing methods, and you have an epidemic of internet garbage. It’s hard to search for genuine information to find out whether something is a scam or not because when you search, “Is X a scam?” you end up with Ezine articles asking that question in the title and then endorsing it.

Netizens try to investigate the validity of a product or service by searching the product / company name + “scam”, and this trend is being exploited by affiliate marketers. Even though Clickbank recommends against such a tactic, affiliates still use it due to its high success in getting visitors.

Quote from Clickbank’s Dos and Don’ts page:

Don’t use “negative” advertising campaigns. While some affiliates think it’s a good idea to create ads like “Is Product X a scam?” and then link to the product, we strongly recommend that you not use this method of advertising. Many vendors are opposed to people associating their product with being a scam, and can request that ClickBank ban particular affiliates from promoting their product if they catch them doing this. This means that your advertising efforts go to waste and you won’t be able to promote that vendor’s product in the future. In addition, it makes ClickBank products in general look bad, and can make customers hesitant to buy the product since you’ve introduced doubt in their mind. It’s better to highlight the benefits of a product right off the bat, instead of introducing fear about a product and then trying to sell a customer on the product anyway.

Then, What Am I to Do? I Still Want to be an Affiliate Marketer

Clickbank is probably the easiest to join and get started as an affiliate. I don’t blame people for starting out with Clickbank. I did, too. But once you realize the nature of businesses that dominate Clickbank’s marketplace, you should not want to limit your business to Clickbank.

Yes, Clickbank does offer some of the highest commissions among affiliate networks, but it’s meaningless as most stuff you see is overpriced worthless crap anyways.

There are better affiliate networks out there. Affiliate networks that don’t focus on downloadable goods tend to attract more legitimate businesses.

To list some, there’s Commission Junction, Amazon, Digital River OneNetworkDirect, LinkSare, and Google Affiliate Network to name a few.

If you want to promote downloadable software, OneNetworkDirect is one affiliate network where many big name software companies like Symantec list their products.

Final Word

What I hope that people would do is not to focus on which affiliate network to join, but rather which products to promote. Once you find a product you really like and want to promote, go to their website and look for affiliate information. Most companies do use affiliate marketing.

You will find that many companies use multiple networks. I personally have affiliate connections with many companies via Commission Junction.

What I think is important is that affiliates research, trust and believe in products they are promoting, and consult your conscience before promoting that best seller on Clickbank.

Let’s help create a cleaner internet filled with genuine and valuable content.

See original post here: Internet Money Part 1 – MLM by Scam Free Internet

Internet Money Part I: MLM
Internet Money Part II: Clickbank – Scammers’ Haven. What’s Wrong with Online Affiliate Marketing
Internet Money Part III:  Paid Surveys

Welcome,

This article is your first step in making thousands of dollars a day with the power of the internet. Sound familiar? I am sorry to disappoint you, but this article doesn’t have any secrets to an online wealth. It’s not a lie though. This is indeed the first step in your possible online career. You need to know what roads to avoid in order to find the right path.

This article is the first part in the make-money-online scam series. First topic I will cover is the multi-level marketing or MLM. If you’ve arrived here via a search engine seeking an opportunity in MLM, you really need to pay attention to this article and the future ones to follow.

I personally got into MLM as a high school student looking to make some cash. I got a few people to sign up below me, but ended up losing close to a $1000 and lots of my time. I don’t regret it though. I used a portion of savings I had, and I learned a lot as a teenager about money and no harm was done. This was a while ago, and many have evolved with more professional looking websites and better disguises. The term MLM is not used as much. “Affiliate marketing” is the new popular term. Any affiliate program with multiple levels is an MLM.

What is MLM?

MLM, abbreviation for multi-level marketing, is a marketing structure where you make commissions not only on your own sales but on sales of other promoters you introduce to the company (or downline members). This level of downline depends on the preset structure.

There is nothing inherently wrong with MLM. It can be an effective marketing strategy for the company. The company doesn’t have to spend as much resources on advertising to the customers as the promoters will do most of the work.

There are various types of compensation plans.

• Unilevel plan – This is the simplest plan. There is no limit to how many frontline members (your direct referrals) you can have. You encourage your frontline to do the same. The depth of your line is usually limited to up to ~7 levels deep.
• Stairstep breakaway plan – You can think of this structure as having a leader for each group. Once a group reaches a predefined volume of sales (or simply the number of members in pyramid schemes), the leader of the group breaks away from the line and is no longer compensated for his downline. However, there are usually other forms of compensation for the original upline. Each member in the downline moves up a compensation level, and so on.
• Matrix plan – Under this plan, there is a limited number of frontline members you can have. Once you go over that level, the new recruit will be placed under one of your frontline members. It can also have a depth limitation. Once reached, a new matrix will start.
• Binary plan – Allows only two frontline members. Like the matrix plan, excess recruits will be placed under your frontline members. This is attractive to members who may think less work is required due to spillovers. But a member must balance their two downlines, so that one side constitutes no more than a specified percentage of the total, to earn commissions. And, a longer depth is required to compensate for the narrower width.
• Hybrid plan – There are also hybrids that combine different elements of these plans.

Why MLMs You See Online Won’t Make You Rich

When you search for MLM opportunities online, you will find that the vast majority of advertised programs emphasize downline recruiting. MLM should be an assisting factor to the sale of a product or service and not the main focus.

When recruitment becomes the main focus, it is nothing more than a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes, by the way, are illegal in many countries including US, UK, and Canada.

Let me just give you a number. 99.9% of participants in recruiting MLMs lose money after expenses. A fundamental problem is that members end up competing with each other and causes market saturation.

All in all, MLMs have a higher failure rate than other businesses, so why enter MLM.

Pyramid Scheme

Pyramid schemes are simply put, MLM without any products or services. The whole scheme is about making money from downline members.

Most of the MLM opportunities advertised on the internet are in fact pyramid schemes. Yes, it is illegal in many countries. How they survive is by disguising themselves as legitimate businesses. In an ideal MLM environment, the company will have a product, and promoters will earn commissions on their own sales as well as downline members’ sales. There is no commission for simply getting someone to join.

However, with many MLMs you see online, you are promised a commission for recruiting a new member. The commission comes from a percentage of the new member’s membership fee.

They want you to think they have products and services to offer, but what they have is simply a cover. Often times, you will see an MLM program with online marketing education as their service, some dubious tools or an ebook as their product.

Take a look at iJango, a new pyramid scheme BBB warned about recently. It advertises, “An online community where members are rewarded for the online activities we all do every day.” You can read news, search, email etc through their portal. That is the service they are providing and also the cover they are hiding behind. The focus is on recruiting to make money. It costs you $149.95 to become a “community director” and $19.95 per month. Community directors make money by recruiting new members.

The Math

“A successful pyramid scheme combines a fake yet seemingly credible business with a simple-to-understand yet sophisticated-sounding money-making formula which is used for profit.” – Wikipedia

It doesn’t matter how the program is put together. A different equation cannot create more wealth.

It is a non-sustainable business model. Pyramid schemes emphasize how much you can make with so many downlines, but they always fail to show you how many people are required to achieve that goal in the grand picture. You are probably already way down in the line, and looking at the picture below, you can see how much of a hopeless position you are in.

Below is an example of the binary plan. It shows you that 112 out of 127 members (88%, red circles) will lose money. This holds true no matter how large the model becomes before collapse. This is not including the fact that the first several downline members are likely fakes.

You can never get in at the beginning and enjoy the spillover.

Ethical Business

People are blinded by money. People will convince themselves that what they are doing is amoral as long as there is money to be made.

Let’s say you know a founder of a new pyramid scheme. You manage to get in early. Sure, you have the opportunity to make money now. But what about the hundreds or thousands of people whom you are ripping off? You know most people below you are going to lose money.

The same goes for selling most of the crap you see on Clickbank. Most of them are scams and rip-offs. This affiliate marketing will be covered in the future article.

To Sum it All Up

• As with any make-money-online opportunities, stay away from programs that advertise: lots of money with little or no work, no experience needed, as seen on…, pictures of cruise ships and BMWs.  Don’t be lazy. There is no loophole!
• Most MLMs you see online are pyramid schemes hiding behind a worthless product or service.
• Avoid companies that emphasize recruitment of downline members instead of selling products.
• 99.9% of participants lose their money. Don’t think you can crack the 0.1%. Those positions are already taken before you know it.
• Don’t be allured by complex sounding level structures. No matter how you rearrange the equation, the answer is always the same.
• Even if you do have the opportunity to make money with MLM, don’t turn to the dark side.

I tried to keep this article short and concise. If you want more details, see the following links.

• http://www.vandruff.com/mlm.html
• http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/other/dvimf16.shtm
• http://www.mlm-thetruth.com/ShockingMLMstats.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme

See original post here: Data Money Online = Scam by Scam Free Internet

A new work at home scam has emerged. As with previous articles (Google Money System and Twitter Money) done before here at Scam Free internet, Data Money Online (www.datamoneyonline.com) follows a similar scheme of charging you an unexpected fee on your credit card.

However, this one’s a little different. It promises you that you will make a profit within 24 hours of signing up, and that you won’t get charged anything until you make a profit (other than the $7.95 trial fee in some cases). Well, that’s the catch right there, “…until you make profit.”

Here’s what they do.

First, you are given $5 when you sign up. This $5 counts as that promised profit, and now that you have made a profit, you will be charged. You will be charged $197!

Direct quote from their sign up page:

Don’t worry – we’re not charging anything yet: we’re just asking you to deposit a refundable $7.95. This will unlock all the steps, which is the main key to making money with this program. ONLY IF you start making money within one day will your card be charged our fee or your deposit will be refunded as well.

Why can’t we take our fee from your checks? We do not issue your checks. Your checks are made and sent by the companies directly which you will see in the next page, and we don’t have any control over your funds. Give it a thought – even if you think we’re a scam (which we’re not!): you have nothing to lose, as we’re not charging you anything until you start making money. But if we are correct, you might be discarding the only program on the whole internet that puts its money where its mouth is.

Here is one of many complaints:

I signed up for a 24 hour trial with DATA Money Online. The trial fee was 7.95 that were supposed to be refunded unless making money within 24 hours, which [wasn’t]. I researched the site and found that many people were reporting the company name to be fraudulent. I sent them an email Thursday, July 23, 2009 7:34 pm (Which I Have Saved) the very same day of signing up to cancel the 7.95 holding fee. Did not get a response and The phone number given is someone saying high call volume is making it impossible to reach by phone and to email them. The next day I was contacted by my banks fraud prevention service concerning suspicious activity. Obviously, they knew something was wrong too. I called them back and they told me that the 7.95 was charged which I could have dealt with, but then informed me of a $197.00 charge. I never knew a thing about a $197.00 fee what so ever! The woman gave me a number that she had listed with the $197 charge. I called the number again, and [again] as well as many emails. Nothing.

I would like to add that [there] was no agree to terms box, never knew anything of a 197.00 charge AND the 7.95 should have never been charged in the first place. Meaning, if 7.95 was only to be charged if you make money within 24 hours, I never did, and have proof. Also, remember I contacted them to cancel my 7.95 holding fee on July 23rd 2009. Which is irrelevant but maybe not?

The phone number that they give you 1-866-552-5774 is a voicemail that directs you to send them an email instead. When you send the email you do not get any response back.

I would like to add how [embarrassing] this has been. My checking [account] is now completely negative.

To summarize,

• Data Money Online promises you instant profit. Although you will indeed get instant money, you’ll be losing lots more a day later.
  Profit = $5, Cost = $200+. You do the math.
• In some instances, you’ll be charged a recurring monthly fee.
• They will never answer your phone calls. You will be told to email them instead, which you never get a reply from.
• Like with most scams, it is never clear what you actually do. All you see is, “no experience needed,” “as seen on CNN, Google, Oprah, etc…,” and of course, lots of false testimonials, fake cheques (or checks) and Clickbank screenshots, and promises of easy money.

There seems to be some variations of the Data Money Online scam. Some have recurring fees, some promise one-time fee, some have $7.95 trial, etc. But they all have one thing in common: SCAM. The top level domains are all “datamoneyonline.com” or “dataentrycompany.com”. Don’t even look at the page if you see these URLS in the address bar.

Both addresses are added to the scam list here.

Don’t ever make a hasty decision when you have to give away your personal information especially credit card numbers. Even if the deal sounds very affordable with no risk, once you give away your personal information, you are at the scammers’ mercy. Always do proper research. Take the time to read the terms and privacy agreements.

You can also come to our new forum and ask questions if you’re still unsure.

Be safe!

See original post here: Twitter Money Scams by Scam Free Internet

Take a look at the growth Twitter had in 2009.

It is doing fairly well, wouldn’t you say, for a company that has yet to develop a revenue stream. In case you didn’t know, Twitter doesn’t make any money, yet investors keep it going with the reliance on its potential.

Just like was the case in Google Money System, Twitter money scams are popping up like rabbits out of hats. They make promises of easy automated money making system by simply tweeting.

There are many advertising schemes (ie. be-a magpie) you can use to monetize from your Twitter account, and I wouldn’t call those scams; although, they often become the tools to facilitate scams. They do create a spammy environment for Twitter users, but advertising is advertising.

Below, I posted some examples of these scams, but the process they are all advertising is simple. You post affiliate links on your Twitter page; try your best to get followers (sometimes using a spam software that you pay $200 for). If you’re lucky, you get followers that are in the same shoes as you. Given the topic of discussion, you will only attract other affiliate marketers like yourself.

As with most money making schemes, it’s a perpetual cycle of victims becoming scammers. You buy marketing ebooks and software etc, that tell you to advertise on Twitter, and you turn around and sell exactly that to other uninformed victims. From what I gather, there are some successful affiliate marketers. But I never could convince myself to get involved in such an unethical practice of selling garbage.

Here are some example pages below. A quick search brings up tons of Twitter money results. It seems more than half of these links already died. So much for an easy profit, unless they made millions, shut down the website and retired :).

This one is very much like the Google Money System scam. the layout is even identical. Charges you $77 if you don’t cancel your subscription and return the kit within 14 days. It doesn’t seem to be a recurring payment though. Still, scam is a scam.

Nice car and cash flying around. “As seen on: Google, Facebook etc.” – You always see these “as seen on” mentions in all scams these days. Don’t get the false sense of credibility from these meaningless stickers.

Some kit that can teach you to make $2,217 each month. These arbitrary numbers are everywhere.

The above site even gives you a nice diagram explaining the scam. It is exactly what I said at the top. You promote affiliate links; display your results to your followers; get more followers to exploit just like you were exploited.

Well, that’s the summary of what is going on with Twitter money. It seems everybody is after the easy ‘internet money’ they don’t really understand (remembering South Park episode:)).

Also, check out the article on Google Money System.

See original post here: ScamXposer Exposer by Scam Free Internet

Yesterday, I was looking through various news websites and feeds, looking for some scam, and this examiner.com blog came up. It’s an informative post warning about the dangers of online job hunting and work at home scams. In the concluding paragraph of the article were two suggested websites to help you filter out the legit opportunities from the scam.

One of them is Scam.com, a forum where people discuss the legitimacy of plethora of online businesses and other scams. From a brief look into different threads, I could see that it could be useful. Especially if you were enticed by some online ad, you can go to the forum and search for it. Likely, others have also seen it or have experienced it. You’ll get a good understanding of what you almost joined if you are able to filter out the replies from affiliates of the program that litter most of the threads.

They also have political and religious threads where people are still disputing global warming :P. If you’re looking to participate in those garbage discussions, too, knock yourself out.

Now, the other suggested site on the Examiner post was called, “ScamXposer”. This site mainly has three lists: recommended, not recommended, and scam. Although I didn’t closely examine the contents of the two latter lists, I don’t have a problem with them as they simply list websites that are scams or rip-offs. It doesn’t look like there are unfairly listed businesses.

The problem I have is with the recommended list. Every single recommended opportunity has his own affiliate link that he directs you to click. Some links may look like a non-affiliate link, but they are. A link like this: “www.scamxposer.com/ecurrency-arbitrage.html” is actually just a re-direction to “http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?Clk=xxxxxxx,” his affiliate link. I am not against people making money, and this is his business model. He puts effort into compiling a list of scam and reviews some of them, and the source of income is, other than Google Ads, the affiliate marketing (like the link above) he’s doing.

He uses the trust he gained from his visitors and uses it against them. A visitor thinking this is a legitimate review site trusts the author and the recommendations he gives have more weight on them. This is a classic marketing tactic used by many affiliate marketers. They are coached to use this ‘review method’. ScamXposer is more elaborate than most of the other so-called review sites, and actually has some value to it, but nonetheless, it is the same tactic as described in the Registry Cleaners article.

Like I’ve mentioned before, I am not flat-out against affiliate marketing in general. I do it, too! The banners you see on the right… some of them are affiliate links. You buy from that link, I get a small share. However, when you promote a near-scam, rip-off products and so-called opportunities, that’s a problem. Also, even if something’s not a scam, a biased review of an affiliated program with a misleading information doesn’t belong on a review site.

Look at the top recommended one:

Ok, it’s got a five star rating. You can apparently make a minimum $2000 with no experience. That’s what I call a false advertisement. The link at the bottom is his custom affiliate page link where you get to watch a nice video telling you to give them your personal info just so you can watch another video. All this program is is an MLM (multi-level marketing or pyramid scheme). He suggests that this program finally figured out how to make an MLM system work. But of course, all MLMs say that, that it’s different from all the others. Sure, good luck making that kind of money as a bottom sucker in an MLM. This doesn’t sound worthy of the top spot on a recommended ‘online income opportunities’ list. If you want to make that kind of money using this program, you need to have a site like ScamXposer.com to lure people in or sell lots of Trivita products yourself. People talking about Trivita on Scam.com

Let’s look at another, somewhere in the middle of the list:

Looking at the description of this one, it sounds like a good place to look for an actually home-based job (not a business start-up opp). But inspecting the page from the link (affiliate link, again), it charges you a membership fee for the access to the job listing, and affiliates like the ScamXposer guy gets a share of that membership fee. General rule: Don’t ever pay for a job listing.

A lot of the recommended ones (specially the top ones) require little to no experience or knowledge, and the income potential figures mislead you to believe that you can make an equivalent or higher income compared to your current or ex day job. In many cases, I don’t see much difference between the recommended and not-recommended programs other than that he is a member of the recommended ones. In the end, they are not work opportunities, but programs that you need to pay for directly or indirectly.

Another is called Project Payday. It’s one of the top recommended opportunities, but it’s a program where you complete offers to receive pennies at a time. If you forget to cancel an offer you signed up for, like say a DVD club, you’ll be charged on your credit card for more than you bargained for. This isn’t a work-at-home job, honestly. They got video testimonials of people saying they made $400 in the first day spending less than a few hours a day, but you don’t actually believe them, do you?

As I’ve mentioned in the Work at home online scams article, most of the information you find in these ebooks and such are available to you for free online. Like with anything, you need to put time and effort into your work if you want money, unless you’re one of the few lucky ones :). Don’t get temped by promises of easy money and join an MLM. You want to get into MLM, that’s fine. But don’t expect quick and easy money.

Don’t pay to get a job; don’t trust “reviews” you see online; and do your homework the proper way; don’t learn from an advertiser advertising his/her own product.

So, to the Examiner blogger: due diligence before suggesting a website, please.

Thanks for visiting.

*Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece and I am not calling the website a ‘fraud,’ just calling it a ‘bad’ website.

See original post here: Google Money System? by Scam Free Internet

Have you arrived here searching for some easy money making opportunities using Google? Read on and you’ll see what all the fuss is about. First of all, this scheme has zero association with Google. It’s about scammers wrongfully using Google’s reputation to their benefit.

I don’t know how long this scheme has been around, but there seems to be quite a number of these floating around. I looked around and found one good example of how this scheme works, so follow the example below, and you’ll see why this is a scam.

First, we start out by looking at a Squidoo page. Squidoo is like eHow or About, but user-contributed and its contributors are paid. Below is the quote from Squidoo ‘What is Squidoo?’ page.

Squidoo makes money from ads and affiliate links.
We give 5% of what we earn, right off the top, to charity. We keep 45% to cover our overhead and stuff.
That leaves 50%. That goes to charity or to the people who build the pages. And we leave it up to you to choose one or the other.

Many money seeking online marketers choose to use Squidoo because, first of all, it pays, and marketers use it to promote their affiliate links and their blogs which promote their affiliate links. Here’s one screenshot of such page.

It pretends to be an investigative report on Google Money System, but it’s just an advertisement in disguise. It’s very much the same tactic use in the registry cleaner scams. You click on one of the links there, and you end up here:

“Google Fortune,” “Earn Cash with Google,” etc. It looks like another review site with some arbitrary rating numbers complete with fake comments praising some of the programs. I click on the first one called, “Google Fortune,”  and this is where it led me to.

See that $978 per day? Where do they come up with these ridiculous numbers? I realize it’s a tactic to make things look legit by using a non-round number, but it’s being over-used these days, don’t you think?

It seems like we’ve arrived at our final destination. All those pages leading to this product. Let’s take a look at what it is. Well, the page itself doesn’t tell you very much other than that you can make lots of money. How about the terms and conditions. Take a look at what’s actually in the terms and conditions.

Terms & Conditions of Sale (“Conditions”)

1. SCOPE & APPLICATION

1.1 By submitting an order, You automatically receive a 7-day trial to the Google Start up Kit. Your 7-day trial begins immediately upon placing your order. You will be billed $1.97 at the time of order submission. Once  Your trial is active you have 7-days to decide whether to accept Your Subscription. Prior to the expiration of the 7-day trial period, You may cancel Your subscription by calling toll-free at 1-866-993-1473. Should You fail to cancel Your Subscription within the 7-day trial You will be billed $79.90 at the completion of the 7-day trial and every month thereafter for continued services and hosting of your Visual Webtools software unless canceled by You.

………

Right off the bat, we see a problem. Unless you cancel your subscription, you will be billed $79.90 every month after the $1.97 7-day trial period. You won’t see this $79.90 a month anywhere until you get your credit card bill.

Next is the Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy

Use of personal information
By entering a sweepstakes or promotion, registering with our Website, completing any forms on our Website, or by checking or not unchecking co-registration boxes, you grant the Company the right to use the collected information for marketing purposes including, but not limited to, sharing such information with third party advertisers (“Advertisers”), emailing, or physically mailing Company or any third party offers to your email address or postal address. We may also use such information to fulfill prizes, track compliance with the applicable sweepstakes or promotion rules, or for content improvement and feedback purposes. We may sell the personal information that you supply to us and we may join together with other businesses to bring selected retail or service opportunities to our user base. These businesses may include providers of direct marketing services and applications, including lookup and reference, data enhancement, suppression and validation. In addition, the Company reserves the right to release current or past user information in the event we believe that the Website is being or has been used in violation of any sweepstakes or promotion rules; to commit unlawful acts; if the information is subpoenaed; if the Company is sold or acquired; or when the Company deems it necessary or appropriate. By agreeing to these terms, you hereby consent to disclosure of any record or communication to any third party when the Company, in its sole discretion, determines the disclosure to be appropriate.
We may share Website usage information about our Website visitors who have received targeted promotional campaigns with Advertisers for the purpose of formatting future campaigns and upgrading visitor information used in reporting statistics.
The Company also reserves the right to provide aggregate or group data about our visitors and users for lawful purposes. Aggregate or group data is data that describes the demographics, usage, or characteristics of our participants as a group, without revealing any personally identifiable information. By subscribing to the Website, you agree to allow us to provide such data to third parties.

………

Wow, tons of stuff here. Basically, you give them the right to do whatever they want with your personal information by doing anything (“by checking or unchecking co-registration boxes” LOL) with them. I am sure you don’t want to do business with a company that uses such privacy policy even if their product is actually good.

Problems with this Google Money System are clear. Don’t agree to pay for something you know nothing about. They take your personal info and take payment from you before anything is revealed to you. The person promoting this scam obviously hasn’t profited from this scheme. That’s why he or she is busy selling this garbage instead of using it. It is a perpetual cycle with these affiliate marketers like I talked about in Work at Home Scams. You look for and buy a product that supposedly teaches you how to make money online, and you end up selling this exact product to other uninformed victims. People, please don’t do this.

Hey look, here’s the page you get to when you click on the other link on the above Squidoo page.

Twitter cash formula? Looks like I have some material to write about.

Happy surfing everyone!

See original post here: Warning From RCMP RE: Mystery Shopper by Scam Free Internet

Another warning from Canada. Mystery Shopping is a method used by market researchers to test out a market, product, or service. Here’s the background info from Wikipedia:

Mystery shopping or Mystery Consumer is a tool used by market research companies to measure quality of retail service or gather specific information about products and services. Mystery shoppers posing as normal customers perform specific tasks—such as purchasing a product, asking questions, registering complaints or behaving in a certain way – and then provide detailed reports or feedback about their experiences.

Mystery shopping began in the 1940s as a way to measure employee integrity. Tools used for mystery shopping assessments range from simple questionnaires to complete audio and video recordings. Many mystery shopping companies are completely administered through the Internet, allowing potential mystery shoppers to use the Internet to register for participation, find mystery shopping jobs and receive payment.

The most common venues where mystery shopping is used are retail stores, movie theaters, restaurants, fast food chains, banks, gas stations, car dealerships, apartments and health clubs, as well as health care facilities. In the UK, mystery shopping is increasingly used to provide feedback on customer services provided by local authorities and other non-profit organizations, such as housing associations and churches. -WP

Here’s the article from Daily Gleaner:

The mystery-shopper scam is still making the rounds in the capital city.

The RCMP is warning the public to be wary of job advertisements searching for mystery shoppers.

While some are legitimate, there are a few that aren’t, said Sgt. Claude Tremblay of RCMP J Division.

“If it seems like easy money, it’s probably not legitimate,” he said.

The assignment, once a person signs up to be a mystery shopper, is to cash a money order or cheque, keep some of the money, and wire the reminder to the mystery shopper company through Western Union to test its customer service.

The problem is, it’s a fraudulent cheque, Tremblay said.

“If you get any money or cheques in the mail like this you should be wary of it,” he said. “We advise that you take it to police or have it checked out by a financial institution.” – Daily Gleaner

The fake cheque or money order is a very popular tactic used by scammers. This should tip you off that it’s not legitimate.

See original post here: Work at Home Online Scams by Scam Free Internet

After doing my first two stories (Registry cleaners, Online TV), one common aspect stood out. It is the fact that both scams are able to spread fast because of affiliate marketing. Now the gigantic scope of online work at home scams cannot be all covered in this article. What I will focus on is to give you some general advise on how not to throw away your cash at worthless scams, and talk about problems with affiliate marketing.

Search terms, “work at home” or “make money online” probably result in the biggest number of scam sites. They entice online opportunity seeker with the promise of easy money. “You don’t have to do anything. You can enjoy your life and let the money making system work on its own.” Sure, they all sound good, and some even sound very convincing. However, in the end, they will try to sell you an ebook they put together that probably does have some good info in there, but nothing you can’t find online yourself. Most ebooks are repackaged from other ebooks.

My main problem is this. When someone who has an expertise in an area tries to create a product or service to sell, it’s all dandy. But when someone who, without proper education or experience, tries to simply look for ways to make some doe online, the product ends up substandard and/or becomes a scam.

This is how an average newbie’s journey starts. Let’s say Joe wants to look for ways to make money online. He starts by searching on a search engine (SE), “work at home” or “how to make money online”. Eventually he will be drawn to the affiliate marketing. He buys some ebooks; maybe even sign up on some paid membership that promises to make him rich. These ebooks and “gurus” will tell him to create a website and promote their product and other popular products on Clickbank (Clickbank is where affiliates and advertisers meet and it also provides the system for transactions and commissions). He will sign up on Clickbank.com to start promoting products. The easiest and the likely product he will promote is an ebook on how to make money online. You can already see the irony in this. Joe doesn’t yet make any money, but he is teaching others to make money like he does. Joe doesn’t have any skills in website design, so he uses one of the provided one page templates to write his sales pitch.

Joe may make a few sales after making his site search engine optimized, spamming forums and message boards with his link, and paying for some advertising on Google Adsense and other PPC ads. His revenues after all this effort doesn’t even cover his costs, let alone a proper compensation for his time. Now this may evolve into a real website with third party ads (ie. Adsense). Then if he’s lucky, he will get another Joe to buy from him. See the cycle?

What most affiliates are trying to do is copy the success of big websites that earn huge income from affiliate links and advertising revenue. The difference is, most affiliates don’t have a website with good content to drive traffic. They’ve been told to create a website that will drive traffic. But this is a backward approach. You are supposed to create a website with genuine content, and when you start getting traffic, you earn some money with advertising, not the other way around where you try to make money with advertising and try to build a website content around that.

Some may succeed with a lot of effort, but then these ebooks and programs already lied to you about making money while enjoying a cruise ride. Plus, have you thought of what you are actually promoting? Like I’ve covered in the first two stories, most of these affiliate programs that attract average Joes sell scam products. Does ethical business mean nothing to you?

In conclusion, if you want to work at home using the power of the internet, look for legitimate job opportunities. They are out there. From virtual assistants to programming, these are actual jobs that will pay you decent money. But like any other job, you work hard for your money.

Recommendations

• Look for legitimate jobs – oDesk.com is a good website where job seekers and companies meet. They provide software to track workers’ performance so that employers don’t get cheated on hours. Popular jobs seem to be programming jobs. So if you have that skill, take a look. There are other jobs available, too. Sign up and take some tests to enhance your profile.  http://www.odesk.com
• Another one, like oDesk, I just found (Sept. 2, 2009) is http://www.limeexchange.com
• I found this ABC article on work from home tips. It is very informative with lots of links to interesting websites. Hopefully that’ll give you some ideas. LINK
• Don’t waste your time reading all the material online, whether free or paid. There’s so much stuff on this subject, you’ll never actually get started. Start something first, and then when you need help, search and read. You learn as you go, not endless learning.
• Workathomenoscams.com – This guy does reviews on websites to see if they are legitimate or scam. But most articles are about paid surveys and click-ads-to-make-money type of deal. At least you’ll know what’s a scam and what’s not. Plus, he provides you with weekly list of job postings.
  He is advertising his affiliate links with every article he does, so if you just sign up to everything that he says are not scams, you’re only making him rich. Same owner, different site that has job postings: LINK
• Don’t pay for a job – A job is supposed to pay you, not the other way around. Although there are legitimate paid training programs out there, most of the time, it’s a scam. Plus, all training programs teach you the same things. If you are focused and smart enough, you can find out what all these guys are teaching their members.
• If you’re already into affiliate marketing, think about the legitimacy of what you are promoting. Affiliate marketing in itself is not a problem. Every website does affiliate marketing. I just have a problem with the way it’s evolved into this monster that snatches poor money seekers.

If you have some good suggestions on working from home, you are welcome to comment.