Posts tagged ‘scams’

Cover of Snake Oil!

Snake oil! How ‘Make Money Online’ scams work …and how to avoid them

A quick search of the Web will turn up thousands of different websites, all promising to show you how you can make incredible amounts of money online, with very little required from you – little or no expertise, little or no effort, and just a few dollars to unlock the door to limitless wealth.

Sound too good to be true? Sadly, there are a lot of people out there who don’t realise that these propositions are often exactly that.

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WWWordsmith: Forging a living from online writing

January Sales! Get free business eBooks

We’re putting three of our ErgoGuides business eBooks on a special free promotion for two days only. If you missed the free promos the first time around when we launched the books, now you have a second chance to get them free again.

The sale starts at 0800 GMT on Friday 27 December (nominally—depending on Amazon’s internal workings, the actual start may be anything up to two hours after that time) and ends 48 hours later, ie 0800 GMT on Sunday 29 December or up to two hours afterwards. Get them while they’re free!

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What’s all this about link building?

I’m always on my soap box complaining about link builders, and some people have asked me why I have such a hive of bees in my bonnet about them. This posting is an attempt to explain my take on the issue. As always, if I’ve got it wrong, feel to use the comments box below to correct me or to give your own views on the matter. This is just how I see it.

Several years ago, there was a simple recipe for success on the Internet for those who didn’t have the skills to create their own products or even to add anything useful to the Internet. The simple recipe was to do keyword research, find high value keywords, provide ‘good enough’ content, do a link building campaign, rank high in Google, and rake the money in. What most of these things had in common was that they relied on having a high rank in Google to get the free traffic. Most Internet-savvy people know that this doesn’t work any more.

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"Do not feed the Internet" by John Atkinson of Wrong Hands

How spammy forum posts can hurt you

I have a friend who runs a nice little community forum. After several years of friends just ‘chatting’ online, the forum has suddenly started to become something of a spam magnet. Actually, I think they’re lucky to have been able to avoid the vermin for so long. I could immediately see several ways how the forum could be improved to keep the spam down, and suggested them.

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Earning money with Trip Advisor – another scam

Trip Advisor sent me an email today announcing their 2012 Top Contributors of the Year. The winner of the Top Reviewer category had clocked up 859 reviews. And the longest review was a “whopping 11,171 words”. Hmm. Why would anyone do that rather than post the content on their own site, which they can monetise as they see fit? There’s definitely something worth looking into here.

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The wrong sort of traffic

“Traffic = $$$” This mantra is commonly chanted on the Web, particularly by two sorts of unscrupulous people: “Get-rich-quick” scheme hucksters trying to tout their latest…

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