Saturday, April 27, 2013

Internet Get Rich Quick Scams and how to detect them.




Here we go again!

 Tired of internet get rich quick schemes, misinformation, and just outright scammy lies? Well you are not the only ones! A sucker is born every minute, but the truth is you can follow some simple steps not to be scammed into spending money you just don't have on learning how to make some money in the first place. How do you do this? Well I will give you a few simple steps to do it!

First step, don't be an idiot, now the video I linked  may not have been a scam but there is an enormous probability due to the overly high end video production they are using and corny acting, it is pretty surefire we have a commercial venture on our hands. Yes, if they are trying to make money off of you by selling a secret about web income success, chances are that's where it stops! If these other methods were so big, why would they be cashing in on making suckers out of people? Why wouldn't they just give the secrets away right there in the video? Of course if you look at the high bar on the youtube video there is likely a URL or something in there right? I bet they want you to go to their site to sign up for something right? Of course!

One of the biggest money makers right now is the teaching people "Secrets" gig, it is the snake oil of the modern era. While back in the day a snake oil salesman might have given you cyanide for a hefty price to cure your gout, now they teach you to become rich in a single day by spending $100.00 to get their secrets.

If you really want to find out how to make money online it is really a matter of finding the right resources via unbiased sources that couldn't possibly be leeching money off of you due to the demographic of the page and the terms of service forcing non commercial behavior. Fortunately I have some actual resources for you to learn from, but first I will tell you I am a blogger because blogging makes money. I wouldn't bother writing all of this if there wasn't a purpose, now back in the day I often wrote for backlinks but I am now more into the adsense income which you can get from Google! Look it up and get yourself a free blogger account! Also make sure to get into some social networking so you can have that added angle to making some quick money online (well not so quick actually, you have a long road ahead getting blogs going. )


Here are some resources:

Hubpages
eBay
Fiverr
Youtube
Amazon
and  Freelancing websites

Also check out this resource! 

Thursday, January 17, 2013


Okay really guys? Google I love your blog service thanks for the free crap but honestly I has to ask myself why you are so cold and heartless.

I expect an answer Matt Cutts. I expect for you to tell me why didn't just make links to bad neighborhoods a virtual nofollow? Why couldn't you just be happy with making it null and void rather than punishing those who have no control? I mean do you really think the fly by night directory I posted my link to actually will respond in a human lifetime? The dude running that directory probably even forgot the project he was working on and left it running, he probably checks it once a year.

People don't spend 3-4 years building a domain name's reputation so you can treat it as some trivial garbage. We do it for your precious search engine and the long term results it brings. Have a heart Mr. Cutts. Have a heart and stop that crap about penalizing old bad links because at this point we really can't undo the damage. We shouldn't have penalties that we can't undo. Don't make us start over man, cmon.

We are in the business to make money just the same as you are. I know that big companies these days have dreams of some Star Trek-esque version of a Marxist utopia but in truth we need to make money in the free market economy for which we live now. This frustrates us, the competition is enormous and sometimes we have to cut it as close as possible while remaining within the rules, but unfortunately later on the search engines want to change their rules and get us for penalties on crimes we weren't even committing back years before.

The directories may be called "Link Farms" now but back in the day they were just places to get a good link. The untrained eye wouldn't have really known that it was suffering from sort of PR penalty would it? Of course it wouldn't.

So here is my request to Mr. Cutts and the Google spam team,... go ahead and penalize those newly breaking rules but not those who grandfathered in. If your algorithm cannot handle automating that process I would strongly suggest making their old links worth nothing and moving on. The bottom line is that you end up harming people's livelihood and I remain fortunate that I did not have children to feed when my clients were suddenly stuck in a seemingly endless line of penalties for breaking rules years before that weren't even in place yet.



Legend of the Craigsmonster

The creature from the anti-capitalist abyss...

Oh I know you probably hate the idea of anyone "Spamming" on the internet and most people do but what about those guys trying to give their dreams a shot with little to no money. Should they honestly be told to suck it up and work hard until they have paid ad money? What if those paid ads don't work so well and they waste years of effort just scrimping and saving to get absolutely nowhere. You see, I think people who rant about "Spammers" are generally anti-capitalist and expect the world to just join a big union and get in the punch card line like everyone else.

Our world was built on the dreams and hard fights of entrepreneurs but some seek to make the fight unbearable, impossible perhaps. Companies like craigslist do make opportunity but at the same time they hinder it with their obsessive anti-spam filtering.

I think the worst of it all is their Ghosting. It is automated lying after all, they go as far as to confirm someone has a post viewable and it is indeed false. Well imagine how that feels from the perspective of a person who is about to have their car repossessed. I think the ghosting idea ends up really harmful and is the utmost douchebaggery an administrator or programmer could come up with as an anti-spam filter.

Let's be honest here, the level of nonsense a person has to go through just to get a phone verified account is sickening. Especially when you factor in that they REALLY only want you to post ONE time on a given subject per 48 hours and ONLY in your home city. This is the internet, get the memo? We are a global thing guys.

The practices of craigslist have maintained their dominance to some degree but have enabled a dark element of somewhat well off spam posters to dominate while those of us trying to get 2-3 ads out per day are finding it excessively hard to see our posts show up on the listings. If we aren't ghosted we are flagged, if we aren't flagged then we are blocked. Rather than simply limiting to 3 posts per day and leaving it there they have to add all sort of c-blocking methods to success, yes Craigs-blocking. What did you think I meant? ;)

All in all, if you really hope to make a business of it I suggest you find alternatives to craigslist. I for one will be glad for a day when an intelligent alternative comes along and sweeps the floor with them. Their behavior is simply rude and uncalled for, in fact it is harmful and damages our economy in ways they couldn't imagine. When you make it hard for someone to pay their bills it starts to damage the economy via a chain reaction. The Craigsmonster is no laughing matter, it is something that should only be dealt with sparingly. It does guard a pile of gold after all, but it guards it a bit too well I think.