I remember only a few short months ago how many people in the IM community were espousing the easy money from this program called Zeek Rewards. Well it turns out Zeek Rewards was nothing more than a simple Ponzi scheme, and it was shut down by the US Government before it collapsed. Now the people at the top that were promoting this scheme (and made a huge profit) will have to likely pay reparations to those that joined in late (hopefully they will see some part of their "investment" returned). If it sounds like a Ponzi or Get Rich Quick sceme please stay away!
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Make Money HYIP
So as my quest to make money from home continues, I keep running into something called HYIP. HYIP stands for High Yield Investment Plan, and generally is a nice way to describe a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme. These are of course illegal in nearly every country, and the real question is not a matter of if they will collapse, but when. That said you can indeed make a little money playing the HYIP game, but similar to Forex, these "investments" are ultra high risk.
There are many sites that review these various HYIP schemes, and the owners of those sites are probably some of the only people making any real money in the HYIP game (the sites serve as a referral portal to the HYIP scams, earning the operators profits via referrals). Some of the plans promise a 120% payout in 24 hours. The scam is quite simple, the profits are paid out of new investor dollars. Once the site fails to attract new investors, and existing investors try to pull their money out, the site operators disappear with all the money.
HYIP is a confidence game, the plan managers entice you into making bigger investments by paying out good returns on smaller investments. I gambled a small sum ($200) on a very popular HYIP, and it indeed paid out great, $40 per day in profit! Would an investment of $2000 then payout $400 a day in profits? The answer is maybe, or maybe they just keep your money and blame a DDOS or hackers for taking their site down. Think it won't happen to you? Everyone that has spent any amount of time playing the HYIP has had shady operators run off with the money. Think of the operators as wannabe Bernie Madoffs, but instead of being US based, they operate out of some 3rd world country where they are more likely to get away with this crime.
If you are going to play the HYIP game, against my advise, and fully knowing that it is a Ponzi scheme, well at least minimize your risk by NEVER depositing more than $200 into one scheme. By spreading the risk out over multiple HYIPs you will be able to hedge your losses more effectively. Also with a smaller investment, you are likely to actually be able to recoup your investment, as these scams tend to pay on smaller deposits to help convince less savvy investors into depositing their life savings. Remember HYIP is ALWAYS 100% of the time a scam ~ while its possible to Make Money with HYIP, only gamble money that you can afford to lose.
There are many sites that review these various HYIP schemes, and the owners of those sites are probably some of the only people making any real money in the HYIP game (the sites serve as a referral portal to the HYIP scams, earning the operators profits via referrals). Some of the plans promise a 120% payout in 24 hours. The scam is quite simple, the profits are paid out of new investor dollars. Once the site fails to attract new investors, and existing investors try to pull their money out, the site operators disappear with all the money.
HYIP is a confidence game, the plan managers entice you into making bigger investments by paying out good returns on smaller investments. I gambled a small sum ($200) on a very popular HYIP, and it indeed paid out great, $40 per day in profit! Would an investment of $2000 then payout $400 a day in profits? The answer is maybe, or maybe they just keep your money and blame a DDOS or hackers for taking their site down. Think it won't happen to you? Everyone that has spent any amount of time playing the HYIP has had shady operators run off with the money. Think of the operators as wannabe Bernie Madoffs, but instead of being US based, they operate out of some 3rd world country where they are more likely to get away with this crime.
If you are going to play the HYIP game, against my advise, and fully knowing that it is a Ponzi scheme, well at least minimize your risk by NEVER depositing more than $200 into one scheme. By spreading the risk out over multiple HYIPs you will be able to hedge your losses more effectively. Also with a smaller investment, you are likely to actually be able to recoup your investment, as these scams tend to pay on smaller deposits to help convince less savvy investors into depositing their life savings. Remember HYIP is ALWAYS 100% of the time a scam ~ while its possible to Make Money with HYIP, only gamble money that you can afford to lose.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Make Money Affiliate Marketing
Clickbank - Don't bother with any of this garbage, nobody really wants to buy any of it, no matter how slick the sales copy, how convincing the videos are, how nice the squeeze page graphics look, its pretty much the same thing. Garbage. Can you profit by promoting this garbage? Sure, but the big money makers are the ones that come up with the top tier crap and market it to shady spammers. If you have quality traffic, this isn't a good way to monetize it. If you want to build Clickbank product review sites, and then rank those sites, then you will be like 1000 other people trying to do the same thing. Maybe you'll be smart and come up with keywords the others didn't think of? Or maybe not. I've promoted a few Clickbank products (some of the only good ones) and never made enough for a payout check.
Commission Junction - There are some good advertisers here, some well known and established brands, so if your website manages to rank on something that's pertinent to one of the niches they cater to, then commission junction has decent offering to consider.
Amazon affiliate - Yes you can make money as an affiliate for Amazon, by building review blogs and getting them ranked. It is in theory possible to earn a small commission for every item people buy after following your link, but the reality is that its hard to earn much this way, and furthermore our research shows that google penalizes sites whose sole purpose is to refer sales to affiliate sites, including amazon!
Most content is far better monetized using AdSense than trying to promote affiliate offers, including Amazon, so we typically recommend going that route first. Its not that affiliate marketing doesn't work (I have several affiliates that earn commissions selling my software), its that these affiliates know how to branch out and communicate with people, beyond just a website. In most cases my affiliates have some sort of interaction with the customers they refer, rather than just clicking a link on a website.
Key Thought:
Interaction with customers drives sales. Active income is easier than passive income.
Some of the biggest moneymakers on the Internet are affiliate marketers. These guys also fill seminar halls and sell their success systems offline as well. These professionals have something you probably don't: charisma and the natural ability to sell.
Commission Junction - There are some good advertisers here, some well known and established brands, so if your website manages to rank on something that's pertinent to one of the niches they cater to, then commission junction has decent offering to consider.
Amazon affiliate - Yes you can make money as an affiliate for Amazon, by building review blogs and getting them ranked. It is in theory possible to earn a small commission for every item people buy after following your link, but the reality is that its hard to earn much this way, and furthermore our research shows that google penalizes sites whose sole purpose is to refer sales to affiliate sites, including amazon!
Most content is far better monetized using AdSense than trying to promote affiliate offers, including Amazon, so we typically recommend going that route first. Its not that affiliate marketing doesn't work (I have several affiliates that earn commissions selling my software), its that these affiliates know how to branch out and communicate with people, beyond just a website. In most cases my affiliates have some sort of interaction with the customers they refer, rather than just clicking a link on a website.
Key Thought:
Interaction with customers drives sales. Active income is easier than passive income.
Some of the biggest moneymakers on the Internet are affiliate marketers. These guys also fill seminar halls and sell their success systems offline as well. These professionals have something you probably don't: charisma and the natural ability to sell.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Make Money Forex
So next I thought I could make some money trading Forex. You have all seen the ads, the sales script promising a carefree lifestyle only trading a few minutes per day. You can even trade using foolproof bots that totally automate the process of trading, one of the most popular of these is Fap-turbo. Once again I must caution the readers that I personally lost every penny I "invested" in Forex, and that its a fools market rigged by scammers, fraudsters, and big money companies that serve only to get you hooked and clear out your wallet.
What is Forex?
Forex is the trading of currencies. With brokers allowing you to leverage 10x to 100x its possible to make a lot (or lose) very quickly. Forex is considered a high risk investment, as its VERY easy to LOSE your entire investment!
Is forex legit?
The concept of Forex sounds like a completely legitimate offering, as its just the trading of foreign currencies using an electronic broker. There are some big publicly traded companies that offer this service as well as some smaller boutique offerings. The industry is very poorly regulated, and is also filled with scam companies that will take your money and never let you cash out a penny, even if you do win.
Can I make money?
You will probably lose every penny you invest. Trades are executed in an ancillary market that "resembles" the official currency market that is really dominated by large institutional investors such as banks holding foreign currency, companies holding currency from doing business overseas, etc. Forex is a highly leveraged game, so a small movement or "pip" in the difference of a currency pair can make a significant difference in the account balance. Margin calls are automated and can totally wipe you out if you don't watch what you are doing.
The brokerages make their money on the spreads, plus they are nearly certainly playing arbitrage games to maximize the use of your money. Brokers are known to "hunt your stops", delay your trades, and widen the spreads to maximize their profits at the expense of yours. And these are the honest ones! The fake ones just STEAL from you, so make sure you do some research if you want to try gambling the forex market.
The brokerages make their money on the spreads, plus they are nearly certainly playing arbitrage games to maximize the use of your money. Brokers are known to "hunt your stops", delay your trades, and widen the spreads to maximize their profits at the expense of yours. And these are the honest ones! The fake ones just STEAL from you, so make sure you do some research if you want to try gambling the forex market.
Why so many scams?
This industry is largely unregulated as it is transacted online. You are often doing business with a foreign corporation which is in a country with laws vastly different than those in the United States. While there are legitimate companies that trade forex, think of it more as a casino than a stock trading site although the charts and research on some of these platforms are impeccable!
Live vs Game account!
A demo or game account doesn't behave the same as a live money account. In demo all transactions are instantly accepted regardless of market, whereas in live mode your transactions must actually process. This is a VERY big difference. I was able to "perfect" a strategy that banked hard money in Game mode, but on a live account it cleared out my balance in just a matter of a few short days.
Who really makes money?
Who really makes money?
The companies where you trade make their money when you lose yours, in a stock market things don't quite work this way, the brokers typically make commissions when you trade, rather than banking on the concept of you losing everything. A new trend is allowing professional traders to manage your account. While these professional traders may get lucky and make you a little money, the fees they charge (50% of high watermark gain!) wipe out most of those profits.
Forex isn't investing, it's Gambling. You may as well go blow your life savings in a Casino, as that has just about the same odds of making money as Forex.
Forex isn't investing, it's Gambling. You may as well go blow your life savings in a Casino, as that has just about the same odds of making money as Forex.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Make Money Blogging
My first attempts at making money online were based on an e-book a friend gave me that talked about how great it can be to make money blogging. The premise is fairly simple, write a blog, amass a huge following to your blog, and the riches will flow in from advertising revenue. Reality is this works for very few people, mostly for the following reasons:
1. Keeping a blog updated takes a significant amount of work. Most people just can't commit to all the writing required.
2. Garbage blogs with spun content are not what people are looking for. The whole Micro Niche Site, Made For Adsense, and Autoblog market is about producing crap that nobody wants on the internet. Don't waste your time here. If you really want to waste your time with this garbage I can sell you a number of garbage sites I have that never made any money, so you too can have sites that aren't even worth the domain renewal.
3. If you build it, will they come? You can be the worlds greatest writer, but without luck, cheating, or an insane amount of effort in doing Search Engine Optimization, you are likely to get minimal traffic if any. Think you can buy traffic to your blog? Well think again, as paid traffic will just get your Adsense account banned. Anything you read that promises a "method" to make $XXX dollars a day from Adsense, well it probably won't.
4. Google hates you. Really, they have a personal vendetta against the entire Make Money from Home market, so right from the start you are looking at an uphill battle.
5. Keeping a blog updated takes a TON of work. Most people find that the amount of work required simply isn't worth the prospect of making pennies a day. It takes a very long time to build up a follower base, and most simply give up.
That said, I am expecting a check for $368 for last month's Adsense earnings nearly all from my Gaming niche blog, so it is POSSIBLE to make money blogging, it's just really HARD.
If you want to get started blogging, you can actually do it without investing a penny by creating a blog on blogger.com. Many experts recommend choosing an "exact match domain" and using the Wordpress blogging platform for building revenue generating sites. Personally I think these experts are full of it, exact match is an SEO trick that is being increasing devalued. You can make just as much blogging using a blogger blog as you can hosting your own.
If you go the Wordpress route you are looking at the following costs:
1. Domain ($10-$20 per year)
2. Hosting ($5-$20 per month)
The upside to using Wordpress is the myriad of plugins available that are basically a swiss army knife that can be used to add a ton of features to your website. Also you own the site, control the content, and get to keep 100% of the ad revenue generated (less taxes of course). Going the blogger route, there is somewhat less flexibility and Google does a revenue share on the advertising placed on the blog. This revenue share is largely offset by the fact that google does place higher paying ads on its own blog network.
The basic method is simple. Pick a subject you know a ton about, and every day make a post about that subject. These posts should be lengthy, well written, and on topic; then with a little luck your post will get syndicated, discovered, or go viral and you will make money blogging.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Make Money From Home
Make Money From Home
Lots of people want to be able to work from home and make money, particularly using their computer and telephone to either work remotely for an existing company or to earn money doing internet marketing. This market is so wrought with fraud and abuse its absolutely disgusting, nearly the whole "make money from home" market is a huge scam. The people making money are scamming a mass of people trying to get in on the action. My recommendation is don't ever pay a penny for any e-book, plugin, or software that is marketed toward the internet marketing or pretty much any product on clickbank.
These scams use length convincing videos, emotional text, and other manipulative techniques to try to get you to buy their money making system. Of course the system is nothing more than just promoting the system, no real products to be had other than some informational ebooks that are rehashed time and time again. Really the only one's that make any money on these schemes are the ones that are at the top of the pyramid. Please, I repeat DON'T buy anything other than hosting, graphic design, or other basic inexpensive marketing services.
Even the cheaters, the blackhatters, have trouble making any kind of serious money online. There are a few success stories, but their dreams are all easily crushed at the whim of a search engine algorithm change. This week Google launched Penguin, which I think is bogus they steal the Linux mascot for the name of this latest tweak to the single most important AI engine in the world. Prior to this the update was Panda, and I much preferred that as a mascot. This update still needs some tuning of course but does invalidate most of the blackhat services being offered. The blackhat scene will of course recover and this update does raise the prospect of negative SEO which is really scary. Good luck to those guys!
If you think you can make money doing free survey's online, guess what think again! You might spend a month to just earn $10-$20 prize and in that time you will get so much spam and viruses that you will need to abandon your email and reformat your computer. The whole CPA industry is a clever scam to get people to submit their info to sketchy scammers and fraudsters. I have a paid survey website and you can go check it out yourself if you want. We do actually redeem the points, but its crazy hard to earn enough to amount to anything. Honestly it doesn't make any money despite a catchy name and snazzy web design. $50 worth of adwords ads yielded all of $.30 of earning. You think you can do better in CPA? Maybe, but really don't count on it. CPA works for some traffic but you won't be getting repeat visitors!
Can you make money blogging?
I earn a little bit of money each month from my blogs. I blog about things I am interested in, hobbies, medical conditions that I suffer from, games I play, etc. I own a total of 36 domains registered in Godaddy and a dozen or so have been built so far. Nearly all of the blogs earn very little, maybe a few cents each week per blog, all but one that is part of my make money from home success story. While it does have a blog, that revenue PALES in comparison to the sales it generates. If google would put better ads on it, then it would do much better, but my niche sucks for ad revenue now.
I tried to make money online for 3 years and never made enough to get a check! But finally I hit pay dirt. I didn't mess with an exact match domain, or try to overly manipulate the search engines. I don't really even need google's traffic, and they can't give my traffic to someone else either, my site is 100% Panda, Penguin, and anything else proof. Instead of just building a blog, I did something much bigger, I built a BRAND. I get THOUSANDS of searches each month for my keyword, which when I started nobody was looking for. By building a brand you end up with amazing organic, search, and social traffic.
Social is VERY important, my brand's fanapge is quickly approaching 10,000 fans, and of those we have converted nearly half into paid members of our site. No fake fans, no paid fans, no fan exchange or anything like that. That stuff doesn't really work worth a damn anyhow as you need real people that are interested in your product to be able to get conversions. Post interesting content that people want and let things just grow naturally.
Over the next several posts I tell you my story, what I did right, wrong, and what I would have done differently. I could have easily sold this story as an ebook, bundled it with some open source software and sold it to you for $150 or more as the worlds greatest way to make money. Or I could build my list, forcing you to give me your email address to give you access to all the great information I am going be revealing. But I don't have the time to market scams to a list, and I think selling garbage ebooks is disgusting, so lets skip that step for now. To make money from air you must take money from others, in exchange for something that has no cost to you, but gives a good value to your customers. All my secrets to make money from home will be revealed here absolutely free.
Lots of people want to be able to work from home and make money, particularly using their computer and telephone to either work remotely for an existing company or to earn money doing internet marketing. This market is so wrought with fraud and abuse its absolutely disgusting, nearly the whole "make money from home" market is a huge scam. The people making money are scamming a mass of people trying to get in on the action. My recommendation is don't ever pay a penny for any e-book, plugin, or software that is marketed toward the internet marketing or pretty much any product on clickbank.
These scams use length convincing videos, emotional text, and other manipulative techniques to try to get you to buy their money making system. Of course the system is nothing more than just promoting the system, no real products to be had other than some informational ebooks that are rehashed time and time again. Really the only one's that make any money on these schemes are the ones that are at the top of the pyramid. Please, I repeat DON'T buy anything other than hosting, graphic design, or other basic inexpensive marketing services.
Even the cheaters, the blackhatters, have trouble making any kind of serious money online. There are a few success stories, but their dreams are all easily crushed at the whim of a search engine algorithm change. This week Google launched Penguin, which I think is bogus they steal the Linux mascot for the name of this latest tweak to the single most important AI engine in the world. Prior to this the update was Panda, and I much preferred that as a mascot. This update still needs some tuning of course but does invalidate most of the blackhat services being offered. The blackhat scene will of course recover and this update does raise the prospect of negative SEO which is really scary. Good luck to those guys!
If you think you can make money doing free survey's online, guess what think again! You might spend a month to just earn $10-$20 prize and in that time you will get so much spam and viruses that you will need to abandon your email and reformat your computer. The whole CPA industry is a clever scam to get people to submit their info to sketchy scammers and fraudsters. I have a paid survey website and you can go check it out yourself if you want. We do actually redeem the points, but its crazy hard to earn enough to amount to anything. Honestly it doesn't make any money despite a catchy name and snazzy web design. $50 worth of adwords ads yielded all of $.30 of earning. You think you can do better in CPA? Maybe, but really don't count on it. CPA works for some traffic but you won't be getting repeat visitors!
Can you make money blogging?
I earn a little bit of money each month from my blogs. I blog about things I am interested in, hobbies, medical conditions that I suffer from, games I play, etc. I own a total of 36 domains registered in Godaddy and a dozen or so have been built so far. Nearly all of the blogs earn very little, maybe a few cents each week per blog, all but one that is part of my make money from home success story. While it does have a blog, that revenue PALES in comparison to the sales it generates. If google would put better ads on it, then it would do much better, but my niche sucks for ad revenue now.
I tried to make money online for 3 years and never made enough to get a check! But finally I hit pay dirt. I didn't mess with an exact match domain, or try to overly manipulate the search engines. I don't really even need google's traffic, and they can't give my traffic to someone else either, my site is 100% Panda, Penguin, and anything else proof. Instead of just building a blog, I did something much bigger, I built a BRAND. I get THOUSANDS of searches each month for my keyword, which when I started nobody was looking for. By building a brand you end up with amazing organic, search, and social traffic.
Social is VERY important, my brand's fanapge is quickly approaching 10,000 fans, and of those we have converted nearly half into paid members of our site. No fake fans, no paid fans, no fan exchange or anything like that. That stuff doesn't really work worth a damn anyhow as you need real people that are interested in your product to be able to get conversions. Post interesting content that people want and let things just grow naturally.
Over the next several posts I tell you my story, what I did right, wrong, and what I would have done differently. I could have easily sold this story as an ebook, bundled it with some open source software and sold it to you for $150 or more as the worlds greatest way to make money. Or I could build my list, forcing you to give me your email address to give you access to all the great information I am going be revealing. But I don't have the time to market scams to a list, and I think selling garbage ebooks is disgusting, so lets skip that step for now. To make money from air you must take money from others, in exchange for something that has no cost to you, but gives a good value to your customers. All my secrets to make money from home will be revealed here absolutely free.
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