I received a note from my friend Jennifer that included a website URL and the question “Have you heard of this – is it legit?“
After a brief look at the site which is promoting a product called “Easy Google Profit”, I could tell why she thought it might have been a legitimate online business opportunity. The site looks very professional. With the title Canada Job Journal and a newpaper-like appearance (see screenshot below), most business opportunity seekers would want to trust that the information is both authoritative and objective.
Unfortunately, nothing could be farther from the truth, in this particular case.
To weed out legitimate online business opportunities from scams, you need to fortify yourself with a healthy dose of skepticism and be prepared to dig deeper to discover the truth before you lay out your hard-earned money on such offers.
In cases such as this one – you'll quickly discover that the writer is less than honest.
Immediately below the article title “Jobs: Is Working Online At Home The Next Gold Rush?” was a line that read “Posted by Anthony on March 15th, 2009 and filed under Finance“, yet there are no links to this supposed journal's categories, Finance or otherwise.
The next item is a graphic stating “As seen on ABC, AOL, CNN, MSNBC and USA Today”, along with each of those companies logos. You might think “WOW! This must REALLY be good if CNN is endorsing it“, however, if you do a search for the product name and any one of those company names, you'll come up with a bunch of Google search results about what a scam this product is.
My B.S. meter went into High Alert while reading the second line of the first paragraph, “Mary, a mother from Penticton, BC is thriving…“
ANY time you see the name of your hometown on a business opportunity website, you should be alert to the fact that the webmaster is probably using a little programming trick.
Sure enough, when I used WorldProxy202 to see what surfers from both the U.S. and the U.K. would see when reading the same page, the sentence changed to “Mary, a mother from ,is thriving…“
If that isn't sufficient proof, do a View > Page Source on the page and you'll see the javascipt coding as follows:
<code><script src=”http://j.maxmind.com/app/geoip.js”></script><script type=”text/javascript”><!–
document.write(geoip_city());
// –></script>, <script type=”text/javascript”><!–
document.write(geoip_region());
// –></script></code>
If that little bit of trickery doesn't convince you to close the page, then this next discovery definitely should have you running away.
You've seen ads on websites thousands of times, right?
Normally, clicking on the different headlines will take you to DIFFERENT sites. Well, in this case, they AREN'T ads. It's a picture that leads to only ONE link which is easy enough to discern if you see the ‘hand' come up on your cursor everywhere within the ad area, and not just when you cursor over a link.
As a matter of fact, if you take the time to cursor over every link on the page, you would notice that each one is exactly the same – and they all go to the same offer.
If you need MORE incentive to reject the offer, take a look at what appear to be comments from site visitors.
Each one is either favorable to the offer, or there is a question that someone answers with a ‘proof of earnings' graphic – because of course a professional journal wouldn't be posting images from inside someone's Google account.
Moreover, the comments are always ‘closed due to spam', (see bottom of the screenshot) because the webmaster wouldn't want REAL visitors posting REAL comments or asking REAL questions.
To up the ante, the webmaster adds an article from the Vancouver Sun (CanWest Publishing) about the current state of the economy as it relates to employment. Of course, the news is pretty dire and therefore gives visitors incentive to WANT to make ‘Easy Google Profit' working from home on their computers.
However, the Copyright Permission and Rules on Canada.com pertaining to Canwest newspaper Web sites clearly specify that “commercial uses including publication, retransmission, broadcast, posting to newsgroups, mail lists or electronic bulletin boards, circulation, selling, reproduction or redistribution in any medium are prohibited, except with the prior written approval of the copyright owner“.
Here's what Google actually had to say about these systems…:
Of late, we've received a few emails from new AdSense applicants about not being accepted into the program despite paying a specific amount of money or buying a CD package.
We'd like to take this opportunity to state that we're not affiliated with any third-parties that solicit payment to join the AdSense program or that sell CDs with money-back guarantee offers. AdSense is a free product offered to publishers by Google Inc., and there’s no cost or obligation involved. As a result, we recommend that prospective publishers exercise caution when presented with such offers.
Bottom line – scammers exist only because there are legions of people who still believe in “overnight riches” with no work involved – aka “suckers”.
Don't be a sucker – do your homework!
While Google Adsense is one way to make money online, you'll earn only pennies for each person that clicks on those links. To make dollars instead, learn how to sell real products and services from your website as an affiliate marketer – read the Super Affiliate Handbook – a real step-by-step guide that teaches you how to build a real and sustainable online business in affiliate marketing.