Money Making Scams That Work and How to Avoid Them

I have been in the Internet Marketing World for over tens years now. I know what works and what doesn’t work, but there is always more to learn. There are a good deal of money making scams that work. I know this because I have fell for a lot of them. In fact, when I first got started, it seemed very easy to find a scam and very hard to find legitimate programs truly focused on the success of their students.

In this post, I am going to list many of the money making scams that work, how to avoid them, and tell you about how I got SLAPPED by Google back when I started.

On my site you will find affiliate links along with other links. If you click on a link that requires you to sign-up or pay for something, then be assured that I will make some money from your action. The money I earn pays for my website, so that I continue to provide you with great information. Rest assured, that I will only recommend products I have tried and enjoy using. You can learn more about my Affiliate Policy by clicking here

If you want to learn about the red flags of scams then check out this earlier post.

Some of My Experience Making Money Online

When I first got into making money online, that was my focus: making money online. I wanted to turn the Internet into an employee so that it could make money for me while I was working my day job. The goal was to be able to eventually quit my day job and solely make enough money online to pay my bills and allow myself financial freedom.

It took me years to get to where I am now and if you follow my advice, then you can shave your learning experience by 90%. Here is some of the things that I first got involved with, how I got labeled a spammer, and how I got slapped by Google.

People get scammed all the time online. If you have in the past, then don’t get yourself down: it happens to everyone when they first start out if they don’t research what they are getting into. Here is a list of blogs that talk about scams from the Federal Trade Commission. If you still need more information after you read this post, then go check it out.

How It Began For Me

I was so naive when I first started searching for ways to make it online. I found a program that taught you how to make money online with help from Twitter. This was my first lesson in the ethics of selling online.

I don’t remember the name of the program or the guy that developed it, but what you were to do was to join an affiliate program called ClickBank. Google the company if you don’t know who they are after you finish reading this post.

After you joined the program, you were to find products, get your affiliate link, and then post those links on Twitter with a short, catchy description. The trick was to post a product link about every two hours or so.

It Worked!!

I made three hundred dollars in one day!

Then Twitter caught on to what people were doing, canceled accounts they believed were spammers, and changed their algorithm so that you could not post the same exact post or a post with the same link in it more than once a day. If you did, then they deleted the second post and eventually closed your profile and labeled your email as a spammer. Which meant you could not open another Twitter account with the same email.

This hurt my ego some. I didn’t know what I was doing was wrong. I was following the advice of someone that seemed to know what they were doing. I made money on my first attempt, but now I was blacklisted in the eyes of Twitter. That’s not what I wanted.

Scammed By a Stripper

My second lesson was taught to me by a stripper from New York. That’s Right… a stripper and she was proud to tell you. The lady was selling a program that created money making websites for you. The program came with 15 ready-to-use sites that were guaranteed to make money… or so she claimed.

I didn’t have any experience creating websites, so as a newbie, I thought this was the perfect opportunity for me. I didn’t just buy the 15 websites, I also bought the up-sale that gave me 15 more websites every week, and I bought the next up-sale that promised to advertise my websites all over the web.

After I purchased the last up-sale I was sent to a final congratulations video that the lady made to thank people for going “all-the-way” with her. During this video she mentioned that the guru’s were laughing at people like me you wanted to make money online for little to nothing. I took this very personal and thankfully the product was a ClickBank product, and I was able to get my $230 dollars back.

Thank You ClickBank!!

That is one great thing about ClickBank. If you are not happy with a product they sell, then you can easily get your money back. Scammer don’t really have a chance when they use the ClickBank Market Place to sell his or her products.

I recently did a review about a product that sounds a lot like this product. Only this time, it’s not a stripper selling it. Check out that review by clicking here.

A Lesson in Ethics

Another program that I found was created by a guy from India. This program taught you how to leverage surveys to make money online, but it didn’t seem very ethical to me.

What he taught was to find surveys on ClickBank that paid up to $120 dollars if a person completed them. Normally these types of surveys gave the survey participant a new cell phone or big screen TV if they completed all the steps.

I am sure you may have seen these types of surveys. They require that you do a certain number of “silver” promotions (sign up to a book club or buy some knives) and then complete a certain number of “gold” promotions (sign up for two credit cards or purchase a high valued service). Once you complete them you get a new TV or something else worthwhile.

The guy said you were to post on Craigslist that you had whatever product the survey offered for sale for a ridiculously low price. Once the person contacted you about the item, you were to tell them you no longer had the item, but you knew how they could get one for free and then provide them with your affiliate link.

If ten or more people completed a survey a day then you could easily make over $1,000 dollar a day. That sounded great to me, but I didn’t like the idea of never really having the item to sell. So, I contacted the creator of the program and asked him if it was in good ethics to do this type of sale process…in my mind a scam.

He replied that the people were trying to get something for nothing, so in his mind it was OK because they were trying to rip him off first. Wow, that was not what I wanted to do. My conscience was not able to let me go through with this program. It wasn’t a ClickBank product, so I lost my $50 dollars I paid for this program.

My final experience with scams caused me to get slapped by Google. This means they blacklisted my accounts, didn’t rank my websites, and wouldn’t let me promote with Adwords. Once again, I was following the wrong advice.

Slapped by Google

This time could have been my final attempt at online marketing. Luckily for me, I had a Google Representative that helped me out for a few years.

I bought a book from a late night infomercial that guaranteed to teach you how to make money online. The guy is still in the Internet marketing field to this day. I am not going to give his name because maybe he didn’t mean to lead me astray, but following his advice hurt my online reputation. I will tell you that his brother and he is very well-known and many people have had success following them. Well, according to their Facebook page.

What he taught was to find products on Clickbank and then purchase Google Ads to promote them. There was no need for a website because you could post ads that directly sent people to the product through your affiliate link. It sounded like the best idea I had ever heard of.

Google had sent me a post card that gave me $200 dollars in credits to use on ads. I thought I would use the free money to make some money and then reinvest in more ads.

I set up my ads one night and went to bed. The next morning I logged into my Google Ads account and got a very big surprise. There was a big red bar across the screen saying that my account had been suspended. I didn’t know what was going on.

Back then, when you set up a Google Ads account it was possible to contact a Google representative by email. I emailed mine and left my phone number. He called me back and explained that Google did not like the way I was trying to advertise on their platform and that all of my accounts (Google Ads, Google websites, and Email Addresses) were blacklisted and flagged.

He asked me why I thought it was a good idea to use affiliate links in Google Ads. I told him I was just following the advice of another marketer. He asked me the name of the marketer and then tells me they too were having a problem with him because many people were trying the same thing I tried.

I worked with my representative for many years trying to rebuild my reputation with Google. I finally achieve it and they began ranking my websites once again and I learn a lot about how Google works during that time. It is very important to understand the guidelines of Google Advertising before you try to advertise within their platforms.

Is There an Honest Way to Make Money Online?

Yes, there are many legitimate ways to make money online. You can check out this earlier post to learn more about them. I have found one company online that truly does teach people how to earn an online income. They get you started with a website for free, no credit card needed, and once you get up and going, then you can pay to continue your education. It is the best place I have found in my 10+ years working online.

Conclusion

There are a good deal of money making scams online. They are easy to spot if you know the red flags. If they claim to do all the work for you–it’s a scam. If they claim you need to make money by being unethical–it’s a scam. If they teach you methods that go against Google’s Guidelines–it’s a scam.

Take my advice and shave 90% of your learning curve and don’t ever get slapped by Google. If you want to learn how to guarantee your success online and join a community of successful affiliates, then please click on the banner below or check out my review of the program by clicking here if you need more information.

Here is to your success and please be careful online.