The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things

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The Straight and Honest Truth about Online Money-Making Schemes

March 26th, 2008 · 8 Comments

I have read (and laughed at) many of the home business money-making schemes that i’ve stumbled on by clicking on links out of Gmail’s ads at the top or from Google search results. The claims are completely laughable as people claim that they can show you a system that makes $300-$2500/day or more! They claim they make these sums with as little as 30 minutes a day of “data entry” work or other such schemes. Here I will discuss one scheme and some others that i’ve messed around with in the past so hopefully you can learn to AVOID all of these money-making scams. Yes, we all want to get rich quick, no, it won’t happen through any of these online schemes except for the scammer themselves will make good money.

The one i’m going to focus on today is called by several names (first clue its a scam!): Keyboarding4Cash.com, KeyStrokes4Cash.Com, DataEntryMadeEasy.Com, WorkAtHomeTyping.Org and numerous other domains. I will give the scammers credit for some of the more creative ideas i’ve seen employed just in the last couple of years. One of the new things i’ve seen the scammers doing is starting up a TON of other domains that when you search on Google for things like “keyboarding 4 cash is a scam” you will see Google ads saying “97% of money-making schemes are scams, click here to avoid them!!!”. When you click there they explain how they, the ever-diligent consumer protector, have sought out and tried 20-60 different online programs (the number varies on these sites) and used their own money and tried each system for 2 months to see if it really works. They were all scams, but wait, 3 of them happen to be good programs you can actually make money from. All you have to do is click here and take advantage of this special 50% off coupon that I have.

This is where the alarm bells should be going off - the first question you must always ask is why is this person warning you about these schemes, is it out of the kindness of their heart or is the link an affiliate link that will make them money if you sign up for whatever scheme is promised at the other end of the link? If you mouse-over the link and it has a code appended at the end, it is most likely an affiliate marketing link of some sort. Also, if you are at somewhere like WorkAtHomeTyping.Org and the link they put you to for DataEntryMadeEasy is structured like this: workathometyping.org/dataentrymadeeasy/ or something along those lines, they are just utilizing a hidden redirect using PHP or ASP or some other web language so that you can’t see that it really is just an affiliate link that they pass in the redirect to the other website!

The second clue that something is not as legit as it might seem on the surface - copied content with changed names. If you look at the various review websites found around the web for Keyboarding4Cash.Com or KeyStrokes4Cash.com, you will find that the “97% of them are scams except these three” websites often have identical content with one name changed and a different website theme slapped on it. For instance, one of them said “My name is Andrew Johnson and I am going to protect you from the scams that I have found online.”. The other website (both pointed to the same 3 supposed non-scams by the way!) said “My name is Frank Peterson and I am going to protect you from the scams that I have found online.”. The content was copied verbatim except for name changes and I found this on numerous sites. Basically the scammers have made numerous clone websites that claim to “review” the product that they are offering and say it is the only one that isn’t a scam. This is an interesting tactic that I didn’t notice 4-5 years ago when I last messed around with these schemes to see what they were all about. This tactic also helps them with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that their websites will show up higher. It is just a bit suspicious that when you decide to search Google for whether a particular website is a scam, you find numerous websites with cloned content pointing to the one you were searching for as “the one that is not a scam”.

Third clue, “time-limited coupons”! I would love to take a survey of how many people actually believe the banner ads that say “You are today’s winner click here for your prize!!!” or ones that have a countdown saying “Claim this item, offer good for only 30…29…28…27 seconds” and counts down. Time-limited coupons are the same joke! Do you think people actually have time to update all of their websites with various coupons every few days? Why is it that if I go to keyboard4cash.com next week it will still say that “I screwed up the coupons last week, so everyone gets half off!”. It is something about consumer psychology that makes this tactic work so well. You need to buy now or you might miss out on this golden opportunity. Why wait until next week if we’re giving you 50% off now? Scams try to tap into the impulse buy factor to get you to part with your money. They also all offer 30-day money back guarantees that are nearly impossible to get money back from them for. The question to always ask yourself is, “How are they going to make money off of this site?”. If they really wanted to help you out as much as they claim, why do they charge an “entry fee” to the site? Why not have a free member’s area or Wiki setup with good online money making schemes that actually work - they don’t because they are making money off of you buying into the idea of making money.

Case in point: A few years ago I got suckered into a turn-key system that claimed they’d help you setup an online website and make money etc. Basically, the scheme was this: you pay them hundreds of dollars and they give you a crappy website template and a bunch of e-books that you can now try to market and sell on your website. Setup some Google Pay-Per-Click ads and voila, you’re off to the races! I’d say 99% of the schemes you see online (note how i’m making use of made-up statistics - this is what the scam websites do a lot - statistics are useless without properly conducted studies done that are well-documented so don’t believe any of them!) consist of selling you the concept of selling other people the concept of making money. Basically to “get rich quick” you setup a website selling the idea of “getting rich quick”. It all boils down to the age-old affiliate marketing scheme of making sites pointing to other sites to get people to buy products.

If you are curious of how the person in the pictures with the fancy cars and houses and pictures of them on vacation is making all of that money, look no further then whatever website you are looking at - that is the crux of nearly all of these schemes.  Also there is no real reason to believe that anybody in those pictures is actually the person who made the website in the first place!  We can all use Google image search to come up with pictures of people standing in front of nice cars or houses - that doesn’t mean the person in the picture even owns the house or car anyway!

The rest of the schemes revolve around “filling out surveys” to make tons of money online. Guess what, I’ve tried out some of those sites that claim they can direct you to the best survey sites to make money and all they consist of is an out-dated list of FREE to sign up for survey taking websites that occasionally provide incentives for doing so. If you want to be spammed into taking tons of surveys, i’ll clue you in to the only one i’ve seen that actually does a large quantity of them: GlobalTestMarket.Com But guess what, signing up with them is FREE and they really do respect opt-out and cancelling your account. However, like other paid survey companies, they set “thresholds” to limit when you can convert your points into money or withdraw money you’ve accumulated. With GlobalTestMarket you have to get 1000 market points before you can convert it to $50 in payout. Each survey gives you around 3-50 market points (3 points if you don’t qualify, 50 if you do and complete it). So, doing a little bit of basic math you will see that for spending 15-30 minutes filling out a survey you are getting paid the whopping amount of $2.50. Some of the surveys pay even less than that. If you want to fill out surveys (maybe 5 a day at most you will get from them) for $2-$3 a piece - with 20 completed needed to get your $50 out feel free. This will take you weeks to do to earn $50. I’d say $100 a month is the most you can realistically make if you don’t spend all day taking surveys. Wow, $100 a month, you can retire and go live in the Bahamas now!

Now, for the companies listed earlier in my little diatribe, I looked up their WhoIs info, and guess what? It either has foreign entries that are inconsistent or they are listed with privacy shielding agencies such as WhoIsGuard where basically the real registrar is hiding behind some 3rd party company. When multiple sites that seem associated all are behind WhoisGuard, that is a good clue-in that they have something to hide.

I will write some more on this topic later - but what it boils down to is this (my own quote): “In order to make money from any business, you are going to have to do real work. Expecting a website or scheme to make you money in minutes a day spent is unrealistic and foolish. Making any business work requires real time, effort, capital outlay and a strong work ethic.”.

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Tags: Current Events · Rant · Scams · Search Engines

8 responses so far ↓

  • 1 The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things » Blog Archive » A preponderance of Cars.. // Apr 17, 2008 at 11:23 am

    [...] a special coupon for half off that price but it’s only good for 3-days!  You can get it with this coupon for $49.95 [...]

  • 2 The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things » Blog Archive » A Question of Believability // Apr 25, 2008 at 8:59 am

    [...] marketing schemes try to suck you in and it is why I also wrote this article about how most online money making schemes are scams and also made the point to not trust anyone who has a picture of a fancy car on their money making [...]

  • 3 William // Jun 23, 2008 at 5:54 pm

    I liked your article. If everyone is a crook, how do you make money online? Isn’t there any course or system we can trust to learn how to go about it?
    Thank you!

  • 4 ironwill96 // Jun 30, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    @William: There are of course ways to make money online, I just think that it takes a lot of work on your part and isn’t as easy as a 1-click turn-style system that will automate your path to wealth.

    I think the key is to find a niche product and then market yourself well. Others have had success making stores built around other people’s products (such as an Amazon affiliate store). I’m no expert at making money online but it is always fun to dream and imagine!

  • 5 Grant B. // Aug 11, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    Nicely written, and a breath of fresh air! One paragraph in I was honestly afraid that yours was another of of those “97% of money-making schemes are scams, click here to avoid them” blogs, but I quickly realized that I had finally found a voice of sanity in amongst the hawkers.

    Keep it up. Too many people get roped into these bogus scams all day long. I hope that your writings will reach some of them and save the $49.99 into the wind syndrome :-)

  • 6 ironwill96 // Aug 11, 2008 at 8:49 pm

    Thanks for your comments, I actually wrote another article here: http://www.greatpcs.net/2008/08/02/time-to-talk-scams-again/

    about some of the more recent ones i’ve seen such as high-yield investment programs. There are too many scams to keep up with, but as the saying goes: “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

  • 7 Joseph // Sep 29, 2008 at 7:46 am

    If all of these wonderfull money making schemes are for real why dont they just let the people use it, make a profit and then take their money from the profit and in this way we all can make bundles of dollars. By the way do you perhaps know of such program where you can use the program and pay later with the profit you make

  • 8 ironwill96 // Sep 29, 2008 at 8:03 am

    Joseph,

    I don’t know of any such programs. Given that most online money making schemes actually revolve around selling online money making schemes it is unlikely that such a program exists. Where would be the enforcement mechanism to make sure that people pay you after they make money off the program?

    I don’t think bundles of dollars exist out there except for legitimate business ideas that take a lot of time, effort, and creativity to succeed. I am research some other fake money making opportunities now and am doing some actual research in buying into some of the programs so I can give a first hand report on how they don’t work.

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