Wordpress Comment Spam Stopped In Its Tracks! Best Plugin Ever.

by El Plumber (admin) on June 28, 2009

It’s funny how you don’t miss something until it’s gone. In this case, I have been taking for granted the fact that a single plugin is devouring all our comment spam here at the Electron Plumber. Devouring it in the sense that the spam is blocked before it is accepted into the system, so not only have we been spam free, but the actual Wordpress spam queue is empty as well.

Why would we want to do this?  The built in Askimet spam filter catches 99% of spam and throws it in the spam queue right? Well, in addition to letting 1% of the spam through, it also blocks 1% of the legitimate comments and drops them in the spam queue. Since we like everyone’s voice to be heard, we used to scan the spam queue manually a couple of times a day to make sure nothing got lost.

We moderate all comments here since lots of unscrupulous people try to take advantage of the fact that we rank highly for some sought after scam program keywords in Google, and it was getting very annoying having to weed through 50+ spam comments a day before deleting them. So I decided to take action!  Now we have no spam to weed through.

How did we accomplish this? A simple Wordpress plugin that goes by the somewhat odd name TanTanNoodles Simple Spam Filter. It works like this:

  1. Any comments that has over 5 links is flagged as potential spam.  This is configurable and can be set to any number of links.
  2. Any comment that includes any of a list of definable keywords (viagra!  porn!  ringtones!) is flagged as potential spam.
  3. Any comment that contains a definable regular expression is flagged.  For example, the php-bb forum code for a link is [url=] and lots of bots try to use it even on Wordpress comment forms.

Any comment that meets the above conditions isn’t rejected outright, instead the user is brought to a captcha that looks like the following:

spamcapcha Wordpress Comment Spam Stopped In Its Tracks! Best Plugin Ever.

Bots just give up on it.  Which so far has blocked 99.99999% of the spam from even getting to the spam queue while still allowing legitimate uses who use spammy words or many links to still post comments, they just have to do the captcha.  I’m guessing less than 2% of the comments we get here have had to go through the captcha process.  We’ve had 1756 spam messages blocked by the plugin, and only one has gotten through it and even that one landed in the spam queue.  It was pretty obvious that it was hand entered by a live person.

You do have to sign up for a reCaptcha account (100% free) and link it to the plugin, so it’s not totally effortless to setup, but OH MY GOD we don’t get blog comment spam anymore.  Can’t recommend the darn thing enough.

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Google Treasure Chest Exposed!

by El Plumber (admin) on June 27, 2009

Thanks to Big Chuck Turner for pointing us to a  news video produced by the hard hitting news team at a local ABC affiliate in Philadelphia about the Google Treasure Chest and the fake Miami Gazette News site promoting it.  Note that the news story doesn’t touch on the affiliate networks promoting this, or the fact that the Miami Gazette News is 99% likely not related to Google Treasure Chest in particular, but an affiliate site pointing to whatever Google money making scheme is paying the most that month.

Video after the break.

[click to continue…]

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Amazon Closes All Affiliate Accounts Based In North Carolina

by El Plumber (admin) on June 26, 2009

top logo v46787036 Amazon Closes All Affiliate Accounts Based In North CarolinaAt 4:30am this morning, all Affiliate accounts based in North Carolina were closed by Amazon.  That means no more referrals paid for anyone sending affiliate tagged links to Amazon if they are based in NC.  The affiliates received the following email:

We regret to inform you that the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) appears ready to enact an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with North Carolina-based Associates. You are receiving this e-mail because our records indicate that you are an Amazon Associate and resident of North Carolina.

Please note that this is not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Associates Program. All referral fees earned on qualified traffic will continue to be paid as planned.

But because the new law is drafted to go into effect once enacted – which could happen in the next two weeks – we will have to terminate the participation of all North Carolina residents in the Amazon Associates program on or before that same day. After the termination day, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com nor will we accept new applications for the Associates program from North Carolina residents.

The unfortunate consequences of this legislation on North Carolina residents like you were explained in detail to key senators and representatives in Raleigh, including the leadership of the Senate, House, and both chambers’ finance committees. Other states, including Maryland, Minnesota, and Tennessee, considered nearly identical schemes, but rejected these proposals largely because of the adverse impact on their states’ residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates program, and we will apprise you of the General Assembly’s action on this matter.

Sincerely,
Amazon.com

Why?  Because of a law that *might* be enacted by the North Carolina legislature that would apply NC sales tax to any sale made through any web site based in North Carolina, which includes any technically made through Amazon but referred by an affiliate in North Carolina.

To which Amazon picked up their ball and went home, instantly depriving many North Carolina residents of their affiliate income.  Note, they were warned a few weeks earlier that Amazon might cut them off, so it’s not a complete surprise, but it certainly left many affiliate scrambling.  The general consensus is this is a shot across the bow of the North Carolina legislature to rethink their bill while they still can, as I’m sure many state representatives have received an earful from angry and suddenly jobless affiliates this morning.

There is similar legislation in New York and New York affiliate have received warnings as well, but so far their accounts are still open.

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Google Kit Scam Sites - The Full List

by El Plumber (admin) on June 21, 2009

Well folks, I just can’t keep up anymore!  There are so many ads placed by affiliates pushing these different Google Money Kit, Google Biz Kits, Internet Cash Kits, Google Fast Cash, Google Money Makers and lying/hiding the real pricing that we here at the Plumber just can’t keep up posting about each one we find.

So here we go, a master list of all the affiliate sites, all the programs they link to, and how to cancel them.  For a full explanation on why these are all scams in our opinion and how they work, see The Easy Google Profit Scam.  Note that all of these typically say things like “As Seen on CNN, NBC, ABC, Fox, Google, CNBC, and As Seen On TV” which they can technically if they have purchased advertising on any of those sites.

Please share this with your friends and loved ones using the Share This link at the bottom of the page so they don’t get taken!

Flogs (Fake Blogs)

Mike’s Money Site at www.mikesmoneysite.com/2/ - Classic Flog with GeoIP tracking to make it look like Mike Smithson lives in your town too with his beautiful wife Angela and his daughter Marie.  Links to Google Cash Secret at rs925.cashsecretclub.com.

Diago’s Road To Riches at www.diegomakesdinero.com - This one is an ethnic focused Flog shooting for suckering in the Latino surfer.  Nice picture of “Diego Gonzales from California” holding a pile of money and includes a link that takes you to “Chasque Aquí Para Español” where you see the El Camino de Diego Para Riquezas spanish version of the page.   Links to The Google Money System Home Business Kit which takes you to www.yoursearchprofits and our friend Easy Google Profit  from Google Pay Day.

Welcome To My Money Blog at www.resourceofwealth.org/money/ - Says he’s Jeremy Parker from the Woodland, CA area and uses the same picutre of the guy in a tuxido as many of the other sites.   Links to Google Biz Kit and Earn Google Cash with a title “Earn Cash With Google”.  Terms and Conditions say your are dealing with www.profitstudiolearning.com. DR globalDirect, Inc. d/b/a Reg.Net.   Hidden monthly charge here is $69.90 after 7 days.

Bryans Money Blog at BryansMoneyBlog.com - My name is Bryan Hunter. I am originally from the Irvington, NY area.  But he looks *exactly* like Jeremy Parker and Kevin Hoeffer and all the rest, same exact pictures and everything.  Links to the Google Cash Kit, which again brings you right to www.yoursearchprofits.com which appears to be owned by a company called JRS Media Solutions.   Read the terms and conditions that only appear as a link on the purchase page and you get this:  “I am ordering the Earn Google Cash™ CD and trial membership for $2.29 S&H, after the 7-day trial I will be charged $59.95 if I do not cancel. I also agree to the 14 day and 21 day bonus trials to Grant Master™ and Network Agenda™ for $7.95 a month and $9.95 a month thereafter, should I choose not to cancel.”

Scotts Money Blog at ScottsMoneyBlog.com - Bryan’s brother Scott lives in your town too!  That’s amazing huh!  Again total fake, another GeoIP targeting script that figures out where you live by your internet providers IP address.  This site calls it Google Fast Cash and again links to yoursearchprofits.com and the Google Pay Day company.

Jennifers Money Blog at jennifersmoneyblog.com - another flog using GeoIP Targeting to try to make you think that Jennifer Hunter (maybe Bryan and Scotts long lost sister!) is making money online in your town and can show you the secret for only $2.95!  Oh, and $95 after 7 days, and $34 after 14 days, and $24 after 21 days, then again the next month. Links to Google Fast Cash same as the others, and our old friends at yoursearchprofits and Google Pay Day.

How I Made Cash Make Money At Home Online at howimadecash.com/a/ - Kevin Hoeffer lives!  No GeoIP tracking here, Kevin lives in California and has been wearing that same wedding tux in about 200 different blogs now.  All the links say Google Cash Kit, click on anything and you go to yourblogprofits.com/c2 which says it’s owned by someone named Eco Marketing, LLC.

Resource Of Wealth at howimademoneyathome.com/money/ - The title of this one is Welcome To My Money Blog and starts our old friend Kevin Hoeffer’s picture in the wedding tuxedo, but this time his name is Jeremy Parker, originally from the Woodland, CA area.  This affiliate apparently decided not to spring for GeoIp targeting for his flog.  This one sells a Google Cash Starter Kit and a Google Biz Kit.  All links take you to rs925.cashsecretclub.com and Google Fast Cash run by Cash Secret Club.

Chris Fraiser at chris-fraiser.com - Chris lives in your town through the magic of the GeoIP tracker software with his wife who was “amazed”  when he found the only non-scam method to earn money online.  Except that the only non-scam method for him to make money online is to scam you out of your money.  Ingenious in a way.  Links to Make Money With Google and the Easy Google Cash kit litter the page, all of them take you to cashsecretclub.com

Fake News Sites

Los Angeles Weekly News at www.losangeles-weekly.com/jobs/ - Newer style fake news site discussing our dear old friend Mary Steadman and how she made a killing using the Google Home Business Kit links to www.yoursearchprofits and the classic Easy Google Profit system from Google Pay Day.

Online Jobs Journal at server2.mediajmp.com/donsplash.html - “Breaking News. Top Stories. Trusted Sources” is their tag line and boy are they anything but.  Our good friend Mary Steadman and her picutre with the toddler is featured prominantly in this one.  Pushes the Google Biz Kit, which links to a page titled “Google Fire” and is the same old www.yoursearchprofits from Google Pay Day and the Easy Google Profit scam.

Your Town Monitor Tribune at monitortribune.com/college-dropout-makes-10000-a-month.php - Uses GeoIP targeting to look like it’s a newspaper from your town which they think makes people trust it more.  Says the program is called Google Cash but again links to Google Fast Cash at rs933.cashsecretclub.com.

World Job News at www.world-job-news.com/finance/ - Wow, this is certainly taking the news site pioneered by the Los Angeles Tribune and Miami Gazette to new heights.  This one REALLY looks like a random news site, complete with author tag line and photo, little video and good quality photos.  Other than the fact that the page renders poorly with overlapping links and takes 5+ minutes that is.  Links to a program called Google Money Master but sents you right to our old buddy at www.yoursearchprofits from Google Pay Day and the Easy Google Profit scam.

Your Town, State Local News titled DailyJobsTribune.com at jobs-tribune.com - This one takes the World Job News format above one step further.  Looks like they cleaned up the HTML problems or maybe the one above was just a cheap copy of the jobs-tribune.com.  Since the title says DailyJobsTribune.com but the url is jobs-tribune.com, I suspect someone is knocking off another affiliates site.  It does look really good, and the GeoIP targeting that says “Your Town, CA Local News” will fool a lot of people.  Plus it makes it harder to look for the scam since you can’t search on the newspaper name.   The fake reporter’s name is Tom Chilton @ www.Financial-Weekly.com which is likely the original site this was knocked off from.  The link is to Google Money Master and you end up at secure4.s3curehost.com and Easy Google Cash.   The terms and conditions on this one:

You  may cancel Your subscription by calling toll-free at 1-800-497-4988 or 1-801-578-9020 (International customers please call 1-866-321-2728), or by writing to 1810 E Sahara Ave, Suite 1-341, Las Vegas, NV 89104. Should You fail to cancel Your Subscription within the 7 day trial, You will be billed $2.95. Additionally, You will be billed $79.90 again 7 days from the Trial Start date  and every month thereafter for Your monthly Subscription unless canceled by You.

Your Town Daily News at net-newsdaily.com/?s=59 - Is Working Online At Home The Way to Financial Freedom?  Yes, but this deal will only put you in debt.  Another GeoIP named site with the traditional fake news layout.  All links say Easy Google Profits and link to good old securecartcenter.com and this time the name is Google Money Master.

More To Come!

I Was Taken By One Of These Sites! What Do I Do?

  1. Don’t feel bad! Seems like hundreds if not thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of “negative option” offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
  2. In our opinion you should call/write your credit card company, report your card stolen, and dispute the charges.  Basically you’ve just been internet mugged and getting these people to stop charging your card is reported to be very difficult.  Reporting the card stolen gets you a new card number immediately and disables the old one.
  3. Monitor your credit accounts by clicking here for a free month of Experian ID Protection monitoring.  You just gave some shady characters your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number.  You think they’ll stop trying to take money from you just because you canceled your card number?  Experian is a respected company, one of the Big Three credit reporting agencies.  The ID Protection is free for 30 days and comes with a free credit report and free monitoring and a free fraud support hotline.  Then it’s only $9.95 a month if you don’t cancel before the 30 days are up. I’d strongly suggest signing up for the free month, call the hotline and ask for help, then check your credit report to make sure no one has tried to change your address or open a new card using your cards details.

I Didn’t Get Taken, But What Can I Do To Help?

What can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!
  1. Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
  2. Use the “Share This” links below to Digg or Twitter or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
  3. Email this link to your friends.

Want to learn how to earn money online really for free? Check out our article on The Best Free Internet Marketing Course - ShoemoneyX

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The Plumber Goes Do Follow! And You Should Too.

by El Plumber (admin) on June 19, 2009

Well, Matt Curtis from Google dropped a bombshell on the SEO community the other night by clarifying the “basic” operation of PageRank, the value of link sculpting, and what really happens when you nofollow a link.

He made it very clear that this was based on a simplified version of Page Rank than what Google uses today and that even nofollow links counted for something in other Google calculations as linking to good sites can actually help you in some ways.

The general ideas were these:

  1. PageRank sculpting should be considered tertiary (as in not first or second) to such high value things as creating good content and link building.
  2. Internal link sculpting does has some value, meaning putting your high value pages linked directly from the home page and not three levels deep.  Sculpting using nofollow is worse than a waste of time, it can actually hurt.
  3. PageRank decays by 10%-15% before it’s ever split up to be redistributed among the links on a page, in order to prevent “infinite Page Rank” from occurring on a closed site.
  4. Nofollow tags eat pagerank.  If you have 10 links on a page, and you have 10 “points” of PageRank, each link gets 1 point passed to it.  If 5 of those links are tagged with rel=nofollow, you LOSE those 5 points of PageRank.

Number 3 and 4 have the largest implications for site owners for blogs and anyone that has attempted link sculpting using nofollow.  Here is what we at the Electron Plumber took away from this:

  • Remove nofollow from everywhere internal to your site.   Make sure you don’t have any pages that add nofollow to the whole page especially or they basically become PageRank black holes.  Nofollow eats PageRank.  If you want a page to not be indexed by the search engines, use noindex.
  • Reduce the number of links on a page to pass the greatest amount of “link juice” to other pages.
  • PageRank splits and decay basically buries old content on your blog.   Say you have 100 points of page rank on your home page, 9 posts on the home page and no links other than the “Previous Entries” one at the bottom to your older posts.  So each link gets 10 points of Page rank, but 10% decays, so each really gets 9 points.  So 9 points go to your Previous Entries page, or your page 2.  That has 9 links and 1 Previous Entries on it and 10% decay.  So each link gets 0.8 points sent to it.  Previous Entries again, or page 3, now has 0.8 points to distribute, etc.  Once you get to Previous Entries page 5, the Page Rank reaches so close to 0 as to be meaningless.  You can “refresh it” to bring it forward, or create a “greatest hits” page off your home page to give those old but valuable posts some link love.
  • Blog comments with URL’s eat PageRank!  If you have 10 sidebar links total, 2 internal links on an article, and 88 nofollowed comment author URLs, your pagerank is 88% dying at that page, more actually because of the decay.  Either turn off comment links completely or split them into comment pages AND limit the number of links allowed per comment to one per commenter (which is what we decided to do for now).
  • Don’t pile too many posts into your most popular categories.  Here at the Plumber, we’ve been getting our most search engine traffic lately to the “Bullsh*t Exposted” category.  However, it holds the greatest number of posts, which dilutes the amount of PageRank each gets from the homepage, where as “Arbitrage” has only two posts in it and gets virtually no search traffic.  Probably going to restructure that somehow, although we haven’t talked or through much about it yet.
  • Link your top search content from the home page using targeted keywords to improve your search engine rankings for those keywords.

Those are the messages we took from Matt’s post.  Use them to help boost your search engine rankings where you can!

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What is “free as in beer”?

by El Plumber (admin) on June 18, 2009

free beer poster 233x300 What is free as in beer?I used the term “free as in beer” in a comment the other day and a couple people asked what it meant.

There is a saying in software development called “free as in beer” vs “free as in speech.”  I’m going to add an article about a new phrase to these called “free as in SCAM” but more on that later.

Wiktionary.org defines “free as in beer” as the following:

free as in beer - Adjective

1. Free in the sense of costing no money; gratis.

Usage notes:
This term and its counterpart free as in speech are mostly used in computing contexts, as for example when comparing traditional freeware (which may be proprietary) with open-source software (where anybody can access and modify the source code).

Ok, so what does this really mean?

Free As In Beer

Someone gives you a free beer and it’s tasty.  That is good.  There is software that is free to use (free as in beer) called Freeware.  You can use it all you want for your own personal use, but you are not necessarily allowed to modify it.  Free as in beer means free for your use.  No shipping cost, no strings attached, it’s free.

Free As In Speech

Someone says something to you and you paraphrase it and repeat it to your friends.  Speech is free, you can use it, repeat it, change it.  It’s yours to do as you see fit.   Software that is Open Source is free to modify and distribute (free as in speech) so not only do you get to have it for free, but it can become your own in a way and you can do with it freely what you want.

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Your Town Tribune News First - Another Easy Google Profit Scam News Site.

by El Plumber (admin) on June 16, 2009

mikesteadman1 Your Town Tribune News First Another Easy Google Profit Scam News Site.

Someone sent me a link to tribunenewsfirst.com, which hosts a bunch of Easy Google Profit fake news blogs trying to convince you to input your credit card for only $1.97 and learn Mike Steadman’s secrets to making money at home working part time for Google.  Wait, now it’s Ashley Steadman’s secrets.  Wait!  Now it’s Mike Steadman again, but with a different picture! And it’s always Your Town Tribune News First isn’t it?

Will the Real Mike Steadman Please Stand Up!

This set of sites has a great GeoIPTargeting feature that takes the information your computer sends EVERY time you go to a webpage (your IP address and your browser information) and translates it into a town name, typically a town near yours where your Internet host is located.  It’s a marketing trick to make you feel like the site is more trustworthy because it’s close to you.  Hell, if college dropout Mike Steadman from the next town over can make $10,500 working from home after losing his job at Burger King (can Burger King really afford to fire anyone?) then why the heck couldn’t I right?

These sites are fully of catchy headlines like:

“$10,000 a Month, isn’t that hard with Google” - Mike”

“College Drop-Out Shares The Secrets To Make Over $10,000/mo”

mikesteadman2 Your Town Tribune News First Another Easy Google Profit Scam News Site.Is it really true?  Can I start making $10,000 a month working from home posting links to Google right away?  Of course not, they’re trying to take your hard earned money, money you likely can’t afford to lose on a scam like this.

Are These Easy Google Profit Fake Work At Home News Sites Scams?

We here at the Electron Plumber have been reporting on these fake work at home blog and fake earn money online news sites for a while now and they keep getting more professional and more devious every day.  Why do we think these sites are scams in our opinion?  Well, they don’t disclose the monthly charges you’ll be facing seven days after you give them your credit card.

Check out our article on The Easy Google Profit Scam for more details about how this whole thing works and what the FTC has to say on the matter.

Go to any of the Easy Google Profit sites or the new Twitter Profit House this one is pushing, sign up for all but giving them your credit card and look around the page.  See anything to indicate you’re paying more than $1.97?  Now look at the fine print that only appears in a popup window if you click the tiny Terms and Conditions link at the bottom.  See it buried in there?  They’ll whack your card $99 a month for the Twitter Money System and another $87.23 for the Easy Google Profit Fast Cash one, all without every disclosing that on the order page, which is VERY likely illegal according to FTC guidelines regarding negative option offers, that is ones with recurring monthly charges.

ashleysteadman Your Town Tribune News First Another Easy Google Profit Scam News Site.What do you get for $197 a month?  Does it matter?  These people are deliberately hiding their monthly charges and that you aren’t paying $1.97 but rather $197.  I can’t imaging any info they are providing could be worth anywhere near that much if they have to trick you out of it.

I Was Taken By The Easy Google Profit Scam! What Do I Do?

  1. Don’t feel bad! Seems like thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
  2. Call the number  on the website IMMEDIATELY.  Finding that number is up to you, they seem to keep changing. Have a witness listen when you call and/or record the conversation if possible. Unfortunately many people have complained that they can never get anyone to talk to when they call.  You may want to skip this step and go right to #3.
  3. Call your credit card company and report the card stolen. They never clearly disclosed the charges you were signing up for and are going to start using your card for something you were not informed of.  Treat it as if it was stolen.
  4. Monitor your credit accounts! Click here to sign up for Experian ID Protection monitoring.  You just gave some shady characters your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number.  They tricked you once, you think they’ll stop at just the $82 they squeezed out of your card before you canceled?  Experian is a large company, one of the Big Three credit reporting agencies.  They clearly state that the ID Protection it’s truly free for a full 30 days, then only $9.95 a month if you don’t cancel in 30 days. I’d strongly suggest signing up for at least the free month to make sure no one tries to change your address or open a new card using the current cards details you gave away.

I Didn’t Get Taken, But What Can I Do To Help?

What can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!
  1. Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
  2. Use the “Share This” links below to Digg or Twitter or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
  3. Email this story to your friends.

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The Best Free Make Money At Home Course.

by El Plumber (admin) on June 15, 2009

You won’t see this free course I’m about to tell you about advertised all over the internet like all the Easy Google Profit scams we keep reporting on.  Why not?  Because it’s FREE.  No one is going to pay big bucks to advertise something real like this, so it remains mostly secret for only those that happen to stumble across it.

And when I say free, I mean FREE as in beer. No credit card, no payment, no “shipping fees”. Seriously, I mean the thing costs $0, zilch, nada. No odd shipping or handling or download fees, no credit card necessary, no nothing. Just sign up with your email address and first name and bam, it’s yours.

Want to know how to make money online as an internet marketer?  Want a very successful (and possibly crazy to give this stuff away for free) internet marketing veteran to teach you?  Want to not have to pay a single penny for it?  Well, before now you’d be nuts to ask for such a thing, but ShoeMoney, AKA Jeremy Schoemaker has gone and done it.

Jeremy Schoemaker is the original *real deal* in the internet marketing world and started the whole “Google Check” phenomenon.  Check this out:

adsensecheck The Best Free Make Money At Home Course.

Yeah, you read that right, that check is from Google for $132,994.97. Note the unblurred portion of the address is Lincoln, NE.  Proving that you can make money working from home pretty much anywhere.

Shoe made a huge name for himself in the online marketing industry by:

  1. Making a crap ton of money using Google Adsense and posting his famous “Google Check” pictured above on a popular Internet Marketing forum.  That was basically 99.999% his *profit* for two months in 2005, he said he spent $0 on advertising.
  2. Having tons of people not believe him, so he told everyone the secrets of how he made said crap ton of money using Google Adsense.
  3. Having said tons of people copy all his strategies and flood the market, basically losing him that income stream.
  4. Becoming famous for putting his money where his mouth was.  Which made him a ton of money in other ways, including speaking engagements, website promotion, starting his own trade conference, and sales of software tools for advanced internet marketers.

He’s doing the same thing again by giving his new 12 week online course  on how to make money from home as an Internet Marketer away for FREE.

He justifies giving it free away like this:

“Giving away great content has always paid off massively for me. This blog is a prime example. Without it, neither my Elite Retreat conference or the ShoeMoney Marketing Tools would be successful.

Let me be VERY TRANSPARENT. I want to teach you the basics of internet marketing and educate you on how the online marketing world works from my 13 years of experience.  This course is for the extreme newbie.  All this course requires is that someone works hard.  I am going to take you through the ins and outs of how all of this works and also give you free money to try some of the advertising venues.

If you feel making money online (or my course) is not right for you at anytime, simply hit the unsubscribe button. No cost to you.”

Seriously, go sign up now by clicking here to take you to the ShoeMoney Extreme site.  It’s freakin’ FREE!  Shoe has also said that he won’t make this available for ever.   As soon as he gets too many people in the course, more than he can handle the email questions/clarifications from each week, he’s going to shut off signups.

So, yeah, if you want to learn how to make money with Google from a real respected industry professional, AND you don’t want to pay for it, this is likely your only chance.  Don’t pass t up.  You have nothing to lose (it’s FREE!) and everything to gain.  A deal like this doesn’t come around often.

UPDATE:  Some people have emailed me skeptical that this is truely free since Shoe must have something to gain from it right?  Well, look at it this way.  He makes money selling seats at his Internet Marketing Conference and by selling software tools to advanced interent marketers.  By turning YOU into an advanced Internet Marketer through his free course, he’s created another potential customer.  There is nothing extra to buy and no strings attached to the course.  Your loss if you miss it!

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Watertown Tribune News - Another Easy Google Profit and Google Cash Secret Club Scam Site.

by El Plumber (admin) on June 14, 2009


I saw another fake work at home for Google ad today on Facebook. This time it’s a fake newspaper called the Watertown Tribute News with an article about Mike Steadman the college dropout pushing the Easy Google Profit and Google Cash Secret Club methods of working from home for Google for “only $1.97 or something”.  Click on any link on the news site and you go to a snazzy offer page at yoursearchprofits.com.  Can you work a part time job with Google for only $1.97? Is Mike just a nice guy who made good and is now raking in $10,000 a month “posting links for Google”? No he is not, he’s a fictitious snake oil salesman for the modern age.

mikesteadman Watertown Tribune News Another Easy Google Profit and Google Cash Secret Club Scam Site.

It’s funny how these affiliate advertisers keep recycling the same names and picture for these work from home do gooders over and over again. Mike Steadman looks VERY similar to Kevin Hoeffer, exactly the same as a matter of fact. And he must be brother to Mary Steadman’s from Mary’s Money Blog. Do they know something we don’t about affiliate marketing or are they just lazy? Is that guys face the key to increasing conversions? Is the name Steadman some magic password to getting customers to pony up their credit cards?

Why are Easy Google Profit and Google Cash Secret Clubs Scams?

In our opinion, these offers are scams becasue nowhere do they meet the FTC’s guidelines for what are called “negative option” offers.  A negative option is one where you are offered goods or services at a reduced price and in return are signed up for recurring monthly charges.  For more details on the FCC rules check out our article on The Easy Google Profit Scam

That’s right, it’s not $1.97, it’s something like $78.73 a month that you’ll be charged about 7 days after you give them your credit card, many people saying regardless of if you call to cancel.  Check out the fine print:

I am ordering the Earn Google Cash™ CD and trial membership for $2.29 S&H, after the 7-day trial I will be charged $39.95 if I do not cancel. I also agree to the 14 day and 21 day bonus trials to Grant Master™ and Network Agenda™ for $7.95 a month and $9.95 a month thereafter, should I choose not to cancel.

Great!  Now I’m signed up for three “trials” I didn’t want with monthly charges that I have to call three different numbers (that will never answer) to cancel.  And what do you get in return?  Very likely some stale information about using Google Adsense (a free program by the way) to earn money on your website by letting Google place text ads on your site.

I Was Taken By The Easy Google Profit Scam! What Do I Do?

  1. Don’t feel bad! Seems like thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
  2. Call the number  on the website IMMEDIATELY.  Finding that number is up to you, they seem to keep changing. Have a witness listen when you call and/or record the conversation if possible. Unfortunately many people have complained that they can never get anyone to talk to when they call.  You may want to skip this step and go right to #3.
  3. Call your credit card company and report the card stolen. They never clearly disclosed the charges you were signing up for and are going to start using your card for something you were not informed of.  Treat it as if it was stolen.
  4. Monitor your credit accounts! Click here to sign up for Experian ID Protection monitoring.  You just gave some shady characters your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number.  They tricked you once, you think they’ll stop at just the $82 they squeezed out of your card before you canceled?  Experian is a large company, one of the Big Three credit reporting agencies.  They clearly state that the ID Protection it’s truly free for a full 30 days, then only $9.95 a month if you don’t cancel in 30 days. I’d strongly suggest signing up for at least the free month to make sure no one tries to change your address or open a new card using the current cards details you gave away.

I Didn’t Get Taken, But What Can I Do To Help?

What can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!
  1. Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
  2. Use the “Share This” links below to Digg or Twitter or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
  3. Email this story to your friends.

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