by El Plumber (admin) on December 21, 2009
Every once in a while, someone with a misinformed opinion adds a comment to one of our Google Kit scam posts similar to the following. This time it was courtesy of someone named “Jonathan” on our post about the Easy Google Profit scam:
I think you guys are idiots, how can you guys not read the fine print. Its obvious there are only 2 of you stupid people who wrote this blog. Next time if you give out your credit card number i advise you to read everthing before you sign up. Basically what you guys have done was gave a person your credit card information without reading anything. Its like signing a contract without reading anything. Good Grief. I hope these stupid people may stop putting advertisement saying this is a “scam”, while there are advertising other online business opportunities and advertising there links to earn money from people. So lame hypocrites. Thank you and that is my 2 cent.
Funny thing is, if we go check out traffic logs, the people who post these types of comments typically arrive here by searching for something like “easy google profit affiliate”, meaning they are looking for how to get in on this scam and make money off honest folk like you.
Well, Jonathan, first off we do not advertise The Electron Plumber anywhere. Not even a tiny bit. We did buy $7 worth of Google Adwords once, and you can see where that got us. You found your way here either through a search engine who deems our content worthy of being at the top of a search, or from a reader or fan who linked to us from their page. We say it’s a scam because we really do think it’s a scam, not just to get your attention in an ad.
Second, these Google Fortune scams are not to be confused with the real legitimate online business programs we point visitors to here. For example, Site Build It is the only place we recommend right now for starting an online money making business, simply because it’s legitimacy cannot be argued. SiteSell has 40,000 happy customers, has been in business for 10+ years, includes a full 30 day refund policy and an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau to prove they honor their 30 day refund policy. Site Build It has hundreds of testimonials from real people whose sites you can actually go see for yourself. Lumping SiteSell in with those Google Kit scams is like lumping in Best Buy with the van hanging out in the parking lot selling “used” car stereos.
Third, people who are caught up in these Home Income Library type scams are not stupid as the poster suggests. For example, my Grandmother might be reading Fox News and think an advertisement is a legitimate link, click on it and be brought to a site where the format is exactly like Fox News but pushing the Home Income Library scam. How would she know she was about to be conned?
Put anyone in an unfamiliar element and see how they make out. Picture yourself walking into an antique store where almost all the items are a pretty good reproduction or knockoff. Could you tell the difference? Would you know enough to walk out of the store? Of maybe you see what looks like a pretty good deal on an antique lamp and buy it, only to find out after you get home and plug it in that it doesn’t work and has a “Made In China” sticker hidden under the bulb housing. Then when you return to the antique store it’s simply gone.
Do not blame the victim. This is crime, pure and simple. And it will continue to go unchecked until the FTC gets some balls and starts really going after these people, including the affiliates who advertise them, the ad networks who allow the ads (I’m looking at you AdBrite) and the sites that accept the advertising (that’s you Fox News).
by El Plumber (admin) on December 11, 2009
We get asked a question all the time when helping friends and family learn to make money online by setting up websites and writing content. That question is, “I see all these free webhosting places advertised everywhere. Can I just do that?”
The answer is of course not. There is not a free host on the planet that is worth the time you would put into it. And you will end up spending far more cash in the long run. It constantly amazes me at just how cheap people are when attempting to start an online business. Unlike a real brick and mortar business, you can start a real website with a real domain for around $10, then pay around $5 a month to keep it going. If you are that strapped for cash, do whatever it takes to scrounge $15 dollars together to pay for the first couple of months of real hosting, after which it will not matter. Even the lamest site ever can make $5 a month with minimal effort. That’s basically a couple of paid posts, or one Text Link Ad, or a bunch of random clicks on Adwords, or any combination thereof. Seriously, you can do it.
Still not convinced? Still thinking about using free web hosting? Here is the world of headaches you will be opening yourself up to by trying to save a measly $5 today:
- They’re Not Free – Most of the “free” sites will nickle and dime you constantly for things you need. When you go to sign up for that advertising program and they require you to have an email address @ your website, time to shell out $15 for an email address. Real hosts give you anywhere from 10 to 100 email addresses with a $5 hosting account. Want more than 100mb of storage or 100mb of bandwidth, another $15 per month. Want customer support? How about something non-standard installed? Good luck.
- Free, as long as they can show their Ads – Most Free sites put up their ads on your site. That’s what makes it “free” for you. And the ads they serve are the typically spam “Punch The Monkey And Win!” type ads
- Free, on their domain – Most allow you a “subdomain” on one of their crappy domains, so your address would be “worldsbestwebsite.freecraphost.cc”. Good luck getting anything to rank well on Google or look respectabl.
- Free, if you buy a domain – The hosting is free if you pay $30 for a domain name from them that normally costs $10.
- Free, for 100Mb of storage and 100Mb of bandwidth – Typically just enough storage and bandwidth to tide you over until your site might actually gather some real traffic, then you have to upgrade to their overpriced “premium” hosting.
- Slow As Heck – Free hosts have little incentive to upgrade their hardware and make your site load quickly.
- Scammy – Many free sites we checked out tries to get you to do “offers” in exchange for the free hosting, including Google Biz Kit type scams and those mobile phone number monthly charge scams. Many people do not realize it is not part of the 20 step process in signing up for “free” hosting and enter their phone number or credit card number.
- No Control – Especially if you go with a subdomain host, you have little or no control to what happens to your content and pages. Basically the free host owns it and can do what it likes, including reposting it on their own sites, etc.
- Likely to Disappear – Many of the free hosts of a few years ago cannot be found anymore. What happened to the sites that people created with them? Who knows, they’re just gone now. Why chance it?
- Support? – Good luck getting support from a free host should you ever have a problem. Why would they bother when you are not a paying customer?
- You Don’t Own Your Site – Many of the free webhosts make you use a subdomain which cannot be transferred. Real domains with traffic can SELL for good money, subhosted free sites are owned by hosting company generally and are not yours. All that effort down the tubes.
If anyone finds a free host that they think doesn’t suck, please let us know and we’ll take a look. You may not think they suck now, but give it a few months when you run out of disk space or bandwidth or a year when your site traffic starts to spike and you cannot transfer to a better host without paying a fee or sell the domain to work on a new project.
When you want to put a site on the web, go with one of the big three web hosts. You will see hundreds of sites that claim to “review” the top 10 web hosts or whatnot. The problem is, they only review the top 10 web sites that pay them a commission.
Let the internet do the voting on who you use as a webhost. If you go to Alexa.com and look up the three most popular web hosting companies BY ACTUAL TRAFFIC RANKING. You want the Google, Yahoo, and Facebook of web hosting, not a bunch of bit players.
The top three web hosts by Alexa Rank are:
Godaddy (Alexa Rank 168)
Hostgator (Alexa Rank 438)
Bluehost (Alexa Rank 941).
Note that the Alexa rank listed there is out of ALL sites on the internet, so to be in the top 1000 is pretty dang good.
We use both Godaddy and Hostgator for all our domains and websites and have multiple accounts on both. Honestly I like Hostgator better for a number of reasons. It’s far more user friendly and doesn’t try to upsell you crap you do not need all the time like Godaddy does. I think Godaddy is as popular as they are based on their television advertising campaigns rather than value or customer service. It’s far easier to buy bulk domains at Godaddy, but the hosting is better at Hostgator.
I have never used Bluehost, and would not necessarily recommend them. They require you to pay fully for 12 months of hosting up front (at $7 a month that’s $84) vs Hostgator or Godaddy where you can pay monthly.
Note that both Hostgator and Godaddy are Accredited by the BBB and both receive an A+ rating. Bluehost is not BBB rated.
Seriously, the rankings should tell you something. After Hostgator, you have to drop another 500 sites to find Bluehost. After the top three, you have to go almost another 1000 sites down the list to find the 4th most popular Web Host. Those “See The Top 10 Web Hosts!” sites you see advertised everywhere are just working for commissions from the smaller hosting companies that are just not worth it. Don’t waste your time.
by El Plumber (admin) on December 6, 2009
We have a bunch of niche WordPress sites that target various semi-popular search engine keywords. Some are newer and earn less than $20 a month, some are about a year and a half old and earn over $1000 a month, others fall somewhere in between.
And on all of them we get complete junk comments left all the time. We use a great WordPress comment spam plugin that eliminates all the auto generated spam by making comment posters solve a CAPTCHA if they want to post a comment with a link in it, so everything we see it actually entered by a human being.
Here is one example:
all kids wanted to have an bike,,any kind of bike,,it depend on their age,,but the top priority is security to be safe,,they need our guidance and advice on how to ride to the bike especially to the beginner..
That was left just the other day on a post about a kids bike. Just for fun, let us list what is wrong with it:
- No capital letters
- Double commas everywhere
- Terrible grammar
- No reference to the article in question
- Nothing interesting at all about the comment
Yes, I know the poster in question was just trying to build links for their site, but this is NOT the way to do it. Here, let me rewrite it for you:
I had this great bike as a kid. It had one of those big old horns and a basket in the front. It had only one gear and did not go that fast, but I loved it. This bike is pretty neat looking, but I would love to find an old school bike somewhere.
There you go. You can still cross post that on as many bike reviews as you want and it is still relevant to each.
by El Plumber (admin) on December 3, 2009
There seems to be a misconception out there that since English is the dominant language on the Internet that one should create and write sites in English. Do not fall into this trap.
If English is your first language, learn to write it correctly. Go read www.bartleby.com/141/ and www.economist.com/research/styleguide/ for all the rules you need to know. It is dry, read it anyway.
If English is your second language, do not try to blog in it unless you can write in English at least at a High School level. If you want to do it for practice, go for it, but make sure you get a good writer to review it and provide feedback and corrections, or you will never improve. Native English speakers will not respect you at all and will not read your site. Search Engines will ignore you.
Seriously consider writing in your native language. You actually have an advantage that many English speakers do not. You can take an already popular English blog and adapt the idea to your own language. Not steal the content mind you, but just the site idea. I can imagine there is no site like www.cakewrecks.com in other languages, but there has to be an equivalent cultural idea out there for China or India or Spain.
by El Plumber (admin) on December 1, 2009
A commenter named Steve pointed out yet another variant of the latest Facebook virus, this one posts a message with the web site called “www,articlecash,cn”.
Seems like the perpetrator of this virus is trying hard to stay one step ahead of their URLs being branded as attach or scam sites by changing the web address slightly each time. Odd that they used such similar addresses but it’s likely that they registered them a while ago for some other less nefarious purpose and just used what they already had.
These sites are hosted in China and the registration information is for one of the largest web hosting companies in China. Seems like someone is trying to hide behind a private registration in China. The Affiliate network tracking that the links push through is somewhere called go2jump.org, which is owned by Tatto-Media, which had run afoul of the Washington State Attorney Generals Office at least twice in the past. The final destination where the user is asked for their credit card for the Google Profit scam is a group called New Era Marketing, LLC 374 Banff Ct, Las Vegas, NV 89148.
The likely thing here is that someone in China wrote a virus that floods peoples Facebook pages with an affiliate offer from Spain that points to a US company. The US company can completely deny any involvement (and it’s likely the truth) and the jerk who wrote the virus will likely never get paid by the affiliate network after word gets back to them that they used a Facebook virus to advertise the offer.
Anyone seen another other variants? Anyone figured out where they got it from?
by El Plumber (admin) on November 29, 2009
There now appear to be multiple variants of the ArticleGet,cn Virus that are hitting Facebook. The latest creates a post on someone’s wall that looks like this: “Is this something you can do ? www,ArticleCar,cn”
Articlecar.cn appears to link to a traditional Easy Google Profit scam fake news site, but there very well might be something worse lurking in the background on the site.
Looks like there are two main possibilities for how someone gets this one:
- Cross Site Request Forgery: You click on a link and go to a website which runs some behind the scenes frames and scripts that you never see. If your browser is autologged into Facebook it is then able to make Facebook think you posted the link that the worm submitted under your name.
- Virus Execution: You have a virus on your computer that is allowing it to be used as a “zombie” for someone running a bot network. They are able to make your computer do things without you knowing (thus the zombie part, really should be called a werewolf actually) including posting messages like this to the various social networks.
Either way, not a good thing.
At first we really strongly suspected that it was #1 above (CSRF), but we went and checked out both ArticleGet.cn (which I would NOT recommend without good script blockers in place on your computer. If you do not know what that means, do not go there) as well as all the scam sites linked from it. None of them had anything running on them that would cause this sort of Facebook behavior.
If a friends account is displaying these messages, warn them immediately. If your account is posting these things to your wall, be very afraid, you could very well have some very nasty things running on your computer.
by El Plumber (admin) on November 29, 2009
Quick note about something that many people on Facebook are running into. There appears to be a Facebook post hack or virus or scam (not really sure what form it is taking since we have not seen it live in the wild yet) where it appears that someone posts a message to their wall that says “www,ArticleGet,cn I heard some ppl in my family talkin about this during Thanxgiving. Check it out”
Articleget.cn appears to link to a traditional Easy Google Profit scam fake news site at first glance. There certainly may be some other dastardly doings in the background once you load the site, so I would not suggest going to the site.
If you see a friend that has posted this, warn them immediately. They either have:
- Installed a rogue Facebook application that is posting bogus messages like this to their wall.
- Have a virus or malware on their computer that has given away their Facebook name and password and someone is using it for spamming scam links
Either way, clean it up stat!
If anyone has more information, please add a comment below. Is it something posted to a friends wall like it came directly from that person, or does it appear to be from an App they installed?
Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends about it.
by El Plumber (admin) on November 27, 2009
We get a lot of questions about removing or blocking popups and adware from one source or another, especially pop up ads for all the different Google Biz Kit and Easy Google Profit scams that are out there. Fake news sites and fake blog sites popping up seemingly at random as you are surfing the web are typically a good sign that you have some sort of unwanted adware, malware or spyware on your machine.
How does it work? Some as*hole internet scammer decides that spam is just is not good enough for them and figures out a way to sneakily install software on your computer that causes ads for scam offers to appear over and over and over on your computer. They do this in the hopes that you will be foolish enough to click on one and cough up your credit card information. Do it to 10,000+ people and at least a couple will fall for it.
Most adware invades your computer because of something you explicitly did, rather than some sort of hidden virus that invaded. That free music download software you installed, or that dialog box you clicked on about how you have a virus and CLICK HERE NOW to remove it that installed something called SuperVirusInstaller.exe are the most likely vectors for this sort of computer disease.
At best, they just pop up ads and fake virus scan reports over and over again until you want to throw your computer out the window. At worst, they lurk in the background, copying everything you type into your keyboard to a hidden file that gets uploaded to some black market server somewhere for later mining for username/password combination and credit card numbers.
How do you clear these scam ad popups from your computer? Follow these steps:
- Start Using Firefox as your web browser! Internet Explorer is generally considered to be far more vulnerable to scams and viruses than Firefox. Also, Firefox comes built in with a Popup blocker that will only allow popups from websites you trust. Seriously, using Internet Explorer to surf the internet is like having a one night stand without a condom. Nothing good can come of it, and it might be years before you find out just how bad the consequences were.
- Download, install, and run Ad-Aware from LavaSoft. It’s a program specifically designed to find all the things that traditional anti-virus software misses. It can scan your computer for things like constant ad popups and spyware. And it’s FREE to scan and fix any malware problems it finds. If you want full anti-virus protection and live ongoing malware protection there is a cost for Ad-Aware Plus or Pro, but you can download Ad-Aware Free right now and do a quick scan.
Take the two steps above and take back your computer from all those annoying popup ads! We cannot guarantee that you will not see any popup ads ever again, but the two steps above will greatly reduce the number you run into.
by El Plumber (admin) on November 22, 2009
We’ve received a couple of questions from readers about whether or not Tycoon Cashflow is legit or a scam, so we went and had a look at what they had to offer. NOTE, we have NOT purchased the Tycoon Cashflow program nor looked at what is in the members area. Everything we are going to talk about here is readily available for you to go check out and confirm for yourself. If the folks from Tycoon Cashflow want to give us a review copy of their program we would be happy to provide our honest opinion on it’s worth.
First off, Tycoon Cashflow is NOT a fraud nor a scam as we define it in our article on Frauds vs Scams vs Ripoffs. It is likely not a ripoff either, although there may certainly be better ways to spend your $24.50. That’s right, read on and we will show you how to download Tycoon Cashflow at the sale price.
Here are the pro’s and con’s for Tycoon Cashflow as we see them. Note, this is strictly our opinion on the program and should be taken as such.
Purchase is through Clickbank – That’s Good!
Tycoon Cashflow uses Clickbank as their payment processor. Clickbank is the largest and likely oldest marketplace for digital goods on the planet and they have a good reputation for not scamming people. Giving Clickbank your credit card is a fairly safe bet and you can be sure you will not be charged extra hidden charges at the end of the month. So if you have an extra $24 to spend, you can be safe knowing you will not be ripped off for more than that.
Autoplaying Videos, Bogus Car Pictures – That’s Bad
Just a pet peeve of mine. I cannot stand going to a website and having ANY video or audio automatically play. As soon as it happens, I run. That and the cheesy of photos of the kid standing next to a fancy car. Is it his? His Daddy’s? Maybe he’s a part time valet at a golf course? A picture of a random person standing next to a nice car not only proves nothing, but it makes you look like you are trying too hard.
Likely Bogus “Letter from Clickbank” – That’s Bad
The sales page has a picture to the “letter” he received from Clickbank stating he was in the top .01% of Publishers on Clickbank. Wait a sec, he said he was one of the top Marketers on Clickbank? These are two very different things. Publishers produce and sell content, Marketers earn commissions for advertising the products Publishers make. The letter almost surely has nothing to do with the kids from Tycoon Cashflow at all. And even if it was true, that he is making millions selling on Clickbank, why the heck would he waste his time creating and promote an eBook for fairly short money rather than using his own techniques to make even more millions? Go look up the creators on Twitter for a good indication of their maturity level. Woah, lolz dude!
Created and Run By a Couple of Kids – That’s Good? Bad?
I will let you decide if you care about the age of the creators of this program. The founder of Facebook dropped out of college. Microsoft and Apple and Google were founded by some very young people. Of course, kids of that caliber are few and far between. However, they likely have an insight on the Affiliate Marketing industry that you will not find from older folks.
They Offer a 60 Day Refund – That’s Good!
Although it’s hard to say for sure if the Tycoon Cashflow people will honor the refund policy in all cases, but Clickbank has a pretty good policy of refunding purchases if a consumer complains that the program was not what it said it was, or due to technical difficulties.
Too Easy To Get For Half Price – That’s Bad
It’s fairly easy to get Tycoon Cashflow for half price ($24.50 vs $49), which indicates that the true value of their program is even lower than that. If they are willing to sell it for $24.50, it is pretty low to try to get people to pony up $49 for it.
Easy To Get For Half Price – That’s Good!
The above being said, if you still want it, do not pay $49 for Tycoon Cashflow. Here is how to get it for $24.50.
Now it’s up to you. However, I’d STRONGLY suggest you take the money you were going to spend on Tycoon Cashflow learning from a couple of kids how to be an affiliate marketer and instead spend it on Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook by clicking here. She has been around the industry for over 10 years, has a proven track record, shows you all her bank statement, accounts, and actual web sites she uses for affiliate marketing. She is frequently invited to and speaks at numerous affiliate marketing industry conferences. She is the real deal folks.
If you can afford both, get both programs and learn from both an experienced Affiliate Marketer and the new up and coming generation and combine what you learn from each.
Click this link to get Tycoon Cashflow for $24.50
Click here to see Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook
by El Plumber (admin) on November 15, 2009
I absolutely love WordPress. It is by far the best basic site content management tool on the planet today and I challenge anyone to dispute that. Note that I said BASIC site tool. If you want to do anything far outside the “blog” type of site, it will likely not meet your needs. But for 95% of the people out there, it is perfect. If you can use MS Word or Excel, than you use WordPress. Setting it up, changing the design, and making it look really good is another story, but for the basics of putting stuff on the Internet, it is great.
That being said, it is severely lacking in some basic document management tools that you might be used to with something as feature rich as Word. Part of it has to do with the WordPress editor being a web browser based application, the other part with the fact that it uses a MySQL database to store all the content. But that is also part of its greatest strength.
I have started a number of new websites recently, all based around one single site that I started about 18 months ago that is really starting to pay off. That one site started to take off near the end of the summer and I cloned the idea across a couple of related niches. It only takes a few hours a week to maintain and update each one. The first site made over $1000 last month and is on track to make $2000 this month, all using completely legal and ethical white hat methods. I’m currently writing up a tutorial to teach people to do the exact same thing with the only investment being a basic hosting account. I plan on giving it away for no cost as long as you link back to the tutorial from any sites you create. Stay tuned.
BUT, I screwed up a couple of them and had been using an incorrect affiliate tag all over the place and thus was not getting credit for anyone who clicked through the links on the pages. I can certainly fix it on articles going forward on those sites, but needed to change all the old ones, especially since they were starting to get traffic and clicks. However, the WordPress browser based UI is really clunky for changing things like that. I would have to go to each individual post one at a time, wait for them to load, edit them, save them, etc.
Another option would be to export the entire site using the WordPress backup tools, then do a search and replace in the files manually in a text editor, then clear the site and reload them back in. Another unappealing option.
SQL to the rescue! Here is how to do it:
- Go to you web hosting panel and open whatever tool it uses to connect to the MySQL database for the WordPress site you need to Find and Replace on. Sorry I cannot be more help on this step, but the procedure and tools vary widely from hosting provider to hosting provider. Just get there.
- On most MySQL web interfaces, there will be a tab called “SQL” for the database, click on it.
- Enter the following as your query. Replace the ‘oldtext’ and ‘newtext’ below with what you want to search and replace. This will work for any text, including the text inside URLs, which was what I screwed up.
UPDATE wp_posts set post_content = REPLACE (post_content, ‘oldtext’, ‘newtext’);
Bam. Done. Enjoy!
