[ad] We’ve received some questions lately asking if sites called yourblogprofits.com and yoursearchprofits.com are scams. And the answer, in my opinion, is that they might be. They appear to trick you into thinking you are only paying $2.99 for a service when in fact there are hidden monthly charges in excess of $70 a month, all while advertising using fake blogs and fake news sites that you can make $900+ dollars a day. Other offers and sites that operate in this exact same manner are currently under investigation by the FTC.
For details on how these types of sites operate, check out the article on the Easy Google Profit Scam.
Yourblogprofits.com and Yoursearchprofits Look Darn Shady To Me
They appear to follow the exact same pattern as Google Money Tree and Google Treasure chest scams, both of which have legal action against them by the FTC. What they did was advertise all over they internet (or far more likely that they pay affiliates to do their advertising for them) using fake blogs and fake newspapers. Basically the companies behind these sites post commissions on affiliate advertiser networks that they will pay $40 to anyone who sends them a “customer” and then people create websites that promote those sites with fake testimonials and false location information that makes it look like the blogger or newspaper is in your town too.
Then you click on a link and boom, you’re overwhelmed with blinking timers that time is running out! And plastered all over these sites are trusted brands, “As Seen on Google, ABC, CNN, Fox”, etc. Which technically on some level is the truth, since they can pay to advertise their stuff on those sites for only a few dollars and claim that yes, they have been seen there.
They use all these methods to snooker you into entering in your debit card information on the promise that for only $1.97 shipping and handling you’ll get all the secrets to making money with Google. Will you? Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe you’ll get lucky (and smart) and read the terms and conditions or do a quick Google search before you hand over your account information and avoid any major trauma. If you still want to buy their service at that point for $74.97 or whatever it is, it’s your life, go for it.
Maybe you’ll give them your credit card and think about it after wards when you don’t get anything in the mail, or you get a bunch of eBooks with vague generalities about how you can place Adsense on a site or advertise affiliate programs on Adwords. Maybe you’ll cancel before the hidden seven day trial is up but little did you know that they’re going to start charging your credit card for 3 other programs at $29.97 each
The worst cases of these we’ve heard about so far is from people who get a message that their card was “declined” or a message that the transaction could not be processed, so they try another card, and another. Then find at the end of the month that *ALL* the cards you’ve used were hit by a $79.83 charge each month.
Many times the company charging the card is nothing like what you thought you signed up for, and you’ll get charges from Blazingfastmoney.com, or Easy Cash Pay Day Marketing and they’ll keep coming with a new one and a new charge every 7-14 days.
With many of these sites the only way to get those charges to stop is to report the card numbers stolen and get new ones. But wait! There’s more…
It’s like a nightmare that doesn’t end. A couple people have reported that they’ve received email from eBay or Amazon that someone tried to use the credit card tied to their account to open a new account with a different mailing address. One woman reported receiving an alert a few weeks later from the Experian ID protection monitoring service that someone tried to open a Citibank account in her name with an address somewhere in Nevada. Can’t be 100% sure these sites are responsible for that, but if they’re shady enough to trick you out of your money, what makes you think they won’t sell your identity information for a few more quick bucks?
Will this happen to you by signing up with Yourblogprofits.com or Yoursearchprofits.com? I can’t say for sure, but they appear to be following the exact same pattern as those sites that are currently under investigation by the FTC for this behavior. Offering you a quick money making fix for $2.99 when in fact they are signing you up for hidden monthly charges and not adequately disclosing them.
The FTC has started going after these people, recently taking action against the Google Money Tree company, but unfortunately many new ones have sprouted up with overseas mailing addresses and will not be able to be caught and stopped easily.
I Didn’t Know I was Going To Be Charged Monthly By Yoursearchprofits.com! What Do I Do?
- 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.
- 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 types of sites 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 so they can’t charge you again.
- Monitor your credit accounts by clicking here for a free month of Experian ID Protection monitoring. You just gave some 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.
Luckily I Didn’t Get Taken By These Guys, But What Can I Do To Help?
- Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
- 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!
- Email this link to your friends.
Want to learn how to earn money online for free? Check out our article on The Best Free Internet Marketing Course – ShoemoneyX
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Folks should keep on reporting these scams to the FTC.
There are two things the scammers hate most:
The FTC (as they have the power to take legal action, freeze assets etc)
Chargebacks (as they have to refund the money to the customer and it costs them a $30 fee on top) Too many chargebacks and they lose their merchant account. Many of these scammers have up to a dozen offshore merchant accounts and switch payments between them to try and avoid getting flagged – but enough chargebacks and one by one they will get shut down and put onto a blacklist.
So keep reporting these scams to the FTC:
Go to http://www.FTC.gov and click on file a complaint or use:
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=en
You can also complain to the Attorney General of your state:
http://www.naag.org/attorneys_general.php
P.S There is yet another of these scams doing the rounds called Recession Proof 360 (recessionproof360.com) so folks should watch out for that one too. See: http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/recessionproof360-c222412.html
THANKS FOR THE INFO, I WAS ABOUT TO SIGN UP ON yoursearchprofits.com/051809/order.php.
GOD BLESS YOU
I am an employee of YourblogProfits.com’s customer service team in New Jersey. I am offended and frankly insulted that you would lump us in with other scams (without doing research!) just because we offer Blog Optimization. Blogging is a legit way to make money from home, and while there are many scams on the internet I can assure you that YourBlogProfts.com is NOT a SCAM. We have customers who are making $50 to $100 per day from their Google Adsense Account. I’d say thats well worth the cost of $74.95 per month. For the $74.95 they get much more than just the training material and the hosting, they also get live customer service M-F 10am – 7pm EST, they get Adwords, Keyword Optimization, and we do the coding to put the adsense on their blog (if you have done a blog then you know this is the hardest part).
Next time do some research before you make claims unfairly hurt someone elses business…or you can pretty much expect to be receiving a Libel lawsuit.
Howard, I appreciate your comment. While your site and services may be the best in the business, you still appear, in our opinion, to be tricking people into buying a product that costs $74.95 monthly without adequate disclosure. I saw an Ad on Fox News about how to make $5000 a week with Google, and clicked on it. The exact site it brought me to was howimadecash.com/a/ and the link I followed from that site was https://www.yourblogprofits.com/c2/index2.php. If I enter my information, the credit card entry page clearly indicates that it’s only $2.99 and nothing else. I then had to hunt down at the bottom of the page, clicked the Terms and Conditions, and buried in there in non-numeric language is the full charge:
In my opinion (note, this is an opinion, as I clearly state in the article) this does not meet the FTC statue for clear disclosure in the least. Note the recent legal actions the FTC has taken against the Google Money Tree for this EXACT SAME THING.
For your reference:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus41.pdf
and
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/02/P064202negativeoptionreport.pdf
and
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/07/shortchange.shtm (note the Google Money Tree section)
and
http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0923060/090622googlemoneytreecmplt.pdf
You need to put a clear description of all monthly terms and conditions on the page where people enter their credit card and I’ll be happy to change my opinion, try your service, and potentially change my recommendation.
I invite you to return to discuss these concerns and potentially inform us of when they are corrected.
Wow! There are a lot of schemes out there. I wanted to share this one because it almost got me:
Yesterday I landed on a site webreviewagency.com that apparently has researched 1000′s of online money-makimg sites , claiming 97% of them to be scams. BUT then it also provided a sites ranking based on their reliability. This is what I found alarmimg – the #1 site was Easy Google Money which linked to yoursearchprofits.com.
Please let’s be very careful because it seems that affiliate marketers are posing as research agencies.
Howard – I can’t beleive your are proud to be an employee of such a disgusting company with horrible marketing and sales efforts. I came to this posting after landing on one of your company’s sites, and finding it to be a misleading and extremely questionable sales process. I then searched on your company since I am amazed that you haven’t been put out of business yet.
Howard you are a fool, and I sincerely hope that you end-up in serious legal issues sometime in your life so that you can understand the concept of Kharma.
David Blount. I really wanna give this guy and countless others knuckle sandwiches. I’ve never had any interest in these type of “profitting” sites, in fact I feel that if one just uses their intuition they’ll find themselve far from the sounds and words of these sites/people.
I ended up on this totally useful site by googling, David Blount + SCAM + pop up. Thanks! i’ll be linking THIS SITE to friends and so on…
Yes, I believe yourblogprofits.com is a complete scam for the reasons you outline in your post. I’d like to add that the so-called “24 hour, 7 days a week” customer service telephone # is bogus too. I have tried calling it at various times of the day throughout the week and it will ring and ring…then finally cut off.
I’m submitting a complaint to the FTC.
I unfortunately did not do my research and was taken for the $74.95. I called immediately to speak with someone about this. I was told that they would send me an email confirming my cancellation. This did not come. THey told me that I would get a refund. This did not come. I will call again and hope that they’ll stick to their word but I have lost hope and faith in people’s word.
The google kit is full of it!! I paid the 2.99 before and I didn’t receive any kit. When I called (which was difficult to find a contact person), I was told that the kit was online. I checked it out and it was confusing. It was said that all a person had to do is post links on google and make money. It didnt say anything about the 74.00 being taken out of your account. I cancelled before the 7 day trial but money was still taken out. Thanks for lookin out!! And as for the scammers, you should feel pathetic and ashamed!!
I wanted to start this blogging for profit thing, but after reading I will not be. I wish cnn and others would check these things out before putting them on the air instead of just excepting money for the air time.
Deeli, don’t despair! Start blogging for profit, just don’t buy anyone’s scammy “system” or “program” to learn how! Go start a blog, about anything that interests you.
It’s hard, takes a lot of work, mistakes, trial and error, and perseverance, but trust me, you can do it and make money from it.
I have come back to report my new findings on yourblogprofits.com. I am no longer working for this company after finding out that the owner has refused to allow refunds to those who were charged improperly after canceling within the 1st week. Also, I created my own blog on the day I started and I have been able to generate a whopping $1.05 from adsense so far, the alarming part is… I have made MORE REVENUE than any client of the Yourblogprofits.com service. I completely rescind my previous statement and I agree with the OP.
Folks, that is the same howard that wrote the original comment. I’m not going to give out his email address, but the email address and IP address range match the original comment.
Howard, very glad that you realized what you had gotten yourself into and had the good sense to get out before the FTC hammer comes down on them!
When I first time saw the ad about making Google money via yoursearchprofits.com I almost believed everything they say was true. But before giving my credit card info I wanted to test the site a little bit. In the “Check if you qualify” section I entered “over $1000″ as my desired weekly income and “less than 1 hour” that I’d like to spend a week. And I entered a false zip code. The result was “Congratulations! You are qualified.” It was clear that they just want me in. Bu I decided to close the browser. Now after reading these article and comments I am sure I did right.
I too fell for this, and after trying the phone numbers that I found and not getting through turned to threattening e mails they finally just called me and told me I was getting my refund
and my account cancelled, here is the number from which they called from it is from yourblogprofits, pass it on
435-673-0421
I tried to use the phone number mentioned above (435-673-0421) I got a voicemail stating that it was, Brown Insurance company. If anyone gets more info about contacting this company let us know. I too was told that I would get a refund, that was over a month ago and still no refund!
Yes, this is indeed a scam. I was one of the suckers. Okay here is the number you should call if scammed -1-800-456=8849. They answer customer service. Then I asked for whom? Then she strated reading a script. I kept asking who she works for. She seemed to have a script for people like me- I never knew what the hell the $59.95 was for. I got her to get me a supervisor. I asked questions and got the following answers, – ALBERT was my supervisor.
He was VERY quick to offer me a refund – because I told him my plan was to report the fraud to my bank and the feds. The call center is in UTAH. He says the company that pays his salary is MARKET RESEARCH out of New York. Probably a lie too. He was in a hurry to credit my card and wipe out my so called account. SO if any of you have not been able tyo contact – here it is.. I asked tons of questions and it is clearly a big front fraud/
The fax number is 1-432-205-5415 and their phone is phone 1-800-456-8849
Note even if you get your bank to refund you the money they do a so called fraud investigation – I recommend calling the 800 and demandi9ng a credit as well and ensure that he takes your name out of his syten completely. It is still early ernough in their fraud to get a refund. In any event report it to your banks as well.
Yes, they are a scam. I’m calling my bank today to have a chargeback initiated. In business for 8 years now, they are only the second dishonest merchant I have encountered. PLUS they do not return phone calls 435.656.7608 Keep blogging about this folks, so we can put THEM out of business! Enough chargebacks, you know what happens to your merchant account . . .
Yes, same here, I was charged 74.99 and again of 29.96 and did not know what this charge was for. This is a scam. You think you are signing up for a $2.99 trial and on some small print somewhere you give authority for them to go into your bank account and make unexplained charges from different charge centers. Call 800 456 8849 and demand a refund. Also 877 206 3960 which I believe goes direct to yourblogprofits. Cancel your bank card too otherwise they will continue to charge you. Several other similar sites are already under investigation by the FTC. Won’t be long before this one is too. It is a scam
Thank you one and all…. The B
Exactly what was written above is word for word what happens… I fell for it too, hook line sinker… Emailed them to cancel, they canceled and sent me confirmation, even credited me the $74 charge, then billed me again the following month… Called this time to cancel and they said it wasnt already canceled but they’d take care of it… This was yesterday so waiting to see if they actually credit the charge. Also had to call another number to cancel the $29 charge. Wound up calling my credit card company and having them close the account and issue me a new account #… be warned, the old adage holds true – if it’s too good to be true it probably is
Me too…..I feel like an idiot! I was charged $2.95 and on the same day was charged $72.00 by “mypersonalblogsite.com,” I.E: “yourblogprofits.com,” I.E: “googmagic.” I also had a charge from that “googmagic” site for $29.98, which was actally refunded by a third party answering service and I did get that credit in my account. The other 2 charges were never refunded. I contacted them and spoke with a rep 2 times. 1st rep said I would see a refund in 3 days, 2nd rep said I would see a refund on the 4th day…that was on the 4th day after the 1st call. 1 week later I spoke to a manager who said they would put a “rush” request in for my refund and to call back in 24 hours if I didn’t hear from her. Since then I have left 3 messages and today, 10-6-09, both phone numbers I have (877-585-7999 and 435-656-7608) go dead when I call or loop back into their system. My card has been canceled but I am still out $74.95 and I am pissed off!
Has anyone heard of a law suit against these people?
I have been trying to cancel the account, But I get no answer. Then I got someone on the phone and she gives me the customer support web address. It won’t pull up. I am pissed off for trying to get this up and working. Everything they had me do is not working at all. I am really pissed off! That I am thinking of doing….sue there butts off!
i just found this page and i just signed up for this so how do i stop this i dont need this. If anyone know how to top this please contact me
I was recently burned by this scam and am working with my bank to have the funds replaced into my account. In the mean time, I am requesting that anyone who has information regarding the location of this group to please post it on the board. The actual dollar amount of this scam is immaterial but being taken advantage of is not. Anyway, I am in the mood for a trip and a little baseball bat justice is just what these jerks need.