Thursday, November 11, 2010

How To Avoid Fraud, Deceit & Scams!

 The world is full of people who feel they can take advantage of others to obtain their goals in life. Fraud, Deceit & Scams happen in the real world every day. Just tune into your local news to hear about them. But, Fraud, Deceit & Scams also happen in the virtual world as well. And, unfortunately they often hit those who can lease afford the losses.

Online we are always inundated with "get rich quick schemes" and their claims of "overnight success". If you're like me you find this kind of s.p.a.m clogging up your email box on a daily bases. They tell us how easy it is. How we can just sit back and relax, do nothing all day long and still make a roll full of money. Hell, we might as well go golfing because we'll be making money hand over fist while on the golf course. :-| Now while sitting back and watching the money roll in would definitely be nice, reality is, rarely does any get rich quick scheme ever work. The promises of millions never pan out no matter how hard you try.

The problem here is that so many people want and need to make more money. And they want to make that money as quickly as they can. So they believe, or hope that what the scammer is telling them will be true. But understand this, even the greatest, largest companies in the world took time and work to build. Martha Stewart for example will tell you that she started her business in the basement of her house. And look where that business is today. A multi billion dollar a year corporation. While we all can't be Martha Stewart or Donald Trump or Hugh Heffner we can have our own successful home based business if we just stay away from the scams.

So, how do we spot the scams? Well, if you are serious about operating your own home based business there are things you can watch out for. Sort of the red flags of the business opportunity world. Let's have a look at some now.

- Charging you for information about their business opportunity. It's pretty plain and simple. A so called business opportunity tells you all you have to do is go to your mail box pick up the checks and cash them, but first you must send them a check to get the information on how this is done. I'm of the thinking that your check is going to be the only check getting cashed here. This type of ad appears all over the internet. But if their business opportunity is so good why must you pay to find out what it is. Would it not make more sense to give you that information for free so they could get you interested in their product. I would think so! And unfortunately many people get scammed into sending these frauds the money they ask for. Then if they receive the information they paid for they will often find it pretty much useless and often they are require to send more money for more information. Stay away from these types of ads, they will not get you a successful home based business!

- They want to charge you a fee to sell their products.
O.K., I've got to ask - What's up with that?! If their product is so great won't you be selling them like crazy? Won't you be making money for not only yourself but for the company as well? Don't pay to sell someone else's products.

- They offer you free products.
Ever see these ads where you are entitled to a free (what ever) only to discover you'll need to purchase something first. ie: Sign up today and get (what ever) for FREE! Of course what they don't tell you is you'll have to purchase a sample package first in order to get the freebie.

- Fly by nights
Fly by night companies that pop up and take peoples money operate both offline and online. Very often they disappear without warning. So to keep yourself safe from these frauds ask yourself the following questions. Is this an established company? How long have they been in business? Do they have an actual street address or only a P.O. Box? Or worse, no address and no way to contact them at all? Do they use only an auto responder or do they have an email where you can get in touch with a real person?

I know that all these points seem like common sense. But why then, do so many people ignore them. That is why these scammers can exist. As explained in my book "eBay Marketing Wholesale SourcePak" when looking for your perfect home based business it is important to look for a company that only gives you the straight goods. No promises of exorbitant amounts of money falling from the sky into your lap without you doing a thing to make it happen. And, they should not be charging you for any information on their business opportunity it should be laid out for you. Use your own common sense, if something looks to good to be true, then it probably is to good to be true.

How Non-technical Webmasters Are Harnessing the Power of RSS...

The opportunity to quickly and easily implement and harness the power of RSS is quite real and new programs become available every week that allow non-technical marketers and webmasters to capitalize on the effective use of RSS.

Jim Edwards spoke of this trend in the recent "For a Greater Cause" teleseminar. Media-rich blogs and content sites are stickier and keep visitors on site longer.

Consider delivering audio content via the internet by setting up a blog and incorporating streaming audio. By doing so, your media-rich message creates a relationship with visitors that cannot be achieved with text alone.

If you'd like to take this one step further, start using video content. It's the difference between reading a flyer versus listening to the radio versus watching television. Why do people gravitate to the TV when every home has a radio? When presented with the option, we prefer the satisfaction of both the auditory and visual senses.

The real power of blogs, audio and video is that you can invite your visitors to participate and interact with you by allowing them to post comments. Your blog becomes a community event and we all love a party.

If you'll be using the strategy of blogging with audio and video, there are three things that you should do.

First, as mentioned above, allow your visitors to post comments to your blog.

Second, always give visitors the opportunity to sign up for your newsletter or ezine directly from your blog.

Third, for those who prefer to receive news via RSS feeds, post your RSS feed on every page of your blog.

Recorded interviews with industry experts fed via podcast can raise your credibility simply by association. Arrange for a phone interview with an expert in your market area, get permission to record the call and post it to your blog. If you're offering publicity and exposure for the interviewee, it should be simple to find willing and eager parties.

RSS offers you the ability to provide high frequency content updates. It can be daily or hourly. Deliver important messages, news and other content on demand rather that waiting for your regularly scheduled e-zine.

What's next?...

Here's where things get fun for the online marketer and webmaster. One area in particular where you can really start to take advantage of RSS technology is to build sticky content on your sites and monetize it with programs like Google's Adsense.

RSS feeds are available in abundance that provide product news, press releases and updates. Sites such as PRWeb (http://www.prweb.com) want you to use their news feeds on your site. So why not? Build your site's content with news and information feeds that deliver steady streams of traffic.

Do a bit of searching and you'll find programs and scripts that make the addition of RSS feeds to your website very simple and fast.

RSS gives you an edge over your competition by allowing you to create a sense of community, offer interaction and provide the latest news and information nearly on autopilot.

How can you make money out of your site with no product, no affiliate program, no services and no idea of how to sell …

This was the question my copywriter asked me at one of our meetings about joint ventures on the web. What follows is the question and answers as best as I can remember them. Just to let you know he was making money 24 hours later…

Question: How do you make money out of your site with no product, no affiliate program, no services and no idea of how to sell…

Answer: Easy use Adsense.

Question: But what is Adsense.

Answer: Adsense is the other side of Google's Adwords. These are little three line text adverts that companies use to get targeted traffic to their websites.

Question: But how does it work.

Answer: Simple. Your Website is Internet real estate. The more your website is vested the more valuable the real estate. Just like a piece of real estate you can sell bits off. In this case it is the same as you putting up an advertising billboard on your property. You rent this to a company; in this case Google and they put their ads on it.

Question. OK But how do I get paid

Answer: You get paid every time somebody goes to your site and clicks on one of the ads. Simple enough. (In fact very sophisticated from a technical and marketing point of view but that is getting off the subject.)

Question. How much do I get paid?

Answer. Well here is a thing; you will probably not be able to work out exactly how much you get paid for any one ad that changes ad to ad. But after a few days of running this system you can probably work out how much you are getting per page per day.

Question. How much are you getting?

Answer. I am not allowed to tell you because I have signed a contract with Google that tells me that I am not allowed to say. However, I can tell you that to get to a stage where you get up to $1 per page per page is not impossible, but if you work on $0.30 per page per day, for a well-visited site you could be very happy.

Question. OK but $0.30 per page per day is not a lot.

Answer. No not if you only have 5 pages. But even that would cover the cost of a web site. Have a look below at the figures.

5 page web site at $0.30 per page per day

5 x 0.30 x 365 days = $547.50 per Year

10 page web site at $0.30 per page per day

10 x 0.30 x 365 = $1095.00 per Year

25 page site at $0.30 per page per day

25 x 0.30 x 365 = $2,737.50 per Year

50 page site at $0.30 per page per day

50 x 0.30 x 365 = $5,475.00 per Year

OK We are not talking retiring owning your own island and helicopter. But if you said well I think I could put up one page a day for every day of the year. Have 50 pages per web site. That’s means 7 web sites with 50 pages each and 15 day off.

365 divided by 50 = 7 and 15 over.

That would give you 7 sites at $5,475.00 per year or $38,325.00 in annual income after all the pages were finished. Now does that sound interesting. And all you have had to do is write 200 words per day. Just to let you know this article is so far 543 words.

Even if it is only half that is $19,162.50 per year. That is the repayments on an interest only loan at 5% of just under $400,000.

Question. Why not just have one big website?

Answer. It is better to build a number of columns to hold up a building. Better to diversify and survive.

Question. OK if this is so good why isn’t everybody doing it?

Answer. Many reasons, some people make more out of selling their own products, some do not know about it, some are just too purest. In the end who cares; if you quest is to make some money. There is nothing bad here. In fact there is only good.

Question. What do you mean there is only good.

Answer. Well let’s think. Somebody has got to your site because they have either searched for you on a search engine or somebody has referred them. They will only visit your site if they are interested in what you have. The ads that google put up on their billboard on your site are targeted to what your site is about. Therefore your visitors not only get to see your info but they get to see other offerings. If they are interested they click on the ad. Now look what has happened here. You have made money because somebody has paid to put an ad on your site. The user has clicked on the ad because they are interested in the subject and ad. The advertiser gets a warm lead. Google make a slice as the middleman and can continue to run their excellent service. So everybody wins. And it only costs people pennies.

Question. OK I’m sold what do I do now.

Answer. Simple go to www.google.com/adsense download all the info on setting up and account, the details what specifications your site must meet. Basically, no competitive ads, not profanity, must be a reasonable site with good navigation and no to many spelling mistakes.

The just get going.

Question. Are there ways that I can maximize the adverts and make more money?

Answer. Yes there are. But that is not for this article.

For further information come back to this web site for the next article – Now to maximize your adsense review stream.

How are con artists stealing money from eBay buyers?

Someone is using another person as a middleman.

Just imagine: you want to buy a fast and modern laptop but you see that in retail stores and internet superstores it costs tons of money. Where will you go? Right! You will connect to Internet; start your favorite browser and type "www.ebay.com".

You find a laptop there and you like a price, you think: "Okay. It's very good deal! I will win this auction!" And you win.

You write to a seller and ask him how to pay. The seller is reply that you should send a money order to him/her. Then you send the money order and... nothing. You try to contact with the seller, but nobody replies on your messages.

You use eBay to get seller's information. What a hell!? I sent the money to another person!!! You call to the seller and find that he doesn't know what eBay is. Someone used his credit card to signup.

You find a phone number of a person who had received your money order. You call to her and learn that she is just receiving money orders on behalf of an overseas company.

She doesn't know what eBay is also. Heck! You want your money back! But it's very problematic…

As I know it's impossible!

What do you learn from it?

Before bidding on an auction:
- Look at the payments part of a page. If a seller accepts money orders and cashiers' checks only when it's a 95% scam. Feedback means almost nothing. I will explain it later.

- Ask a seller for his/her phone number and make a call to be sure that the seller is real person who is selling an item.

- If a seller is refused or avoiding to contact you via the phone ask for the eBay escrow service. Use eBay escrow only! Do not trust other companies.

- If you are paying a seller by http://www.PayPal.com always check that a seller name the same as on eBay. If different it's 95% scam.

- If you reached a seller by a phone and negotiated with him about a payment method you can bid on the auction safely.

Some advanced knowledge:

I said early that feedback means nothing. Why?

Because some scam artists are buying eBay accounts with a high feedback rating.

They are buying it from hackers who overtake legal users' accounts and inactive for a long time period accounts. It's also true for PayPal accounts.

And why you should trust eBay escrow services only? Because rippers are running bogus escrow sites and try to rip you off.
Theirs site looks very fine. You will see a professional design and great domain name. But... it’s only fake, intended to take your money and run.

Very often such services tell you to transfer money to an overseas bank account or e-gold account.

REMEMBER THAT A BIG PART OF SCAM ARTISTS SIMPLY DON'T DO THE NEXT STEP IF YOU WILL ASK FOR THE EBAY ESCROW OR PHONE CALL. I KNOW IT, BECAUSE I'M THE RETIRED RIPPER.

Help! eBay Selling

General productivity

Shortkeys
This is lovely utility which saves me hours of time each week. It is perfect for those occasions when you are required to key in information to websites. For example, how often do you key in your name and address, or a username and password, or an email address?

With Shortkeys, you associate 3 or 4 unique keystrokes with a string of frequently used information. Let's suppose I want to have a shortkey for my email address, and I set this as ##z1 in Shortkeys. Whenever I am required to key in my email address, in Outlook, on web forms, in Word documents etc, I just type in ##z1 and Shortkeys instantly replaces that with my email address.


Download Accelerator

If you regularly download ebooks or software, and it seems to take forever, you will find Download Accelerator is a useful addition to your portfolio. Download Accelerator increases download speeds by up to 300%, regardless of the speed of your internet connection. I don't know how it does it, but I guess 89 million users can't be wrong! 


Ebook Production

Acrobat Adobe
I create all my ebooks in pdf format as this file can be read by anyone with Acrobat Reader, and this includes Mac users too. The way I create an ebook is to write it in Microsoft Word first. Once I'm happy that the Word version is exactly how I want it, I use an integrated converter which takes the Word file and converts it automatically into a pdf file. This conversion preserves everything which appeared in the Word document, including headers/footers, page numbers and web links.  


If you are considering developing your own ebooks using Acrobat, the most cost effective way of purchasing it is to buy online from Adobe's US site, and select the download option. 

At 167 Mb, Acrobat is quite a large software product. If you would therefore prefer to buy the boxed CD version, the cheapest way in the UK is to get it from Amazon. http://www.workwinners.com/nlramacrobat.htm

ebook Covers
It is a fact that showing your ebook in 3D form so it looks like a book really helps to boost sales. 


Website creation and maintenance

Website design
I use Macromedia's Dreamweaver to design websites, and indeed to create eBay auction description pages. Dreamweaver is a premium web design product, and unless you're going to do serious website design I wouldn't advise you to acquire it.

It comes in boxed form, and Macromedia will channel any UK purchasers to a UK based reseller. The cheapest way in the UK is to get it from Amazon. 


Image Manipulation & Optimising
I use Paint Shop Pro for picture manipulation and for optimising. This is important for auction pictures, as eBay have a size limit of 50KB on any pictures which you want to upload to their Picture Service.

The authors, JASC, have just released Version 9 of this software. I find Version 8 is perfectly acceptable for everything I want to do, and it's cheaper than Version 9.

You can't now buy Version 8 from the author's USA site, which is unfortunate as this was the cheapest way of buying the product before Version 9 came out. 


Website upload
Cute FTP is probably the best known FTP software. OR FileZilla.



Website hosting
ProWebSpace are excellent and reasonable web hosts which I have now been using for over a year. I transferred to them from another host with whom I was having lots of problems. Now, I have a better service, and it's at one third the price! Of course, you can get web space for nothing from a variety of ISPs.


You only need companies like ProWebSpace if you intend to "go commercial" in your internet activities. If you do, it's important to have a paid service as this gives you the right to kick b**t if ever you experience hosting problems. If you would like to know the hosting company who I moved from, email me.

Newsletter and other Mailings

As my newsletter has grown, I've tried various ways of managing my mailing lists. I currently use Press-Manager, and have found their service to be very easy to set-up and to use. It's a web based service, and all mailings are performed from their site. This means there's no software to be installed, I can manage my mailings from any PC and my ISP no longer bears the mailing load.


Autoresponding

You may know that the use of autoresponders is one of the keys to marketing on the internet. I use Promasoft, and have found it can easily handle everything I want. 


I hope this glimpse into the systems and services I use has been helpful.

Good luck in your own internet business developments and in your eBay selling.