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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Writing for Associated Content

A few days ago, I submitted an article to Associated Content. I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when I was informed by email that my article Is Data-Entry Work a Scam? had been published.

AC is a website where you can write articles and get paid. What I love about this website is that it gives you great options: you can submit text, video, audio, slideshows, you can write about anything you like and they will pay you $1.50 per thousand page views, which is great if you can bring traffic to your articles. You can also write articles on a subject that has been called for, which is more advantageous, moneywise.

Associated Content helps you bringing visitors to your articles by giving you the necessary tools: you can bookmark your articles and share them on network websites such as Facebook, Digg or My Space, you can also interact with other AC members.

So if you like to write, give it a go, it is worth the effort!


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Sunday, October 28, 2007

Nigerian Scam

I had a surprise when I went through my emails this morning: apparently, the Central Bank of Nigeria has been instructed to credit my account with some contract funds.

First, I never entered in any contract with anybody from Nigeria. I am just a girl trying to make a bit of extra cash on the Internet.

Another thing, the email mentions a contract number (which doesn't ring a bell), a Bank Swift code, an account number, an email address, a phone number, which is a lot of probably bogus detail, but it does not include the amount of the payment in question, which is what I'd really like to know!

Well, I am not going to phone them, I am not wasting my money ringing this international phone number, and I will not write to the email contact (I would probably end up receiving more scam emails or even worse, this could result in someone being able to get information from my computer without my knowledge).

I ran an internet search on internet fraud after getting this email and found that the Nigerian scam has been active since the 1980's! My information said that very often, Nigerian officials are not only aware of it, they run the bloody scheme!

I printed the email and I am going to hand it into my nearest police station, which I suppose is the right thing to do, even though I don't think this will result in much. I suppose I am part responsible in getting that email, as I am always signing up for free stuff online (most of the time free newsletters about internet marketing that I don't even have the time to read!).

The bottom line is that I am happy I did not get sucked in and become another victim of this scam and I want to warn as many people as possible, so it's a good thing you are reading this!


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Friday, October 26, 2007

Agloco

While surfing the net a few months ago, I found a story from someone saying he was making a killing just by having a viewbar on his computer screen; he was talking about companies that pay people just for using the Internet. I could not remember the website's name so the other day, while investigating some more ways to get paid on the Internet, I ran a search for "get paid to surf" and I found a lot of blogs and articles about such programmes.

I signed up with Agloco and then realised I would not get paid (if ever), for another while. I downloaded their viewbar even though the website says it is not yet available (weird?). I think there is a new version coming up which is not yet available for download but Agloco is encouraging members to refer as many people as possible for when the company will get hot. This might be wishful thinking but I read their blog and thought this sounded like an honest company.

You have to understand that when you sign up, you own a part of Agloco. There are 4 ways to make money when you sign up:
1- you earn money when you use the Agloco viewbar,
2- you get some of the total revenue generated by the total use of Agloco's viewbars by all their members,
3- when a member makes a purchase with a company advertising with them, all members get a portion of the commission earned by Agloco,
4- when you refer new members, you also make money.

The downside of it all is that Agloco is not making money yet so they can't pay their members at the moment but since sign up is free, what have I got to lose?


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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Is Data-Entry Work a Scam?

Today while I was reading my emails, I was taken to another of those sites that offer data-entry work. If you don't already know about them, these are websites that guarantee you big money for little work, inputting a few lines of data onto some forms. They always sound very convincing, the only thing is that you need to pay them in order to join their scheme.

This is one of the job opportunities I would never go for, it just does not seem right to have to pay anyone for working. When you get work, you should get paid, not the opposite! I think this is one of the biggest scams on the internet. Maybe I am wrong, maybe you can make $200 or more a day just filling forms. If I had money to throw out the window, I would be very tempted to get in on one of those schemes and find out what exactly are they all about.

Did you notice that they always have a high price for joining (usually $97) but always have that price reduced to almost half just when you are about to join? If you haven't, try again in 6 months and you will see that the time-limited special price offer is strangely still valid. I don't know about you but I think this makes it even more look like a scam.

What if, instead of asking for a payment on signing up, the companies just deducted that amount from your first paycheck? They may argue that the joining fee allows them to recover the cost of training new aplicants: if training new people really is that costly to them, this would seem fairer (even though a legitimate company should provide training free of charge), but then again, if you could join for free, I guess they would not make any money, since they appear to make a lot of dough from their new applicants.

Another thing data-entry companies may claim as one of the reasons for the joining fee is that acceptance is limited, so they use the money thing to control the flow of entries: I don't know, if they so much want to limit the number of entrants, why don't they spend a little less in advertising? I guess this way they could even afford to pay for the training themselves!

If you own or work for a data-entry company and you read this blog, please leave a comment, I would be very interested to find out what you have to say.


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Monday, October 22, 2007

Dear God, I Almost Forgot!

With all this talk about making money online, I nearly forgot that my car insurance was due for renewal! I have been with the same insurers for a good few years now, so I thought it might be a good idea this year to get a few Insurance Quotes Online, just to keep my insurance dealer on his toes (yes, I do like to get people to actually work for their commission and no, you would not like to have me as your boss).

I found a great choice of Automobile Insurance Policies on the internet. I managed to find a great site offering all kinds of auto insurance ranging from Sports cars to policies for Teen drivers. As it turns out, I even found Poor Driver Auto Insurance Rates (Not that I need this, even though I am a woman)!

So I won't bore you with all the details but I printed out the cheapest quote I could find for my own needs, stashed it in an enveloppe and if my old insurance company can't match that I am changing my car insurance tomorrow!


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Saturday, October 20, 2007

Why Write a Blog?

I stumbled on the concept of blogs while browsing on the internet, looking for more ideas to make me earn money online.

Apparently, it is possible to make decent money online by writing on your own blog. So if you keep an online diary and enjoy writing for fun, like me, why not get paid for it? This is why I decided to give it a go and joined Blogvertise.

The process seems simple enough: you don't just write anything. Blogvertise works with advertisers who want some publicity about their product, website or service. When they get a request from an advertiser, Blogvertise passes it on to its registered bloggers who then have to write a post on their blog about the specific item.

In order to be accepted in the program, your blog must attract enough traffic so that your paid posts (which are in fact ads) are being seen by more than a handful of people. That is the reason why your blog must be at least 3 months old, which is not yet the case for my blog, and you must also write regularly on it so until this blog gets old enough to be accepted I will just have to write for fun!


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How my Internet Career Started

I am a single mum and even though I have college education, I can't go outside my home to work everyday like most people do as I can't afford childcare. I am lucky enough to be receiving money from the Social Welfare but I don't want to live this way forever!


Last June, I went on Ebay and bought some ebooks loaded with money-making advice, some of them were good, others were utterly rubbish. One of them showed me how to make money from bookmakers. I had never been a gambler before this but it turned out the advice was good and I managed to make €6000 in one month! My only problem was being too greedy, instead of stopping after one winner per day, I tried to get two and sometimes three a day, which worked fine until I lost everything in one afternoon, so I decided to give up the horses.


A few weeks later, I came upon a website claiming it could make me $300 in 7 minutes and $100 per hour thereafter. You might have seen the ad on Google, this is in fact an affiliate advertising a casino's sign up bonus. I signed up, made a $200 deposit, got the bonus, followed the instructions for winning at European Roulette, got up to $676 and back down to $238, up to $520 again, at which point I decided to take $220 back and I played the other $300 and lost it. This gave me a total win of $20: not bad, I did not lose any money, but not great either for 2 weeks of playing 1 to 2 hours a day!


I then decided not to risk any more money and I joined 4 casino affiliate programs and created my own website: http://www.freewebs.com/freecasinobonus. I thought this was going to be easy money but oh, boy, was I wrong! Although I enjoyed it I spent an entire week building, designing, changing pages, adding and removing things, and I still occasionally do it when a new idea comes to me. But the hardest thing about a website is its promotion, during the last 2 weeks, I have spent hours everyday looking for ways to get visitors on my website. I didn't want to pay for advertising until I started making money so I had to find other ways. I signed up for every available free newsletter giving me advice on promoting my website and my email inbox is now full of rubbish, it takes me almost an hour each day to sort the good from the bad (and the ugly!).


I am not looking for lazy ways to make money, no get rich quick scams. I am willing to work hard and I am not ready to give up just yet. Call me crazy if you like but I am sure there are ways to make money on the net!


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