Internet Fraud and Work-at-Home Scams

Consumer scams are not new.

As an example, in the 1920’s, the Ponzi scheme (bogus investment swindle) was a notorious way to bilk individuals from their savings.  However, the idea of that specific scam goes back earlier, to 1857, when Charles Dickens described it in his novel Little Dorrit. The recent example of Bernie Madoff, operator of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, is testament that old ideas can be given a fresh suit to steal from people anew.

Of course criminal behavior goes back much earlier than Charles Dickens depicts. One of the Ten Commandments (“You shall not steal”) is indicative of how long criminal acts have been problematic to Mankind.

Nowadays, a modern way for criminals to put on a new suit is by cloaking themselves behind the Internet.

Examples of Internet Scams and Fraud

The list of ways that theft is perpetrated via the Internet is seemingly endless.

The FBI maintains a website resource of “Internet Fraud” and how to avoid such.  The FBI notes that the most common categories of Internet fraud include:

• Internet auction fraud
• Non-delivery of merchandise purchased from websites
• Credit card fraud
• Investment fraud
• Business fraud
• Nigerian Letter Fraud

That last is so well known as an example of Internet fraud that the FBI lists it on the same page as its own singular category. Although it has been bilking individuals of their savings “online” since the 1990’s, the scam goes back decades earlier in the form of direct mail and faxes. (For more info, click here for the Nigerian email scam.)

Work-at-Home Scams

Due to the recession and a demand for new income sources, “work-at-home” scams have seen substantial rises in activity. The following article and video from the ABC NEWS Business Unit, Google Sues to Stop Work-From-Home Scams, highlights a number of such scams, including the widely propagated Google work-at-home scam, which includes “fake news articles, fake news blogs and fake testimonials to promote their services and direct them to credit card processing sites like the one run by Pacific WebWorks, Google said.”

Furthermore, the article states “Google is warning customers to be wary of the following work-from-home promotions: Google Adwork, Google ATM, Google Biz Kit, Google Cash, Earn Google Cash Kit, Google Fortune, Google Marketing Kit, Google Profits, The Home Business Kit for Google, Google StartUp Kit, and Google Works.”

Protect Yourself from Internet Scams

Internet fraud is common. And even though “auction fraud” is one category listed by the FBI, the vast majority of purchases made via auction sites, such as eBay, are fairly transacted.  In other words only a small percentage are fraudulent.  The same is true for business fraud and online credit card transactions in general: the vast majority of purchases made over the Internet are transacted fairly.

On the other hand, work-at-home opportunities are particularly prone to fraud. According to the ABC video (link above) 54 out of 55 such work-at-home opportunities are scams.  That means any time you see an advertisement for some work-at-home “opportunity,” there is a very high likelihood that its sole intent is to scam you out of your money.

The US Justice Department lists a number of ways to avoid becoming defrauded, including:

• Being Careful About Giving Out Valuable Personal Data Online
• Being Especially Careful About Online Communications With Someone Who Conceals His True Identity
• Watching Out for “Advance-Fee” Demands

For more info on protecting yourself from Internet scams click on this link from the United States Department of Justice on Internet Fraud.

Outline For an Online Business

This is an outline of how to establish an online business. Although these steps are relatively simple and can be executed entirely by using free, or very low cost services, it’s the very first step that determines whether anything will happen with the rest of the steps:

1: Make a decision that you want to develop an online business and commit to some amount of time you can devote to it – ideally every day. (A failure in establishing personal commitment here will make the rest of these points moot).

2: Determine the business focus. If you already have an offline business that you want to promote, then you have a place to start. Otherwise, determine your area of focus around these two variables:

a) Are there people who will purchase a product/service you are offering?

b) Are you interested enough in this product/service that you will be able to devote some time to it every day?

3: Start a blog on that subject.

Although there are very simple and entirely free blogging platforms that you can use to start immediately (Blogger.com and Wordpress.com), a better choice is to pay for your own website name and host your own blog software. Here are the steps to accomplish that:

a) Buy your own website name (less than $10.00/yr)

b) Subscribe to a web hosting service (less than $10/month)

c) Download and install the Wordpress blogging software (free) from Wordpress.org (note the “.org”).  Many hosting services will walk you through this process.  (For more info, click the following link for You Need a Professional Wordpress Blog).

4: Start an email subscription service, such as an email newsletter, to develop a subscriber base that you can build a relationship with. Click here to for more information on giving away valuable, free information, to build an email list.

(In fact, this would be a good place to plug my own free newsletter: to find out more, click Skyworks Orbit.)

5: Create content every day on the subject of your blog. This is important enough that it deserves special emphasis. You will need traffic arriving to your website. You can either buy traffic or grow traffic naturally. If you are going to develop traffic naturally (free), you’ll need to develop a lot of content over time. The more content that you have, the more reasons search engines have to bring traffic to your site. There is considerably more to know about this subject, but for the sake of simplicity, recognize that a lot of content is needed. (Click here for more information on Generating Free Traffic with Blogs).

6: You need a product or service to sell online. This relates to point 2 above. If you already have a service and/or products, you are already set. (Even so, you will want to consider NEW products and services). One simple option (not the best option) is to create an eBook that can be sold from your blog. (Or, you can hire someone to write an eBook for you.) However, generally speaking, eBooks are not as effective as they used to be, especially since, for many subjects, there are lots of established “Free” eBooks already. The point is you need some kind of product or service, and if you don’t have anything to sell right now, physical products, and especially digital products, represent business opportunities that can scale up more effectively than providing services.  “Scaling up more effectively” refers to increasing  business profits with an increase in sales, without a proportionate increase in labor.  (If you sold 10 widgets last week, you may be able to sell 20 widgets this week without hiring more staff).  On the other hand, in some cases providing services may be an easier to way to start a business.  Conversely, since there is only so much time in a day, the amount of service that can be delivered by a business is limited, even when more personnel are hired to deliver the service.

7: You’ll need a way to accept money online. There are many shopping carts available online, which facilitate the exchange of money on the Internet.  A very simple one to start with is Paypal. Although there is no fee for using Paypal, they do take a small percentage of your payment as a commission. As your business grows, there are other paid options, that will save you money, as long as you are generating enough business to make it cost effective.

8: Steps 5 and 6 need to be repeated to expand your income opportunities. Furthermore, if you have a product/service that is purchased month after month (consumable products, such as vitamins, and/or online services that are paid monthly, are some examples), the built-in repeat sales establish a very good business foundation.

NOTE: Although these steps are relatively simple, it should be emphasized that there are more details to know to expand your business faster. Further, step 5 includes an ongoing and continuous flow of activity that should not be undervalued.

The real point is that it is SIMPLE to get started!

5 Ways to Make Money on the Internet

“How do I make money on the Internet?”

Whether it’s a business person tasked with increasing their company’s revenue, or an individual looking to start an online business, that question is fundamental to their mutual purposes: leveraging the Internet for profit.

So, let’s review the basic online marketing business models, in terms of advantages and disadvantages, and see what may resonate with your needs.

By the way, the first two online business models don’t even require that you have your own product or service.

1) Publishing Advertisements On Your Websites

This is relatively easy to understand, since the ubiquity of magazines and newspapers have familiarized readers to this model.  Just like magazines and newspapers sell ads to insert into their pages, which then have the opportunity to be viewed by their readers, websites can display ads on their web pages.  Publishing Google Adsense, (which are contextual ads targeted to display offers that are relative to the content of the target website), are easy to set up.  As your site gains a larger audience, then other types of ads can be displayed, which will generate more revenue.

a) Advantages: Easy to implement.  In fact, this is the easiest way to get started if you don’t already have a product to sell.  Just set up a website (most often a blog), add some content that readers are interested in, and post some Adsense on it.  When your website(s) become more popular, seek higher-paying ads to display.

b) Disadvantages: Unless you manage to cultivate a LOT of traffic and establish some authority for the subject of your website(s), you will not make much money.  And to get to the point where you can publish higher-earning ads, and leave Adsense behind, your website(s) will need to achieve some relative level of popularity.  Furthermore, if you are selling a product or service, this type of ad income may very well reduce your income, because it takes visitors away from your site.

2) Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is all about advertising products and/or services that are provided by other companies.You are completely your own boss and you make a commission from every sale you make.

a) Advantages: No product or inventory required. No need to be concerned about customer support, or shipping, or handling the business aspect of providing the product or service you are selling. This is a pure marketing activity. Your activity is solely focused on becoming as efficient as possible in developing sales to derive the most amount of commissions possible, for the least expense.

b) Disadvantages: You are assuming all the risk for promoting some other company’s products and services. Because this is a very competitive business model, if you are buying traffic, you will lose money before you make money and you will need to continually monitor and refine your marketing performance to stay competitive.

3) Selling a Product

Similar to point #1 above, this is easy to understand. It’s what every physical and online store is doing: selling products and (ideally) making enough money to bank a profit.

a) Advantages: It’s the most basic business model. People need to buy things and someone needs to sell it to them. It’s relatively easy to scale your business up. In other words, if you are selling 10 widgets a week, as you increase your marketing effectiveness you can scale up to 20 widgets a week to make more profit.

b) Disadvantages: You need a product (not much of a disadvantage if you already have products). You need to manufacture or buy the product and unless you use drop shipping (shipments directly from the manufacturer or distributor to consumer) you need to ship the products yourself. There is more personnel and complexity needed to administer this type of business.

4) Selling a Service

Although this is somewhat a variation to selling a product (#3 above), it’s different enough to deserve separate mention. This is primarily a lead generation activity. In other words, unlike selling certain products, it cannot be conducted entirely online. The very nature of providing a service requires personal involvement.

NOTE: There is also the opportunity to sell software-as-a-service (SaaS), but in spite of the name “service,” the actual marketing activity falls under the category of selling a product (see above) or selling a subscription (see below).

a) Advantages: Selling a service is also a basic business model. People need to buy services and someone needs to provide those services. But unlike selling products, there is no products to manufacture or ship. Hence, this type of business is easier to launch than selling a product. You are selling your time to provide the service. This is a business that can be established with lower startup costs and if you are providing a service that is primarily consumed on a localized basis, then your competition is relative to your geographical area.

b) Disadvantages: There is only so much time you have. Sure, you can hire others to meet a growing demand for your service, but even so, this does not scale up as readily as selling products. Although there are exceptions, there is a potentially greater opportunity to make more money selling products than services.

5) Subscription Revenue

This is a powerful business model. Whether it is based upon a membership site or paid newsletter or software-as-a-service (SaaS), or any other way that customers will pay you on a continuous basis (often monthly) this means you are developing streams of revenue, not just individual sales. In other words, you are building a business model that continues to expand more than any of the other opportunities described here. In fact, in certain circumstances, this can include selling perishable products. For example, vitamins and health supplements can be marketed so they are automatically billed and shipped on a recurring basis.

a) Advantages: Very profitable business model. Since most of the work and expense in marketing is in generating that first sale, by using that same effort to establish multiple, ongoing (monthly) sales via paid subscriptions, each new sale has a greater impact on the business than in the other models outlined here.

b) Disadvantages: If you think any of the earlier business models are competitive, then step up to a game of even higher competition. Because this model is so lucrative, you need to be sharp. You’ll need a very good newsletter, or membership service, or product that can be continually auto-billed and shipped (continuity sales), because this attracts a lot of savvy business players who are seeking to carve out and defend their piece of the same pie.

Of course you are not limited to just ONE of these business models. You can mix and match as you wish.

What Are YOU Giving Away For FREE?

Stated another way, “How much potential business are you turning away every single day by not maximizing what value you give away?”

Because you are so busy with life, family, business, social activities and learning more about Internet marketing, it’s easy to lose sight of some of the basics of using a website to help you make money.

Let’s say you’ve created an Internet marketing engine to drive traffic to your website:

• You’ve got a blog
• You’re adding new content to your blog every day
• You’ve got a professional email service pushing visitors to your site on auto-pilot
• You’re using photos, and graphics
• You’re optimizing the photos and graphics to generate traffic for your site
• You’re using video
• You’re creating a series of videos and optimizing them to generate traffic to your site
• You’re taking advantage of local search opportunities
• You’re using social media to drive traffic to your website
• You’re delivering great products/services which results in a stream of happy customers and clients and positive testimonials
• You’ve established an excellent reputation and word-of-mouth referrals from your happy customers, which is also driving traffic to your site
• You’ve established a growing network of incoming links
• You are using offline marketing actions, such as direct mail, print ads, radio, and TV, to drive even more traffic to your website

Jeez! Your Internet marketing engine is really pumping a lot of visitors to your website. How come you’re not turning more of those visitors into customers and clients!?

Before diving into a hefty evaluation of your entire Internet marketing machine, simply review what you are giving away for free.

A large percentage of those visitors are only coming one time. And they are visiting for a remarkably short period of time.

You’ve only got a few seconds to engage them and help them in some meaningful way, so that you can develop a relationship which will yield a greater benefit for them, and more business for you.

Many people who land on your site are looking for specific information: some need to solve a problem or to get an answer RIGHT NOW. Others are gathering info to support buying decisions that may be made sooner or later.

Even if some of these visitors determine very quickly that you are providing something they want, if you do not engage them, you will lose a number of your most interested visitors – every day.

And an easy way to engage visitors is to offer them something for free that is relevant to why they arrived on your site in the first place.

On top of that, you should present that free giveaway like you were selling an expensive diamond, because that’s how valuable it is for your visitors and for your business!

When you give away something for free – in exchange for their email – you have an opportunity to help them and of course, as a result, you are building a relationship, which is further developed through an automated email campaign.

In short, no matter how much (or how little) traffic you have coming to your site, if you are not engaging your visitors and offering something valuable enough to capture their imagination – for free – you have lost an opportunity to help them because the likelihood that they will ever return is very low.

If should be emphasized that whatever you are giving away better be GOOD, so that it will genuinely help your visitors, which will result in building a relationship that will be mutually beneficial.

Oh! One more thing. Giving away something valuable is also useful for building incoming links, which is just one more reason to really make sure your giveaways are REALLY GOOD!

The Love/Hate Dichotomy of Internet Marketing

HOW EFFECTIVE ARE YOUR WEB COMMUNICATIONS?
Internet marketing facilitates a two-way communication flow between publishers of information and consumers of information, and makes it easier for commerce to take place.

The reason savvy business owners love Internet marketing is because it’s effective and economical (compared to using only traditional media). Never before in history has so much communication power been in the hands of any person who has a computer, an Internet connection and a willingness to learn.

INTERNET MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES DO NOT STAND STILL

The reason some hate Internet marketing is because it’s so effective and so economical and yet so unable to stand still, that it can create confusion as to what is pertinent at any given time.

The technology of Internet marketing is evolving every day.

However, all of it still boils down to using technology to enable more efficient communication.

And if you think you are tuned into the world of Internet marketing because you have a static website that communicates as a one-way flow to visitors (like a brochure), you are missing some of the greatest opportunities ever developed to help you promote your business and/or your message.

INTERNET MARKETING IS ABOUT 2-WAY COMMUNICATION

Internet marketing ties together creativity and communication, by way of technologies that incorporate copywriting, design, graphics, promotion, audio, video and other factors that make it easy for communication to go back and forth.

The concept of using technology to facilitate two-way communication between your company and your visitors, customers and clients has been around for many years. But the ways to bring that about are continually getting easier, more effective, and more popular.

Ten years ago it would strike some potential customers odd if you did not have a website. Nowadays, it might strike some potential customers odd if you have a website that was only a static, one-way communication media, without regularly updated information.

ARE YOU USING A BLOG?

Adding a blog to your existing site, or even completely upgrading your website to a blog architecture is such a simple and important advancement, that by NOT having a blog, it would be similar to not having a website 10 years ago.

Blogs not only allow instant feedback from visitors, but they are a much better platform for driving new visitors to your website, especially when intelligently used as part of a marketing program to create expansion.

Are you using a blog?  If not, you are missing a simple opportunity to boost your web presence.

There’s more to know about this, and if your are interested in getting a foothold on the BASICS of this Love/Hate dichotomy of Internet marketing, be sure to sign up for the “The 7 Orbits of Internet Marketing.” It’s free!

Should You Create an Infomercial for Your Product?

After 1984, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) eliminated regulations to govern the commercial content of television, infomercials began to proliferate the late-night airwaves because they were cheap to make and proved to be a highly profitable media, selling anything that could be easily shipped.

In fact, infomercials became so prominently profitable that more and more money poured into the industry and by the dawn of the 21st century, big brands started pumping money into the infomercial profit party in a much bigger way. This raised the profile of the infomercial industry as a whole, and furthered the acceleration of rising rates.

Having been involved with some of the most successful infomercials, I have observed that infomercials, as an advertising media, have matured in a way somewhat analogous (although not nearly as fast), as what has happened in the Pay Per Click advertising channel. PPC has become a massively successful advertising model. As a result, advertisers have rapidly driven up PPC costs, over the past few years.

Further, the level of sophistication in PPC strategies to stay profitable has also increased.

In a similar way, the costs and risks associated with creating and testing infomercials have skyrocketed since their humble beginnings.

So, when someone asks me if they should produce an infomercial, rather than delve into the relative merits of their product or service and how broad the demographics are for the market that buys it, I simply ask how much testing has been done through less expensive media?

(For more info, click “Testing” Your Way To Internet Marketing Success).

PPC would still be the least expensive and the fastest way to test how well a product will sell on the Internet. When that has been refined and scaled up to maximize the demand and profits, enough information will be gained to really determine what are the best keywords and the driving factors that underlie this product’s success. And all that data will be very important as a research basis for scripting and producing an infomercial “test,” to see how it would do on a limited trial basis as a TV advertisement.

There is much more to know about creating infomercials (which is a high profile component of Direct Response Marketing), but the simple answer about whether you should create an infomercial for your product would be based upon how well it’s selling on the Internet and using the supporting info to help evaluate a translation to TV.

Stated another way, for most business persons, the question about whether a product would be successful as an infomercial shouldn’t even be considered until it’s been tested online and then tested in smaller geographical regions as a TV commercial.

Review of Joomla vs. Wordpress

Wordpress and Joomla are two popular website content management systems that I have been using for a number of years.

There are certainly many others, but if you are contemplating various software foundations to build a website upon, you would be wise to become familiar with either, or both of these as they would be a good choice for many website developers.

Setting up websites has evolved considerably since the mid 90’s. In brief, it has become much easier.

A person with nominal knowledge of the Internet can set up a dynamic website pretty quickly. Of course, if a person is willing to devote more time to the subject, one can create more specialized and customized websites.

This article is not a technical treatise of Joomla and Wordpress, but is a simple overview, specifically for non-technical users who are contemplating a software platform for their own website, or as a website for a group of users. Read more »