Blog Scams: How Do You Know If The Hype is a Scam?

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With the line between a legit blog and scam blog getting harder to detect, how do you really know when the blog you are reading is a scam blog? As part of this ongoing series on blog scams, we’ve covered how blog scams are growing and the impact on the economy and job market for stay-at-home workers. Learning to tell the difference between a legit blog and a scam blog is becoming more and more important as the work force moves online looking for jobs.

You begin the process of detection of a scam blog by checking the facts. I covered a lot of information previously on how to check the facts in:

Some of the sites I recommend you use to check your facts when it comes to the hoaxes, scams, and snake oil claims some blogs can make include: [Read more…]

Blog Scams: Look Before You Click

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As part of my research into blog scams, I ran across a new video by Consumer Reports WebWatch called “Look Before You Click”.


Consumer Reports WebWatch – Look Before You Click

The WebWatch’s ‘Look Before You Click’ Campaign was created with a grant from the New York State Office of Attorney General and uses a cartoon animation and satrical musical verse to educate Internet users about Internet fraud that comes in through email, blogs, and websites. [Read more…]

Blog Scams: Get Rich Quick and Work From Home Scams

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In Flipping Blog Scams MMO Niche is Full of Jerks, Garry Conn takes on the scams associated with Make Money Online Niches (MMON) and reselling domain names and sites:

It takes a lot to get me upset; however, when I witness people within the MMO niche that act like a bunch of middle school kids making fun of the ugly girl who dropped her books in the hall it pisses me off and without a doubt shows me the true colors of many of the individuals out here. Not only do these people scam, take money and trick their readers but now they make fun of them when they get the courage to step foot into the MMO arena.

While Garry is talking about the quick flipping of MMON blogs, where people buy good named domains, launch it with a nice blog, manipulate the stats, then resell it leading the buyer on. [Read more…]

Blog Scams: Blog Scams Are a Growing Business

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While I can excuse those who overhype their Plugins, Themes, and contests on their blog, I have a hard time forgiving those who use their blogs as scams. As the blog platform becomes more ubiquitous and easier to use with a lot of automatic content generating tools and comment and trackback spam tools, blogs are being used more and more for the dark side of blogging.

In The Thin Line Between Legitimate Blog Models and Scams, Weblog Scout writes that there is a think line between a scan and legitimate blog model as scammers tend to use the same tools as legit blogs do, such as autoblogging WordPress Plugins, auto-pings, mass site submission tools, and feed scrapers: [Read more…]

Blog Scams: There Is Nothing Like This Anywhere

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I hate hyperbole, and what really infuriates me are claims that “there is nothing like this anywhere!” Oh, really.

With the modern treasure trove called search engines, there is little left in the world that can’t be found, and odds are that your original, can’t be found anywhere, is findable. Have you looked?

A few months ago, a WordPress Plugin author claimed that he had the first Plugin of this kind. I knew of three others published over the past few years that did the same thing, and two did it better. I didn’t need a search engine to find that out, but why didn’t he search first before making the claim?

A day later, a WordPress Theme designer told me that he’d designed a Theme that was such an original, he bet me I couldn’t find anything similar. I found over twenty five similar Themes with a Google search before calling it quits.

Another blogger bragged to me that he was going to hold a contest unlike any other contest. No one in the world had ever done anything like it. When I told him that two similar contests were held over the past couple years exactly like his, one was a success and the other a failure, he was really angry at me for taking the wind out of his sails. I wished him good luck anyway. Maybe his would work, but bragging about it as the “only one of its kind” isn’t the truth. [Read more…]