Report Possible Scams

Have you come across a possible money making scam? Report it here in the comments section for the benefit of many.

Glorified Cheating

Recently I came across a review that boasted about a money making program on internet. This glorified writing was about an eBook for US$ 39.99, revealing a method on how to make money online with YouTube and domain parking. There are many known bloggers who wrote great about this book. All the blogs were directing to a forum thread at digitalpoint for more details.

There is no reason why you don't get excited and shell out US$ 39.99 (there are some offers as well). But only after you pay, you will see the content of the eBook. It is an amateurish word document on a very well known idea of posting videos at YouTube to promote a website. Park a domain at GoDaddy or Sedo, then promote that site URL by watermarking some videos with the site URL and posting them at YouTube.

Now to make the kind of money they promise, you need to watermark and upload atleast 200 videos. Only when you start doing you will realise the effort required. (They provide some sex video clips along with the eBook for you to watermark and upload to YouTube). You can only experience the worst part after all the efforts you put in. It is almost sure that either your domain account or the YouTube account will be banned by the time you are ready to collect your first check.

Isn't it cheating? Selling a well-known idea of using YouTube to promote a website? Will you be happy if I sell you an eBook on a revolutionary idea to quench your thirst, and give you a word document with a list of beer labels available in the market?

What I don't understand is why all those respected bloggers on net are promoting this eBook? Is there a conspiracy?

Where Is The Traffic?

So I created a website. But where is the traffic to generate money. I am the only visitor to my site until I do something to attract internet traffic.

You may find many advertisements offering you a pre-built website that can make you a millionaire. You will scroll down miles and miles to see the testimonials of many millionaires !! Beware..! Don't fall into such scams. OK.. We cannot say it a scam. But it is not as easy to make money from a website as they say. To make millions and millions out of a website you need trillions and trillions of visitors to your site. And that is not easy. In fact, you may not even get a single visitor just by creating a website. It requires time and lot of hardwork.

Now I have a website and I need visitors. Cheapest way is to post about the website on various web directories and forums. The other option is paid advertisement to generate a sure traffic. But will it make money or you lose? Lets see. I am advertising on AdWords for a small amount (to start with, just 2.5 dollars a day). We will have a revenue analysis shortly.

Own Domain For Individuality

To create an identity for this blog, I bought a domain name from GoDaddy.com for US$ 10.19 per year. That is the rate for .com domains. Luckily I got a short domain name, tim4u.com.

There was some confusion while configuring the domain name to point to this blog. Blogger Help says to create a CNAME record as below:

1. Log in to your account at www.godaddy.com.


2. Open the Domains tab and select My Domain Names. You'll be directed to the Domain Manager page.


3. Click the domain that you'd like to use with your blog.


4. Click the Total DNS Control And MX Records link at the bottom of the section entitled Total DNS.


5. Click Add New CNAME Record in the box labelled CNAMES (aliases). If you've already created a CNAME record for your blog's address, click the pencil icon next to the existing CNAME record.


6. For the Name, enter only the subdomain of the address you want to use for your blog. For example, if you picked www.mydomain.com as your address, enter www here.


7. Enter ghs.google.com as the Host Name. Specify a TTL or use the default setting of 1 hour.


8. Click OK, and then click OK again.

It all works fine for www.tim4u.com. But the help document doesn't say anything on how to make tim4u.com (URL without www) to point to the blog. It was just not working. Finally I forwarded tim4u.com to www.tim4u.com from the GoDaddy.com control panel.

So if someone types tim4u.com in the browser, first it redirects to www.tim4u.com and then to the blog hosted at blogspot.com.

Is there a better solution? If so, please share it in the comments section.

Why AdSense, And Why Not Yahoo! Publisher Network?

Recently there is a confusion among AdSense publishers on shifting to Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN). There are also rumours that earnings from YPN is better than AdSense, which must be true on per click basis, but doubtful on the gross earnings, as personally I doubt on the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) with YPN. The reason for a better revenue per click with YPN is that it requires the advertiser to spend a minumum of US$ 0.1 per click. But Google AdWords allows a minimum of upto US$ 0.01 per click. So if you get a click on a YPN ad., chances are that you get a better share than with AdSense.

For the same reason of higher minimum spend per click for advertisers with Yahoo! Publisher Network, chances are that only advertisers from those category having high value keywords will go with YPN. Most of the advertisers with low value keywords will be happy with Google AdWords. This turns out to a huge ad. inventory with AdSense compared to YPN, and thus more ad. varieties to AdSense publishers. High value keywords also imply that the Click-Through-Rates (CTR) are less for the ads. (that is why their value is high).

So, here are the chances. YPN delivers high value ads, but chances of getting clicks may be less. AdSense delivers a mix of high value and low value ads with a better CTR.

There was a time when we could use AdSense and YPN in the same website (but in different pages). But recently Google banned that also. So I had to choose, either AdSense or YPN. Not together.

Why I chose AdSense?

1. Variety of ads. (huge ad. inventory). Visitors will always have something new to click.


2. Possibly better CTR.

Why not Yahoo! Publisher Network?

1. Less ad. inventory.


2. Possibly lower CTR.


3. Ad. presentation is not that attractive as compared to AdSense. Truncated text, not-so-good font etc.

These reasonings are as per the state of these Ad. Networks as on July 2008. At this time, YPN is in beta stage. Things may change in time and above statements may become invalid.

You may have a different opinion. Please share it in the comments section.

AdSense - The Real Money Machine

If you want to see real socialism, you should look at Google AdSense. It is the Ad. Network for both the rich and the poor. If anyone thinks of making money out of his blog or website (who does not have a product to sell), the first thing to look at is AdSense. As many documented, it is one of the best money making system on internet. Anyone can join AdSense, evenif one just started a website with zero visitor, as long as there is some content that does not violate the terms and conditions of Google AdSense (no adult content, no illegal content etc.).

So AdSense is my first choice too. As you can see, I have placed a horizontal AdLink at the top, a 336 x 280 text-only AdUnit at the top of the blog entry, a 200 x 200 image-only AdUnit at the top of the right panel and a vertical AdLink in the right panel. I restricted the AdUnits to text-only and image-only to keep the page look better, though that decision may not be right for a pure ad. performance recommendation. But definitely the visual appeal of the webpage matters in retaining a visitor.

Thus I have four money making agents on my pages. Initially I used to think that people may not click on AdLinks (a conclusion based on my own browsing behaviour). So I used to avoid AdLinks in some of my other websites. But later when I introduced AdLinks for a trial, it surprised me. Yes.. you get most clicks to the AdLinks, if placed appropriately. So don't ignore them.

So the journey begins. We will see how they make money in due course.

I want to put a cautionary note here to those newbies as there are many internet scams around AdSense. Be aware that joining AdSense is totally free and easy to implement. You need not purchase any CD or training material.

Money On Internet - Possibilities And Pitfalls

I have been researching for sometime on possible ways to make money online. It took some time and hands-on experiences to realize that there are more pitfalls and scams than real money making machines. This blog is an effort to document such experiences, and also to use itself as a case study for measuring the amount of money that a literate layman can make out of a normal blog.

To make it simple and to the point, I am thinking of writing it like a diary. Most of the posts will be crisp and short.

For the record, this blog is created on July 01, 2008.