Need Money Scam: Home Jobs Online | Search and Social Goldmine

This one, the Search and Social Goldmine, is being heavily advertised online. Again, the same sales pitch, the same "mom", the same claims, and all the same stuff about making money online. Read on to find out the hidden details.

First, I don't sell Search and Social Goldmine or Home Jobs Online. If you purchased this product, please refer to the website were you gave your credit card information and find out how to contact their customer support.

On the Need Money Blog, I investigate and reveal home income kit products sold online. Some are good, many others are fly by not outfits separating buyers from their money. Buyer beware!

On to Search and Social Goldmine.

I came across Search and Social from a little pop up ad which read something like, "Mom makes $7847.00 a month!". I clicked on the ad and was taken to this website for Home Jobs Online featuring this woman, whose likeness has been selling home income kits for the better part of two years.

The ad lists her name as "Kelly Richards" who has been used for ads like these for years.

At that point, the ad and its claims get hazy. Richards says she needed money.. blah blah.. recession.. blah blah.. found a way to make money online. Then she mentions how big Google and Facebook are and how billions of dollars are spent online.

Great. How do you make money, Kelly? No answer. Only that buyers should a) fill out a form for the Home Jobs Online program, b) follow instructions and c) get a check in a week or so.

I took the risk for my readers and I clicked on the Home Jobs Online link and was taken to another website. This one for "Search and Social Goldmine" or "Stay At Home Income" depending upon which logo you choose to believe.

Not much more information there, only that the product has been featured on some famous websites (with logos) and visitors are asked to fill out a brief form to check the availability of the program in my area.

Filling out the form took me to a website which told the story of Mary Stevens (Hey! Where did Kelly Richards go?)who lost her job, needed money and found this great system - Search and Social Goldmine.

Mary says she made a fortune "posting links". You know, putting links for Big Companies products "on the search engines" and making commissions every time somebody buys something.

Then she goes into the "See How Easy This Is" and the "Imagine If You Posted 10 Links A Day?" pitch. Then it gets dodgy.

"Mary" claims she logs into her account, picks a product to create links for online, then creates a "site". In one or two minutes of work, she claims "she makes $15.00 just like that!" Impossible.

Here's my explanation about what I think this advertisement is talking about.

Links are hypertext coded links to a website which sells something and includes the linkers affiliate tag. An affiliate tag tracks the sale and connects it to the person who posted the link online. (A good example of a company which helps facilitate this type of relationship is Commission Junction, Google it).

If someone buys the product advertised in the link, than the original poster might make some money.

So now that you understand what "links" are, can you really get paid for posting them?

Nobody gets paid for simply "posting links"; they only get paid if a buyer purchases something through that link, if the buyer does not ask for refund, if the buyer's credit card is authorized and if the sale is not fraudulent. A lot can go wrong when making purchases online.

But wait, there's more. Nowhere does Mary point out how she gets Internet searchers to find her links. I will tell you how.

1) She buys advertising using a product like Google AdWords. That costs money to put ads in front of potential buyers and YOU get charged for the ad whether someone buys a product or not. Ad campaigns for affiliate marketing products can run into the hundreds of dollars. Daily.

2) She creates a website, with its own unique domain name and publishes it on the internet. Now she has to get traffic (visitors) to the site. How? By spending more money on advertising. Websites cost money. Domain names cost money. Advertising costs money. All that money is spent before anyone has purchased a single product through one of those magical "links".

Search and Social Goldmine says to join their certification system is only 49.95. Without explaining the two points noted above ("Explain how anyone gets paid $15.00 to simply post a link" and "What are the costs for putting links on the internet where searchers can find them"), I would be reluctant to give this product a try. Your mileage may vary.

This site does not sell the products in question here. If you purchased this product and would like a refund or have questions about the product, please return to the website you purchased the product from and read the Terms of Service for company contact information. Need Money Blog does not sell this product and has no affiliation with the company but is an informational site only.

Need Money Scam: Capital Online Revenue

Sometimes these scams do a good job convincing would be buyers of their products through the use of reputable named companies, realistic sounding testimonials and possible earnings. Capital Online Revenue is not one of these. Rather, they use to many of the same old scam claims to rope in buyers.

Capital Online Revenue can be found through ads on your favorite websites. "Mom makes $5728 a month and beats recession!". The link takes visitors to a blog or website designed to look like an authoritative news story.

Again, the same characters and props are used to fool victims into falling for instant money with little work:

Jessica Meyer was on the ad I saw, and through a software trick, claimed to live in my hometown. There's picture of her with a little girl staring happily at a computer obviously relishing their new found wealth online. The problem is this is the same picture of a woman named Kelly Richards who was making money with New Life Profits last month!

Again, the vague "when people search, you can make money" claim. Somehow, when someone searches for something on Google or Facebook, there's money to be made, or so says Capital Online Revenue. In fact, billions are made annually through this "system" and buyer of COR will too. There's no indication in the ad how that works, though.

Then, there's the usual pictures. One is of a Google Adsense check (which has nothing to do with Capital Online Revenue). Then there is a screen shot of the Google Adsense panel with caption that this is the money someone is earning through Capital Online Revenue.

Then, there is the claims of how easy it is to make money with COR. Simply sign up, follow the program and start depositing checks in the bank. If you are out of work, this sounds too good to be true. It is.

But read the small print at the bottom. "This website is not an actual news site but an ad for Capital Online Revenue. Testimonials and photos are a depiction. Some buyers may make NO MONEY AT ALL."

Then there is the cost. The sign up form says $47.00 and comes with a 365 Day Money Back Guarantee. But here's a sample (the bold face) of what you get with your "kit" and some information about them.

How to make money with eBay guide - Type that into a search engine and find out how for free without buying Capital Online Revenue.

Basic Wordpress tutorials guide - Wordpress is a blogging platform. To effectively use it for internet marketing, you need to have a domain name (cost extra $) and a web hosting account (more extra $$).

Email Marketing guide - email marketing requires you build an opt-in email list which requires you purchase email marketing software (generally about $20.00 additional a month), learn how to use it and get people to sign up. You can't spam.

How much you want to bet Capital Online Revenue conveniently gives buyers little links to purchase each of these needed components such as web hosting, internet domains and email marketing software? Again, it costs buyers more money and don't forget that little caveat - "SOME BUYERS WILL MAKE NO MONEY AT ALL".

Beware these types of make money at home kit. Use Google to search for terms like "making money with internet marketing" and learn how it works before buying anything. Consider building a free website on blogger or Squidoo and try marketing something yourself.


This site does not sell the products in question here. If you purchased this product and would like a refund or have questions about the product, please return to the website you purchased the product from and read the Terms of Service for company contact information. Need Money Blog does not sell this product and has no affiliation with the company but is an informational site only.

Need Money Blog: What to do about lower Adsense earnings

Many who make money online do so by featuring Google AdSense ads on their websites. However, since a change in Google algorithms in April, many AdSense users are reporting less money due to less traffic.

AdSenese is easy to understand: Build a website, apply to AdSense, when approved, add the code to the website and let Google do the rest. Google will automatically insert the ads based upon the website subject and keywords.

Advertisers buy ads from Google through AdWords. When an ad is clicked, the advertiser is charged and the revenue is split between the website owner and Google.

What changed in April has been termed Google Panda or Farmer depending upon what you read. Basically, the number of websites Google has indexed has exploded. Google has created an algorithm which is carefully judging the content and value of a website and ranked it accordingly for web searches.

The end result was some sites saw a drop as much as 40% in their traffic. That meant lower advertising revenue from AdSense. As expected, many website owners were not happy.

Further, there are some who are speculating that websites with lower rankings from Panda are being paid less per click for their ads than a higher ranked website. While this has always been a possibility, some website owners are crying foul.

Regardless, if you have a website and have noticed lower advertising revenue from Google, here are some things you can do:

Content - As always, focus on original, (non-scraped, non-borrowed, non-regurgitated) content. Make it authoritative, deep and well constructed. Lots of keywords on a template page downloaded for free will not cut it any longer.

Focus on successful pages. Look for ways to increase revenue off the pages which are retaining their page ranking and using them to feed to other lower producing pages.

Continue to focus on getting more back links from respected and related sites to your site and more importantly to individual pages.

Develop other types of revenue enhancers such as the sale of ebooks, affiliate sales, Amazon, eBay, increasing opt-in email lists, text ads, individual advertisers and donations.

Google algorithms are a fact of life. Page rank and search results will constantly change. Be prepared for sudden dips in traffic and revenue. Optimize sites which work and fix sites which do not.

Need Money Scam: Home Income Kits

"Mom makes $5177.00 a month! See how here!"

How many times a day do you see an ad like this on your favorite websites? Have you ever clicked on one and taken a look at the website? Most likely it is setup to look like a news site and might even have some video of a reporter talking about people who work from home. There is probably a picture of a "mom" with a child next to her on the same site with a testimonial about how much money she is making now with this home income kit.

These ads also play up the amount of debt and financial hardships the subject is in and how this wonder kit helped them get ahead financially in only a few short weeks. If you have bills or money problems, that part of the ad probably resonated with you.

Here's the deal: most of those home income kits don't work and the testimonials are all fake. There is no Kelly Richards who lives in your home town and she certainly is not making $5000.00 a month "posting links".

Before you plop down the maxed out credit card and buy into one of these scams, take note of the following:

1) Nobody gets paid for "posting links". Millions of companies and individuals do pay to place ads (which are technically links) on websites advertising goods and services. If someone buys one of those products, the individual or company which posted the ad might make some money, if the buyer does not return the product. But nobody gets paid for simply posting the ad, (except for Google or whoever the ad was purchased from).

2) Nobody gets paid the same day or within a short amount of time for selling a product online. Most companies pay persons who sell products for them (affiliate sales), sometime in the future - next month, in 90 days, etc. For example, Amazon pays resellers of their products 90 days after the sale. Clickbank pays 2-3 weeks after the sale at the absolute earliest and withholds part of the sale in case of return. Commission Junction pays 90 days after the final sale and only after a threshold has been reached. Even Google Adsense does not pay until 30 days or more after the end of the month the threshold was passed. Don't believe these ads which say "money will be deposited into your bank account right away".

3) Very few individuals make a living online compared to the number of people who work a "job". If everyone made easily made thousands online, then everyone would do it, right? The fact is, most people who try to work online with these home income kits rarely make any money at all.

4) Each one of these home income kits require the buyer to spend more money after purchasing the kit. Buyers will have to purchase one or more domain names for their websites, a hosting account to put their sites on the internet, and will have to spend money on advertising to get traffic to their site. Even then there is no guarantee they will make any money at all off their work and expenses.

5) The only person making money online is the person selling "make money at home online" income kits.

6) Always, always, always read the fine print on any home income kit advertised online. Many claim the product is a low fee of $1.99 to get started, but that is often only for a short trial period or offers limited access to the actual product. Many home income kits have recurring monthly charges for "hosting and support". Some have high hidden fees such as "$179.99 one time setup charge" for instance.

Finally, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. While there are some good products out there which can help individuals make a few hundred extra dollars a month filling out forms, surveys, watching videos or completing offers, be sure to read and research them carefully before jumping in with both feet.

Be very aware of home income kits and the scams that are out there.