Google Home Profits Scams - Staying Safe While Making Money Online
Introduction to Google Work at Home Scams
Google Home Profits is not really a “scam” for all legal purposes. It’s just a bit of a rip-off. In reference to the Google Home Profits scam, I mainly mean that it isn’t worth the money that it will cost.
So let’s start this off really quick. The Google Home Profits Kit is the latest variant of this operation. It and just about every variation of it are not worth your money. I’ll admit that I can’t seem to find the original version of it. Any link to it seems to be dead. I can only go off of secondhand information and what I’ve seen of similar other Google scams.
The reason that these Google scams aren’t worth your money is that they are either outright scams or they’ll charge you a startup fee and monthly fee for basic tools and information that you can find anywhere.
The Many Different Types of Google Work at Home Scams
There are too many different twists to possibly cover all them. I’ll try to cover the bulk.
Let’s start off with the worst of the bunch. Some Google scams apparently just pitch the idea of making thousands through surveys and answering questions online. There actually are some legitimate survey companies, but the legitimate ones certainly won’t pay more than a thousand a year. Google also wouldn’t be involved in these surveys, so it’s purely someone trying to take advantage of their authority. Survey scams actually deserve their own article. Just know that you would never have to pay to take them.
Another fairly rough one is a Google work at home scam that claims to offer lots of money for just posting links “from the comfort of your own home.” This is where it gets a little hairy. It’s not technically a scam, as they are selling you a method and usually a membership to a club to explain how affiliate marketing works. Affiliate marketing is a legit thing. You post links and advertise things on the Internet, then get a cut of the money if people buy it. Avon or Mary Kay might be some non-Internet examples. That’s pretty much it.
Worse, from the scraps I can find from old scams, they often just tell you to paste their link around the Internet and spam forums with it. This will rarely make you any money and will probably result in a lot of bans and complaints for cluttering up good sites. Some of the true scams will promise to pay you for posting the link to the kit in new places. These usually just last long enough to gather up a good pile of money, at which point they fade away and leave behind a bunch of angry marketers.
The final one seems to be closest to the Google Home Profits Scam. They promise to tell you how to make money using Google. Now, this is why it’s wrong to call it a scam. They will tell you how to make money with Google. They’ll explain the barebones of AdSense and AdWords and might even include a really basic website creator and some free templates. Of course, there is usually a membership plan, which will show up as wonderful charges on your credit card. It’s also standard advice that, once again, you can find anywhere. We have plenty of articles on AdSense basics and how to get approved for AdSense. To add insult to injury, these e-books tend to focus more on labor intensive and ultimately doomed efforts. You can’t just slap together a bunch of websites and retire. It takes skill, creativity and a lot of luck.
Of course, the final note is that most of these scams are just dishonest. If they really had a perfect way to effectively print money, then why would they share it? Most of these people are just online marketers who have put together an e-book and a sales page with some basic information. They plan to make their money by marketing the book. That’s it. Just about every “AdSense expert” who is charging for their information doesn’t have much worth selling. If they had a real secret, they’d just pay a few grand to freelancers to develop sites and rake in the cash.
Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons
Red Flags to Watch For
This is pretty simple. All of these Google scams have a few things in common. If you know what to watch out for, then you shouldn’t fall for whatever the next iterations of the Google work at home scam is.
To start with, think about whether Google would even be related to the thing that they’re selling. Things like surveys and posting links aren’t really related to them. For that matter, Google is a major company. They are probably not related to whatever the product is. Obviously the sellers are just throwing around a name that everyone has heard of to try and gain your confidence. The fact that they feel that they have to do this should at least set you on edge.
Are they also promising obscene amounts of money? There’s an old rule for the stock market. “Once your cab driver is pitching the stock to you as a hot tip, you’re too late.” If it was really possible for everyone to quit their job and become an Internet millionaire, then why are you just stumbling across this? The usual trick is for the seller to push the “all those wage slaves are happy in their job, but you’re different, you can be your own boss.” Hopefully I don’t have to point out why that’s just a fancy sales method.
Read the fine print on any of those Google work at home scams. Like I said, the real trick is that they promise some low cost help and then sign you up for a free trial to their club or clubs…for seven days. If you don’t cancel (which is usually difficult due to the time constraints and their ability to just not answer the phone or put you on hold), then you’ll have a lot of charges for essentially nothing.
Finally, note that these Google work at home scams are usually worthless anyway. Even the things that they’re promising aren’t that spectacular to people who know about them beforehand. There are only two ways to make money from Google at home. You can become a search engine results tester for a company like Leapfrog or Lionbridge. They won’t charge anything and have a normal application process. Or you can set up a website and earn money through AdSense without any of this foolishness.
How to Actually Earn Money Through Adsense
This is probably the worst part of any Google work at home scam. Their basic ideas are right. They are just charging for common knowledge and vastly under reporting the amount of work it would really take.
I believe the common scam is that they point out just how much you could be making for doing nothing once your websites are set up. Basically some creative math about how a few hundred websites earning a dime a click from few thousand visitors really adds up to a lot. That’s all true. The real problem is that they’re honest about how you’d set up a few hundred sites in a short time period. They usually tell you to scrap up free and public domain content and use it on a basic template that they give you and then you abuse social marketing to try and get some visitors. Shockingly, a lot of cookie cutter sites with no new information, no authority and no history will not rank well in Google. You also have to pay about $8 for a good domain name and surprisingly large amount to host what will probably just be failed sites (especially if they “suggest” a host for you).
So, with that aside, here are the basics of how you’d really make money with AdSense. If you’re completely new to web design, then you can learn by reading a few books from the public library or even looking into classes at a community college. We have a section on web design too. You can get a free web development program, like Nvu to experiment a bit. Or you can just get your feet wet with writing by getting a blog on a site like Blogger. You can set up AdSense on that too. If you want to be a bit freer, you can upload Wordpress to your website and blog using that.
You pick a hobby that you like and try to write interesting information about it. If you have good content and update often, then you should at least get a few visitors. You won’t be rich, but you can make a few dollars and eventually get it to the point where it could be good residual income. That’s really it for a newcomer trying to get their feet wet.
If you want to earn money from Google, you just need an AdSense account and some time to develop your own site properly. Or if you want a bit of a quicker path, Bright Hub is still hiring writers. We give SEO training for free too.
References
Source: author’s own experience
