What This Post is Not About

The intention of my post today is not to frighten anyone new in the online business, or to discredit anyone who have had the misfortune of being taken for a ride in this scam. No the purpose of this post is to share some useful lessons to be learned regarding this scam with the hope that by so doing, people can be more prepared to deal with any possible Internet scams.

This is also not a case study and if you need to read up more details, you may follow the warrior forum thread which I will give. However it may well be soon deleted by the forum moderators since the sales page have already been deleted. Possibly to avoid any undue interest on this case and to avoid other scam artists lurking around  to learn how it was pulled off. Yes possibly the greatest scam in Warrior Forum in my time at least.

A Summary of the Scam:

This warrior (member of warrior forum then)  is offering a test drive of any class site for 2 days before you decide to invest in a site. The scam artist decides on the niche, keyword and domain.

To test the site, you need to make a small payment (less than $10) then you will need to complete a form which gives him your Adsense Publisher ID. Thereafter, he will send you the domain for the test so that you can add the channel in your Adsense account to measure the income earned over 2 days.

The scam artist provides an offer to sell his seemingly endless profitable websites on  popular niches targeting Google Adsense. He requires his prospective client to test it out if he likes it and to see how profitable his purchased site is. There is a small admin fee he charges but nobody cares because during the test which is just 2 days, all his clients can see that his new website makes Adsense money like bees stick to honey – between $ 5 -$50 a day.  Yes the stage is set for the next step. The good testimonials are written by each ‘participant’ and most people willingly buy these sites and  agree to whatever requirements he set  to gain more in his scam. The requirements include paying the scam artist a monthly fixed payment besides the cost of the site and domain. In return, he guarantees minimum daily Adsense earnings for the site. His sites are classified into different category of profitability assurance called “classes A-D” and their costs vary accordingly. More profitable sites will cost more.

Some Testimonials (‘Reviews’) Provided By His Customers:

And just like any WSO or Warrior Special Offer, the buyers provide their reviews after getting the positive results. Well here are just a few to give you an idea:

1. ” ….First of all, XXXX is very professional when we make a deal in testing the site.  For the first day and for the first time in my life of Adsense, this is the first time I’ve earned around more than $4USD in one day.

So, when he claims that you can earn around 3 – 5 USd per day, he really delivers it.  And that is probably the minimum… it could get more than that.”

2. “…my review for class D: 1st day $4.96, 2nd day around $5.13 nice job…”

3.  “…$13.82 for 2 days. 9.0% ctr which is quite high, not bad if on average $6 per day. $180 a month. …”

4. “…On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 1:47 PM, he plugged my Adsense ID into one of the Class D sites. As of Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 12:54 PM (47 hours later), his web site has earned me $10.23. (About $5.12/day.)…”

5. “…My review after 2 days test (D class):

First day test: $6.9
second day test: $5.6

This is really great which is why I bought the D class site a few minutes ago. I am going to post updates in a week to tell you how the site grow. I am really happy with the results. …”

6. “…my review ( 1 week )
26.08 : $ 6,23
27.08 : $ 6,16
28.08 : $ 3,62
29.08 : $ 6,62
30.08 : $ 2,30
31.08 : $ 4,31

I hope next weeks i get more earning …”

How And When Was The Scam Found Out?

Google started banning the Adsense accounts of all the people who bought the scammer sites almost on the same day. The reason being that they determined that there were invalid clicks on these Adsense ads being performed on their website. The duration of the scam: 6 weeks.

Lessons Learned:

1. Traffic from search engines like Google is still the best and the safest to earn the trust from Google. In this scam, traffic was self generated possibly by persons the scam artist hired to work for him to click people’s ads.

2. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. So you can be your best critique or your worse enemy.

3. If you buy a website from someone, screen through every single page on the website. In this scam, the sites were poorly made with bad contents, few links and the sites were for lack of a better word – ugly!

4. Do not let money or how to make easy money blogging cloud your judgment of any similar situation that may lead to you getting scammed. It’s the clearest signs.

5. A scam can take place anywhere even in the most established place  like Warrior Forum.

6. When you get scammed, most of the time you will not get your money back.  Even paypal rejected any claims with the reply:

“Unfortunately, we are denying your claim because your purchase was for a virtual, digital, or intangible item, which is not covered under PayPal Purchase Protection. We only cover claims involving physical items that can be shipped and tracked.”

7. Losing money in a scam is bad (many bought the high end “class” kind of sites paying out $1500 per site. But losing your Adsense account – unforgivable as it can destroy (for some people) your only means of make money online – through Google Adsense.

8. Always determine the trustworthiness  and credibility of the person in question. In this case  the scam artist claims to be a  professional company in US. However when the scam was exposed it was found that the IP of his emails all traced to Bangladesh.

For more details check out the Warrior Forum Thread – although it may be a matter of time before the forum moderators delete it.

 Similar Posts:

• 7 Interesting Facts That You Must Know About Forum Marketing
• How You Can Easily Get 2500 Backlinks Here
• Profile Link Building-Learn My New Twist To Get Higher PR Backlinks
• How To Find EDU and Gov Links
• Blog Income-December 2009

If you have a Google Adsense Account and run your own site like your personal blog or website, take the next 5 minutes to protect your account.

For some bloggers, Google Adsense contributes a major part of their online income; for others making money with adsense is the only income having focused only on MFA (made for adsense) adsense ready sites. If you belong to this category of bloggers and Internet Marketers have you posted Google Adsense Privacy Policy on your website or blog?

If you haven’t heard, Google Adsense in March implemented a new policy in their Terms of Service stating that all websites with Google adsense or are a Adsense Publisher of any sort you must now post a privacy policy on your website. This policy requires that “publishers must notify their users of the use of cookies and/or web beacons to collect data in the ad serving process”.

If for some reasons you have not done so, I would say you must do it NOW before it’s too late. Who knows if Google has already started random checking websites or if it can hunt down uncomplying Adsense accounts. Google is after all the ultimate law and technically it can shut you down if you don’t have this privacy promise.

How do you go about doing this? Here is a privacy policy generator to help you get one within minutes so you not only have a professional privacy policy that you can instantly add to your website, it gives you ease of mind knowing you’re compliant. One tip though – please make sure you put it as ‘nofollow’ to avoid the problem of duplicate content.

Don’t get banned from Google Adsense – Don’t do this….

1. Avoid doing any tricks to fool Google like joining link farms or link directories as they generate fake traffic. Believe me, Google is smarter than you think. It could even get you into more trouble with Google besides your adsense ban. For this reason, it may be a good idea not to outsource any link building work to other marketers.

2.Do daily routine check on your adsense ads statistics, but not just to find out how much money you made Check for any abnormal activity like hundreds of clicks if your usual daily CTR is say 10. If this happens, immediately send an email to Google Adsense support.

3. Google Adsense disallows your advertisements to be placed with any content related to adult, racism or depicting violence.

4. Remove Bad Comments or spammy ones immediately – if the comment includes a website link that you don’t feel comfortable or one that contravenes Google Adsense’s content guidelines. I know sometimes it may be hard to tell so use your best judgment or gut feel.

5. Avoid Traffic Exchange – Google Adsense has said it does not recommend using traffic exchange services. They bring in fake traffic to your site and this leads to invalid clicks or impressions that result in your account being disabled.

What if You Got The Google Adsense Ban?

If your Google AdSense account gets banned due to invalid activity, you should immediately send an appeal to Google using this form.

Share other “don’ts” by giving your comment to avoid getting banned from Google Adsense from your personal experiences or what you have learned. Over to you….

Get Angela Edwards’ Backlink Building Subscription here

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your SiteSimilar Posts:

• John “Xfactor’s” Micro Niche Adsense-The Adsense Lessons I Learned
• Make Clickbank Your Alternative To Google Adsense
• Did Your Adsense Income Increase With New Google-Certified Ad Networks?
• Online Business:Why It Doesn’t Pay To Go Against Google
• Are You Trying To Get Your Blog De-Indexed By Google?