These usually come under the guise of a website that will pay you to click on ads for them. The way it’s set up is simple enough: you’ll get paid a certain amount to click on ads. Once you accumulate enough to request a cash out, do so, and you’ll receive a payout. Payouts are usually given to an electronic vendor of your choice, such as Alertpay or Paypal. If you want to earn more, however, you can buy referrals for a small amount of money. You earn a percentage of their earnings, so naturally the more referrals you buy, the more you’ll earn. Think of it as an investment: you take $50 and turn it into $500 in a few week’s time. And you can do this repeatedly.

However, the problem comes in when it’s time to get a payout. Then, you may notice, that you’re not getting anything at all. Instead customer service might tell you that you’ve violated terms of service, or worse, they’ve sent you a check in the mail. Sounds fishy now, doesn’t it? Especially when you’ve obeyed all the rules and haven’t really given them your address to begin with. Now you’re wondering if you’ve been scammed. You should already know the answer to that question.

A Ponzi scam takes money from new investors and distributes it to old investors. In order for it to keep running, it has to constantly keep taking in new investors. Therefore these scams fail after a short while, only to restart again somewhere else.

There is never a product listed on the website; there are only promises of how much you can make if you buy into it or invest in it. If there are credentials or licenses, they are clearly fake – proper examination of them will tell you that. Unfortunately, it’s hard to trace a Ponzi scheme or even report it , as most of the contact information on the website is fake. Since no real address likely exists, reporting them to the Better Business Bureau is moot. Your best bet is to just avoid the website altogether.

There have been many instances of scam businesses, claiming to make you money with Google.  Having been sued by Google, a lot of these programs (or fishy ads that look connected with these programs) have been banned by Google in reaction.  There are legitimate ways to make money online – including with Google – but be careful about it.  Do your research.

For instance, some of these scam programs will ask for your credit card information, so they can send you a “free” kit.  This kit is supposed to take you through a money-making process, step by step.  The credit card information supposedly covers shipping and handling.  Many of these businesses, however, end up giving you nothing in return for the repeated monthly charges you end up paying on your credit card bill.  As a general rule, don’t give out credit card information to anyone without doing a good deal of research.  You want to know who you’re paying, and exactly for what.

Getting your website noticed by Google’s search pages is really a matter of having links to your website from other pages.  The fastest way to do this is to make certain you have a great, useful information that people will want to link to, although you can also submit your site to Google directly.  This is known to take some time, however.

Google does offer some programs to help your site make money.  One program, AdWords, allows you to advertise through Google; they place the ads for you, and you pay Google a certain pay-per-click rate.  AdSense is a program that allows you to place ads on your site, so Google will pay you to help another site advertise.  Again, this is paid for every click.

There are legitimate ways Google can help you make money, but be wary – make sure you understand whatever program you’re going to try, and make sure you know the company is actually the one you think it is.  Do your background research, and you should be fine.