By: Shawn Culver
You might think Internet surfers have started to wise up to all the Internet rip-offs. But you’d be wrong. Scammers on the Internet are very creative and are constantly coming up with new scams or variations on old scams. The only way to fight this is with knowledge.
Here are some of the hottest top Internet scams you should be aware of.
1. Easy Google Profit
2. Google Business Kit
3. Google Treasure Chest
4. Google Money Tree
These programs examples of affiliate marketing business systems that claim to teach people how to do Adsense Arbitrage: that is, buying traffic from a Google Adwords pay-per-click advertising campaign and then sending it to a page where the user is persuaded to click a Google Adsense ad. This is a banned practice in Google’s Terms of Service and isn’t as easy to pull off as it was 2 years ago.
These programs follow many of the same basic principles as most other affiliate marketing business systems out there. Perhaps the most notable difference they have from other affiliate marketing models is in their use of Google AdWords as the sole method of promoting affiliate products and services. Users of these systems follow this basic process:
1) Find quality products and services online
2) Become an affiliate of those products and services
3) Advertise those products and services with Google Adwords
4) Receive your commissions on products and services sold as s result of your pay-per-click campaign
On April 24, 2009 the Texas Attorney General’s Office announced charges for operating a fraudulent work-at-home scheme against Infusion Media Inc, GoogleTreasureChest.com, InternetIncomeInitiative.com, and Jonathan D. Eborn (”Defendants”), whose “GoogleMoneyTree.com” promised six-figure earnings for conducting specialized Google and Yahoo Internet searches. According to the state’s enforcement action, GoogleMoneyTree failed to clearly inform purchasers that they had been enrolled in monthly memberships and had only seven days to cancel their trial membership. Purchasers who failed to cancel within seven days were automatically charged $82 on their credit card statements each month. In addition to the unexpected credit card charges, customer complaints obtained by state investigators indicate that GoogleMoneyTree failed to actually send the “free kit” and refused to honor customer refunds. The state is seeking an injunction, civil penalties of up to $20,000 per violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, as well as restitution for purchasers.
Based on BBB files, Google Treasure Chest.com has a BBB Rating of F.
Reasons for this rating include:
Don’t Do It
Here are the terms they have for the charging of your credit card (notice how they write out the whole number to make it harder to read):
Upon submitting a request for Membership, a Member ID and Password are assigned to you and can be used to gain access to googletreasurechest.com. The initial shipping and handling charge of one dollars and ninety seven cents, includes the google treasure chest kit as well as seven days worth of access to the online directories and training. After seven days, if you choose not to cancel, you will be billed your first monthly membership fee of seventy two dollars and twenty one cents for the membership fee for the googletreasurechest.com membership. Membership fees will be charged to the credit card used by you to complete the transaction. You have also unlocked a fourteen-day trial and twenty one-day trial to the Fraud SafeLockID and GrantSpring for just $19.95 and $14.95 a month thereafter (shows as “SafeLockID” and “GrantSpring”) should you choose not to cancel. Prior charges for all programs are non-refundable but bonus subscriptions can be cancelled and future charges stopped at any time by calling toll-free 866.951.1406 Monday – Friday 9am – 5pm. All offers come with a monthly newsletter.
If you choose to sign up for this product and pay the recurring monthly charges using a debit card you hereby provide pre-authorization and consent that googletreasurechest.com may charge seventy two dollars and twenty one cents on a monthly basis. You may stop payment on any pre-authorized charge by notifying googletreasurechest.com at least three business days prior to the scheduled charge date. You agree your pre-authorization and written consent to charge your debit card is given in electronic form by submitting the request for the membership, and that an electronic signature is sufficient to authenticate your authorization to charge the debit card. You further agree that these terms and conditions shall be your copy of your pre-authorization for the debit card.
Upon completion of the order form, should your credit card be declined, we may, at our option continue to try to authorize your purchase on future dates. Your acceptance of these terms indicates your additional acceptance that should your purchase of either the shipping for your free kit, or your monthly membership fee eventually approve, you will accept and approve those charges to your method of payment.
Please someone Help me!!
Help me PLEASE I can’t beleive it, but I fell for this damn SCAM. I really thought this was real, then it was to LATE. PLEASE someone HELP ME I am a young student and made mistake, but I really don’t want these people stealing my money! Damn scammers it makes me sick that there are people in this world like this!! I fell for it, I am just a normal student trying to make a extra buck.
Google Profit, Google Treasure Chest, Google Home Business Kit, etc. are all the same. A scam product being resold by dozens of affiliates.
The idea is to make AdWords ads directing “clickers” to a AdSense page and hope they click on some of the ads. Hopefully, the revenue from the ads will offset the cost of the AdWords campaigns. This is called the AdSense Arbitrage model for making money online. Like another commenter noted, this was a way to make money a few years ago, but it has too many risks of loss these days. (And is against Googles TOS to boot).
The kicker with these “kits” is getting out of them once you sign up. There is a low introductory charge ($1.95 for instance), but then a steep monthly charge a few days later ($72.21 is one I read). In addition, some companies sign new customers up for other services as well which each cost an additional fee.
To cancel, often one has to send a certified letter with the received materials enclosed. If a customer attempts to block the charges with their bank or credit card company, they are threatened with legal action.
The safest bet is to avoid these types of scams entirely. There is plenty of free information online on how to make money. Google things like article marketing, affiliate marketing, internet marketing and so forth. Most “guides”, especially older ones, are free for joining an email list.
Anything with words, “Easy Profit” is bound to catch the attention of many of you that are looking for alternative methods to supplement an additional income. RUN! Don’t walk for the nearest exit. Nothing in this life is ever “Easy”. Look at the bottom of the sales pages and you will find that Google doesn’t involve itself with the product creator. You will likely get bombarded with additional things (Hoops) you will have to jump through that serve nothing more than trying to get you to buy a product….Theirs! Beware of the $1.95 S&H Fee Scams!
I hope this information was helpful and I hope you found this article before getting taken by these Internet Scams. I recommend always doing a Google search for the product before you make a purchase, because 99% of all products are scams. If it’s a new product, wait a couple of weeks and Google search it again.
About the Author
Shawn Culver founder of Make Cash Now.biz Home Business and PLR Membership Website offering 150,000 articles, 1,000+ ebooks, 4,500+ software titles, 2,000+ business products, working home business programs, training material, 900+ internet scams revealed, and much more!
Anyone else get taken by these scams? Seen one of these type products under a different name? Let us know.
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August 3rd, 2009 
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