Are those Google ad quick money program SCAM?

If they looked too good to be true, then they probably are.

(Note this is not a review of any of these programs, nor a comparison of them)

All this is some common sense that I'd like to warn you, before you throw your money down the drain.

Sometimes, I just feel we, ordinary people are too humble and have too much respect to people we don't even know. Not to say this is always wrong, but from time to time, we may need to look at things in a different way.

We read something on the Internet, written by someone we have no idea who they are, and then sincerely wonder, "wow how smart that idea is, why I didn't know it, I can't wait to start that".

Yes, you are right, I'm talking about all those hypes - get hundreds of dollars per day, by typing, clicking - basic computer skills - nothing to sell, to market.

I generally believes in a rule - "there is no easy money".

I know, you may say there are people with brilliant ideas that made money out of the easiest thing they can do. You are right, except, those are really brave, brilliant attempts that resulted in extreme outcomes that you or me can't reproduce. I mean, you won't get rich by doing that again, because such ideas of making money off the easiest things, is only one time cash cow.

So I've been ignoring all those pop-ups, spam emails, etc. As I always know that easy money does not find me.

Some of those spams even bought adwords to promote those Google Money programs.

Some examples:

Google Tactics

Google Cash 3rd edition

Google Profit

Easiest Home Business Ever

Recently, I started to notice some people even begin to use really "smart" tricks trying to sell these make quick-money programs, or should I say SCAM people's money out of people's wallet?

What tricks can be so smart?

first, call others scam and then sells their idea.

This is smart, because by pointing out others as scam, readers will develop this bond with the writer - "this guy saved me from losing money to those cheaters!" and then read on, some reader may think "hey he pointed out similar things are scams, he must telling us the truth." Well, there is actually no direct link between telling a a truth and always telling truth, although people tend to think a liar is always a liar, actually a smart liar does not always lie, so that he can trick people at times he "really need to".

My warnings to the readers, don't believe someone only because he tells you a truth (in this case others are liar)

Second, calling their program "humble". Typically they say this program is not a "get rich over night" program, you will "only" get $5000 - $7000 per month, etc. This is smart too. Because name a huge number is less idea in 2 ways. a) most people tend to believe the higher the return, the less likely the chance, b) higher number tend to gain attention from scam fighters and been revealed as scam.

So name a more "realistic" number both increase their chance of get some one, but also reduce the risk of been caught by a lot of scam fighters.

However, if you put your mind in your brain and think it through, you will notice something fishy - they always link you to some similar site that ask you to pay 1.95$ with your credit card. You know "credit" is something caused a world wide crisis, so, you'd better be careful giving out our credit card info, because once yo give out your credit card info, whether or not they will only charge you "$1.95" is totally up to their "credit".

And, since the money Google pays out is not infinite, the less people sharing the pool, the more each one will get. So why on the earth someone will spend so much energy in "sharing" their success with others with a cost of "only $1.95"? If they really like to share, what does "$1.95" makes (compare to their $5000 - $7000 / month), if they really don't want competition, why they want to share their "secrete" at the cost of "only $1.95"? That dilute their market share.

The only logical explanation is that the "$1.95" is so significant to those people who are trying to sell you this "secrete", the secret themselves, probably will not earn them more than these "$1.95" accumulated.

It's not totally impossible if there is only one person out there doing this. It is definitely a concern when there are hundreds of people out there that are doing the same thing. It is impossible that so many people are all insane at same price point. No, statistics and probability does not believe this will happen.

What is likely the truth?

(Disclaimer, I did not spend my hard earned money in testing all those programs, sorry, for me the risk is 100% and I do not plan to throw my money down the drain like that. Why? because next day, a new scam will pop out and point to the one I proved false as scam, and say "we are different". I do not have infinite resource to pop all the balloons.)

The likely truth is these scam are profiting from those $1.95 and they will send you something virtually valueless.

It is very common that people tries to sell others something that "cheap" enough, so that a lot of people will buy and they'll make money out of it. (Lots of people think I'll lost less than $2 even if this is a scam).

OK, all they need is millions of people think this way.

You know what, the $2 secret is likely "join us and sell these $2 thingies like we do".

If you are here to see someone who has wasted his/her money and proved these programs are scams, you will be disappointed. However, if you really don't want to risk your $1.95 and would like to see the result of other people throw their money down the drain, here is something you may find useful.

Most of those sites has some comment praising their kit, however, you will see you can't post comment at all. So the source of those comment are questionable. I don't mean they are definitely forged, but who ever posted those comment are special -- you and me can't even post, even if we want to praise them.

What is true about Google cash?

Well, it is true that some people made money by using Google AdSense. And Google is giving out money to people who used their website (blog, forum, bbs, etc) to show Google ads.

If you are really good at marketing your website, and you can drive enough traffic to your site, you can make a fortune from Google. This is no secrete, and this does not worth any $1.95 shipping free to learn.

Is there a way to profit from Google AdSense without selling anything? Yes. Actually, there are millions if not billions web pages that are basically useless, and contains nothing but links and Ads. When people search from something, these pages may show up high in the search list, and when people click on them, the useless web page shows the ads, boom, the owner of those sites get profit. (have you every tried to search with "review", "compare", "price" of something? Have you ever wondered, why there are so many pages has very limited (if any) content and still show up? Yeah, that's why.

While I know there are people made money using Google AdSense, I am also sure there is no easy way of doing it (unless you are a marketing genius), you may get some advise in how to make your web pages more popular, however, its not a guarantee you will out do others and make thousands of dollars over night. It by no means can be considered easy, or autopilot (people change, their search term changes too, so you can't always drive same amount of traffic to your sites at the same rate.

Yes, some of the "training" actually tells you to use Google AdWords to buy traffic. This actually MAY be a good idea if you really know what you are doing (don't expect people searching on Google will appreciate though), but for ordinary people, it's just a waste of money. Because it's very hard to make enough money to cover your advertisement cost.

In short, making money off Google is possible, but don't expect you can buy the secrete with $1.95 and profit with little work. It will be a lot of work (not necessarily labor intensive, but ) you got to learn a lot of Google and other search engines way of positioning search results. Their algorithm changes too. It is also irresponsible wasting other people's time just trying to drive traffic to your pages so you can make money.

There are other means you can make money online, but most of them all involves selling something (yes with Internet store front, you don't need to stay up all day to make sales, but that's far from "autopilot" as some described). You can sell some "digital content" without worrying about shipping and handling, (i.e. the $2 secrets). That's the "easiest" you can get.

Honestly, if you really have some content that you believe people may be interested in, market it with all means. Try to benefit from it while people are spending quality time reading your writing. People will actually help you to promote your content if they find it's valuable.

If you don't have much to say, and don't think you can produce any helpful info, don't bother. You probably can use your time to do better things. Your web page won't earn you money like "autopilot" as someone claimed to be. Even if someone made fortune by producing useless page just to trick people to click on their ads, it doesn't mean it always works. And intentionally waste other people's time to earn profit is not ethical.

Thanks for reading, and saving yourself $1.95.

Using your BlackBerry (or other bluetooth phone) as a "remote control" for your PC

I'm not talking about VNC. Remote desktop is totally irrelevant here.

What I'm going to talk about is something light, just click through your PowerPoint slides, or change to next track in your iTunes' or Windows Media Player.



They use Bluetooth, instead of your air time/air packets. So basically the connection will be "local" - which means you are not depended upon Internet, cell phone connectivity, etc.



I've found several solutions sofar:

Vectir [Free! Well paid version is more powerful] - http://www.vectir.com/

Mobile Witch Remote Control [Free!] - http://www.mobilewitch.com/bluetooth-remote-control.php
Bluetooth Remote Control - http://www.blueshareware.com/bluetooth_remote_control.asp

WMOUSEXP - http://www.clearevo.com/wmousexp/



An application (sounds) very promising is Salling Clicker. However, the Balckberry support is still under consideration by the author, not available yet. http://www.salling.com/Clicker/windows/



Vectir seems the easiest to use from my perspective. However, it is realatively limited. Applications are supported through "plug-in" and so far only 4 applications are supported this way. No 3rd party development plan published. However, you can config mouse mapping and do mouse similation, which I am not a big fan of. Anways, if you only want to control iTunes/Win Media player, try Vectir first. Nice and easy.





Other interesting stuff - use your headset to control powerpoint:
http://www.headsetpresenter.com/



I don't like other hardware solutions given the tradition of hard to upgrade limitation. Saying that, the impatica ShowMate worth mentioning http://www.impatica.com/showmate/.

It's not too expensive and you don't need your Notebook at all. It's a piece of small hardware connects to VGA port of a projector and accepts screen from Blackberry via Bluetooth or USB. A piece of software need to be run on the Blackberry.

Well, I still have trouble buying into it yet, as the flexibility of Blackberry is not yet satisfying my last-minute update of PPT habit.

Crude Oil price and UFO - a conspiracy theory

UFO? Oh, now I got your attention. No it’s not the UFO you think – Unidentified Flying Object.
It’s Unidentified Financial Organization.

Well, all is saying Oil price has been rising because the emerging market (namely India and China)’s rising demand caused it. Well, the thing is neither India nor China is “new” emerging market, both of them have been “emerging”. Saying in the past 6 years, the whole world gradually realized India and China were emerging is an insult on human kind’s intelligence – at least.

And while US energy consumption is dropping, the Oil price continues to set new record highs. And US is still the biggest consumer of Oil, so the link between demand and supply seems not so convincing here.

One more piece of evidence is OPEC actually claims some of their member is struggling to find buyers of their Oil.

OMG! If the theory of supply and demand relationship determines price holds true, should the price come down, so that people who want to sell, can make a deal?

Common wisdom seems not so wise here J

OK, here is my theory.
With Oil price rising for the past 6 years, it became common knowledge that to swing Oil price up, you adjust supply. You don’t need to stop Oil production altogether, you only need to reduce the output marginally, so that supply is lower than demand.

So when supply and demand are relatively balanced, you only need a small amount of supply reduction, to cause some buyer to pay more to avoid being the one who can’t fill their demand, and given the essential status of Oil, it’s likely that lots of buyers are willing to pay more rather than be left out.

It’s not only a theory, it’s reality too. We know that OPEC actually only output less than 50% (in average about 40%) of world’s Oil production, and adjustment of their output by less than a million dollar barrel a day which is less than 2% of total output of crude oil in the world, they can swing Oil price heavily.

However, this time around, it might not be OPEC who is flirting with record Oil price. There were various studies suggesting Oil over 50$ - 60$ USD means lots of alternative energy sources will economically sound. And my maintaining Oil price around 60$, OPEC can maximize their money inflow, while still keep “alternative” energies at the bay – as soon as those alternatives go into mass production, the cost of those are likely to drop and people may opt for the alternative rather than 60$ Oil.

That means Oil price so high (as the writing it’s over 126USD), it’s actually against OPEC’s long term interest.
OPEC’s complain about some member cannot find buyers of their Oil production is an early indication of the troubles ahead.

Indeed, China – one of the “emerging” country that sighted repeatedly by market participants is the most advance market in terms of Alternative energies like solar power.

Is it possible that OPEC countries cannot resist the temptation of 200$ Oil? Maybe, however you got to realize that lots of the OPEC countries are monarchy or semi-monarchy, and they do care more about their descents than most of the “democratic” countries. Besides, their big money hired economists would have definitely done the calculation for them.

And finally their complain about members can’t find buyers for their Oil, shed a light on why they are not eager to increase production – it’s no use, if at current production level, there are excess supply, increase supply will simply make it worse for all OPEC members, because while price is high, there will be more Oil sitting and waiting for buyer.

So what’s going on here? You may ask. The buyers don’t like it, the sellers’ are hurt from it, and why the price still sits there?

Well, here is where UFO comes in.
There are Unidentified Financial Organizations, who noticed a small supply adjustment can swing the price of Oil significantly – they noticed how Saudi Arabia did that in the past.
They also noticed the demand and supply of Oil is GRADUALLY getting balanced as the steady rise of demand in emerging market is nothing unpredictable.
They figured out, if Saudi can swing the price by adding or reducing a fraction of supply, what can’t WE do that?

Yes UFO does not produce Oil, however, everyone can buy Oil.

UFO with trillions of dollar in their pocket, can stock up Oil by purchasing it. And function as “dummy” demand, drives up Oil price, during the course, they can rolling sell and buy Oil to make money. And because they now function like a counter-Saudi Arabia, they know where the Oil price is going, so they can make lots of money out of it.

Why there are OPEC countries can’t find buyer for their Oil? Because UFO works in future market more than real market, when they gouge the price, they may need to purchase excess future that they don’t really need or can’t sell, they will simply void those excess future they bought and the real Oil producer will stumble to sell the real product cause they cannot simply void the physical barrel of Oil when UFO voids their future contract.

So, who are those UFO? I don’t know. I know they are very wealth, very strong and with lots of money.

It does not look like a government’s deed, because the effects of these actions are beyond borders. And the effects are relatively hard to predict compare to other means governments can exercise.

What sees to be true is they have infiltrated many governments, media and investment houses. There are numberless reports citing “emerging” markets, “resilient” US markets, etc which are all true but were also true when Oil was 26$/bbl.

All in all I don’t think it’s a bad thing fro Oil consumers and hopefully the earth. As Oil price so high, many many alternative energy businesses are lucrative. And much cleaner cars are been adopted in US and Europe at unforeseen pace.

Things like nuclear power are back on to agenda. While we still think nuclear is unsafe, Oil burning pollution and green-house-gas, are killing us anyways, how much worse can nuclear be? At least it does not emit Green-house-gas and only kills us in accidents, rather than gradually kill up non-stop like Oil consumption.

So,
“Dear UFO,
If you happen to see this article, please forgive me. I have no intention to portrait you as a dark force; I actually think you are doing a good thing for all of us.
And no one will believe me anyways so I don’t think this will stop your money making machine.
So please don’t send in your commando to kill me.

Worship you.”