Watch Out for The Blogging Scam
Blogging scammers are targeting older Americans and falling prey can cost you thousands of dollars.

If someone sends you an email or worse -calls you on the phone and offers to show you how to make thousands of dollars with almost no effort creating blogs, you should run the other way as fast as you can.

You can make money blogging -indeed many people do. But you don't need to pay someone hundreds or even thousands of dollars as one 75 year old lady recently did.  You can set up a blog for free and there are plenty of free and low-cost training programs available (we recommend one below).

There are literally millions of blogs and more are being created every day, but the truth is that most bloggers dabble in a blog. They rarely post new content and these blogs are rarely found by people searching for information.

How You Make Money from A Blog

First of all you have to have something to write about.  People search for information all the time. Perhaps you are a prostate cancer survivor. Well there are people searching for information about dealing with prostate cancer.  If you were to write a blog about that and post content to it frequently, they people will eventually find and subscribe to your blog.

Now, there are several ways to make money with your blog -but two of them are the easiest and work the best:

1. Find advertisers who will pay you a commission when you place a banner or a text link on your blog and people buy something as a result of clicking on the link.  This is perfectly legitimate and is called affiliate marketing. In our book, The Official Geezer Guide to Starting an Online Business, we walk you through the steps to learn affiliate marketing, provide all the affiliate links and even recommend tons of free and low-cost resources to help you get started and succeed.

2. Sign up for Google AdSense.  Google AdSense is a program that pays you to place Google ads on your website or blog. When someone clicks on one of the ads, then Google will pay you a commission.  Again, we detail how this works and how to do it in The Official Geezer Guide to Starting an Online Business.

Both of these techniques are easy to learn.  If you are really struggling with how to create a blog, there is a great guide called Blogging To The Bank by Rob Benwell. Rob is a Brit who writes from the UK, but his methods and systems work fine here in the US and Canada. He charges a reasonable price for the information and instructions and will give a full refund if you are not happy. His sales letter does make a few wild claims -I am not claiming you can make as much money as he does -but I do believe that almost anyone who is willing to put in at least five to ten hours a week can make over $1000 a month or more using his methods which are completely legitimate.

How Blogging Scams Work

If you are reading something on the internet or someone contacts you, use the following checklist to determine if what they are selling is a scam.

• They promise little or no work. They claim the system will work day and night automatically or they even promise to do all the work for you.
  
• Silly earning claims. Hundreds of dollars per day is not uncommon with such system. It becomes a numbers game. If one site / blog earned $1 per day, then 1,000 blogs would earn you $1,000 a day. After all, it is effortless to setup.
  
• Foolproof system and steps to follow. Zero technical skill required. The system works on auto-pilot without the need to learn a thing. Just buy it and make yourself a cup of coffee. There is nothing to learn and you can start making money in less than 20 minutes.
  
• Instant decision. There is no time to think. You must make a decision now.

The last one is the biggest tip off.  Any legitimate opportunity will still be there tomorrow or next week. This is especially true if you are dealing with a salesman on the telephone.  If they won't let you think it over or discuss it with your spouse then it is usually a scam.

As I mentioned above, one older lady in Florida responded to one of these calls. The company told her they would create the blog and actually create the content for her. Charge $5,000.  Next they called her back and said well you blog is up but there is no traffic, so for $2000 a month they would get traffic to the blog.  And then a few months later they called her back and said well your blog is doing well and you can probably sell it to a professional blogging company for thousands of dollars. Of course they wanted an up-front marketing fee of $10,000 to try and sell it.  So after 6 months, this poor lady lost a large chunk of her retirement savings and of course the people who sold this to her were out of business and no longer answering the phone.

So yes you can make money blogging, but take the time to do the work. Its ok to invest in low-cost training programs like the one we recommend above.  No one likes to lose money, but after all if you spend $20, $30 or $40 and it turns out you wasted your money that is not the end of the world. But when you spend thousands and lose it -then it can be devastating.