Make Money From Google?

Meet Neil Anderson and his lovely girlfriend. He's a regular guy just like you. He grew up in a small town near you, and here he is on vacation in Italy. The only reason he's not like you or me is because he makes $50,000 a month, doing almost nothing. Wow, what a dream!

The only problem with this dream is, it's a lie, from beginning to end.

This picture from NeilsMoneyBlog.com is the same picture used in countless other blog-like web sites offering to allow you to make mega bucks from home (with little or no effort).

I was recently playing Mafia Wars on Facebook when I ran out of energy and noticed an ad on the right telling me I could make thousands of dollars from my blog. Highly skeptical, I thought it would be amusing to read up on some of these claims, so I put on my investigator's hat, and went exploring.

When I arrived at the page, the right hand column had a picture of a friendly face. The story began:

"My name is Neil Anderson. I am originally from the Kingsport, TN area. Recently married. I lost my job as a boring account rep for a manufacturing company a few months back. But here is my story on how I make $50,000+ a month by just submitting small text and ads online on Google. Read my story to learn how I did it and how you can do the same."

The moment I read this claim, I found it hard to believe. First off, Kingsport is a town not far from me and only has about 55,000 people living there. Of all the places in America to be from, a place just down the road seemed unlikely.

So I took a look at the source code and found this:

document.write
(google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city)

For those of you unfamiliar with JavaScript, this is part of a tiny script that inserts the city of the viewer right into the page.

Yep, that's right. Our friend from just down the road is not our friend, and just used JavaScript to pretend to be from just down the road. Imagine that.

The page then goes on to talk about the wonderful concept of getting free money from Google. We learn how our friend Neil made thousands, we see 'proof' of his riches, including his new car, and other trappings of the successful. Then we hear from his friends in a series of comments, posted blog style at the bottom of the page. Of course the comments have conveniently been disabled due to 'spam.' So I guess we don't get to hear from any real customers.

At the bottom of the page there is the usual disclaimer, that includes:

"*INCOME CLAIM WARNING: Testimonials do not result typical result. Photographs or images are depiction of individuals and payment methods. These income examples are representative of some of the most successful participants in the program. Some individuals purchasing the program may make little or NO MONEY AT ALL."

So what does our friend Neil want in order to teach us the secret of being rich like him? Just $2.95. Actually his money making course is completely free, we just have to pay for 'shipping and handling!' Yep, our high tech millionaire in the making cannot just email you information on how to sign up for Google Adsense, he needs to send it to you in the mail!

Now I call bullshit on this program for a wide variety of reasons, not least of which are the lies and outlandish claims made, and the fact that he feels the need to lie about his identity. I found several of these sites, all under different names, all with the same pictures and 'facts' on them. Surprisingly all the people lived less than 20 minutes from me! I tell you, I had no idea there were so many millionaires in this area!

The great scheme they are referring to is the use of Google Adsense, which displays customized ads on a web page or blog. However, they pay tiny amounts of money, which can add up if you have a lot of traffic. But to reach earnings of over $1,000 a day as illustrated on Neil's blog, you would need many thousands of hits a day, if not more, to even come close to those kind of earnings.

At the end of the day, it's just another get rich quick scheme, targetting the stupid. The only people making money are those who collect the checks for $2.95 and mail you a letter telling you to sign up with Google Adsense.

However, I'm such a nice guy, I'll tell you for free: Go to Google, type in Adsense, and sign up. They will show you how to put an ad on your page, like the one I have on this blog. If you are lucky, and have plenty of readers on your web site, you may get a check for $100 every few months. But you are not going to be buying a shiny new Range Rover with the money, nor will you be making $50K while on vacation in Italy.