I know it may seem strange that on my first blog post, that I would mention something that you should not do, but I figured there are a whole bunch of you out there who are completely lost, as to what is legitimate and what is a waste of time.  When you are wet behind the ears, it can be daunting.

There are seemingly hundreds of websites saying that you can make money online by sitting on your butt and doing nothing.  First, let me be the first to tell you that there is no FREE way to make money online where you can sit on your butt and do nothing. If you want  the privilege of doing nothing and making money online, you are going to have to pay for it.  You are going to have to sacrifice either time or money in this business.  It's as simple as that.

That being said, let me tell you some of the things to stay away from,, when it comes to "surefire" ways to make money online.  Some of these I had to learn through my own painful experiences.  Hopefully, you will learn from my mistakes, and not make the same errors.  They are pretty obvious when you think about it, but I just don't want to see you being taken advantage of.

Enough of my rambling.  Here is a short list:

HYIP – HYIP is just a fancy-schmancy acronym for High Yield Investment Programs, which is even a fancier term for Ponzi Scheme. I guarantee it.  I'm not sure if they are as big as they once were a few years back, because quite frankly, I don't pay attention to them anymore. But here is the basic concept behind them. 

These scams work on the idea that there are always going to be new members coming in and investing their money, which is what these scam artists use to fund the operation and pay their members.  Once the membership gets too big, or they run out of new members, the whole thing breaks down.

They are obvious to spot for several reasons.  The most obvious being that they are offering a stupifying return of 10% a day or something like that.  When you see something like this, you minus well just roll your eyes, and hit the Back button on your browser.  You've got Mutual fund managers who would go crazy to get a return of 10% a YEAR for their investors, and this HYIP is offering to make you that in a day??

You can tell its BS, because when you go to their "about us" page on their site, they will never disclose how they make that kind of return on investment.

Paid-To-Surf Websites -  This is just an HYIP with a different name.  The concept behind these are that you get paid a large percentage a day (around 10% of your balance every day) for spending time visiting other people's websites that are part of the program.

The "front" of this scheme is that you are paying for doing this "service" of visiting sites which the webmasters pay your for.  The truth is no website owner with a brain would pay money to have somebody forcibly go to their site.  What's the point?? What are the odds that the person who is only going to your site because they are getting paid to, would be interested in what you are selling?  My guess is that the odds are very low.

You could have a million people go to your website, but if the traffic isn't targeted, then it doesn't mean anything. It would be like selling carrots to kids inside Chucky Cheeses.  Sure, there are going to be a lot of kids there, but do you think many kids are going to spend money on carrots??? Of course, not!!

Make Money With Surveys - I'm ashamed to say that this was my first ever scam that I fell for online. I saw a bunch of these sites that were telling me that I could make $3000-4000 a month just by simply filling out surveys online.  Ahh…..I was so naive.

I must have done well over 100 surveys, and you know how many I got paid for? 1, and it was for a grand total of $5.00.

Here's the deal with surveys.  Companies will create these online surveys.  They ask you to take them, and should you provide information that they are looking for, THEN you can get paid for your contribution.  The problem is they never get back to you AFTER you finish the survey. 

It's like once they have their information, and they don't need you anymore.

Online Data Entry Jobs – Well…….I really don't think I have to go into this one.  This one should be obvious by now.

There may be some more nowadays.  Truthfully, I don't keep up with all this garbage.  I try to run a real online business, so I'm probably a little behind the times when it comes to the latest internet scams.  But these were some of the big ones that were happening when I first thought about making money online.