If you want to skip to the detailed (and somewhat surprising) answer about AmeriPubs you can click here to view the answer to the AmeriPubs.com question.

When I visited the AmeriPubs site the first thing I noticed was a pop-up box that stated:

"This is the official website of American Publications Inc., based in Maryland Heights, Missouri."

Then the pop-up box at AmeriPubs went on to allege there was another company with a similar name based on Connecticut making unrealistic claims and drawing in numerous complaints.

Finally this pop-up box stated: "if you are looking for the "real" American Publications – the one that has been in business since 1992, the one in Missouri, the one that doesn't hide behind a PO Box – then you are in the right place!"

So I thought, "well, that does happen sometimes". A scammer will use another companies name to try to establish credibility. But was that the case here?

The answer to that question is more interesting than I expected.

Click here to find out the lowdown on AmeriPubs.com

A: Short answer – the programs promoted by sites like that often have a very bad reputation.

Now, before I go on, what baffles me is that people will skip over the well-reviewed products such as the ones on the top ten recommended home businesses list, but then go googey-gaga-eyes over products or websites like the following that I'll now discuss…

As far as the website promoting the product:

I've bought my very OWN picture of "Robert's Family" from  a stock photo site so I can use it on this blog post. 

Picture of "Robert's Family" from Stock Photo Site

I've asked friends of mine from around the world to take screenshots from Roberts site as apparently he's a "world traveler" who lives wherever YOU live. 

Update: 5/1/2009:

We have our first "visitor submitted" screenshot of Robert showing him living in Berlin, Germany. Thanks, Carina!

RobertsCashBlog as viewed from Berlin, Germany

RobertsCashBlog as viewed by a friend in Sydney, Australia:

RobertsCashBlog as viewed from Sydney, Australia

RobertsCashBlog as viewed by a friend in Ontario, Canada:

RobertsCashBlog as viewed from Ontaria, Canada

RobertsCashBlog as viewed by me in Saint Louis, Missouri (which is near Saint Peters):

RobertsCashBlog as viewed from Saint Louis

RobertsCashBlog as viewed by a friend in Hyberadad, Andhra, Pradesh:

RobertsCashBlog as viewed from Hyderabad, Andhra, Pradesh

RobertsCashBlog as viewed by a friend in Cali, Valle de Cauca:

RobertsCashBlog in Cali, Valle de Cauca

Has RobertsCashBlog made a visit to YOUR part of the world?

Feel free to let us know!

Related topics:

• Top 10 recommended home businesses
• BradsMoney – Where's that government check?
• BethsMoney discussed

Video of the further "world adventures" of RobertsCashBlog:

Q: I order google cash kit, where the hell is it? why cant i seem to even email these people? i paid the damn money and i never even got an email. i am really getting pissd off. can you help me?

A: You are talking about a completely different product than the one reviewed at this site.

The one you are talking about is NOT on our top 10 recommended home business list and has NOTHING to do with the one reviewed at WorkAtHomeTruth here:
http://www.workathometruth.com/Google-Cash-review.php

These new products are confusing people because they include the OLD Google Cash name.

In fact there are so many new products calling themselves "Google Cash", Google Cash Kit", or "Google Home Business Kit" that I have no idea which one you're talking about.

Where did you find the product you're talking about?

Reply: i found product online when i googled "work from home denver".

it is some kind of work at home system that only cost $1.95 for shipping, so i thought it might be a good one.

i'm not upset about the money, but i was recently laid off and i wanted to start working from home. this whole thing is very confusing, and i do not want to spend a bunch of money on something thats not legit.

maybe your knowledge can help, lots of people say they make a good living only a few hours a day, i am willing to work 6-9 hours like a regular human being. if you can help, i would really appreciate it, i just want to get something started. p.s. it says you can start making money in 72 hours, and get a check in a week. thanks so much for your time!!

My answer:

What's your background. That will help. I can probably point you to some free training to begin with.

After that you'd want to move to some form of low-cost training with a help forum.

But knowing what your background is first will help.

Theoretically you can make money within 72 hours using what's called pay per click marketing – but as I discuss in this section on my site – most people will LOSE money with pay per click marketing first…so I recommend people start with something else:

http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2008/01/05/bootstrapping-your-business/

Everything is about increasing the odds of something working – nothing is going to work 100% of the time.

Reply: hi Paul, i have marketing experience but not online. i have a company that i am trying to expand in the US, but i am not getting a paycheck until i sell some product, when i will earn a commission.

[Note: the specific market this person mentioned has been removed for privacy reasons].

My Reply: There are a couple paths you could take on this (or both):

I'm going to break them into two.

Path 1) is to build an authority site – a large site based on expertise in the field designed to gain a large amount of free search engine traffic. WorkAtHomeTruth is an example of an authority site.

You can determine if a site is an authority site by typing the url into the Google search box. If the listing for the site has "categories" beneath the listing – it's an authority site.

Some of the free information that would help you to build an authority site while also driving free traffic from other sources would be:

• http://www.seofaststart.com – free ebook on basics of search engine optimization.
• http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com – free training on using social media in your marketing efforts. You're in a very competitive field and mastering the use of social media could give you a big edge.
• http://www.twitterhandbook.com

I'd combine those with additional online direct marketing fundamentals taught through the free course at http://www.erictips.com which should definitely be a part of your strategy and for optimizing conversion rates. The training from EricsTips is here:

http://www.ericstips.com – you can get to the lessons without signing
up for the newsletter if you want be going to the following links:

http://www.ericstips.com/tips/lesson1/
http://www.ericstips.com/tips/lesson2/
http://www.ericstips.com/tips/lesson3/

There are also 14 good free videos at http://www.affiliatemoneyrevolution.net/go/FreeTrial (NO cc) which will help reinforce some of the other, previously mentioned information – although I'd consider those optional OR you might consider the $67 one-time upgrade fee there as I've volunteered to help out in the forum along with the owner Michal Brown so you'd get additional help.

Path 2) Still requires you get some statistical data on your conversion rates – although it doens't have to be hardcore-accurate necessarily. I.e.,

Path 2 involves preparing your offer or offers for consideration by one or more of the affiliate networks which have large bases of affiliates.

I'd recommend we come back to that once you get more online experience. But typically the set up works like this:

1. You decide on a price.
2. You decide on how much of that price you're willing to pay to the affiliate network
3. The affiliate network decides how much of that price to pay their affilaites.
4. You have to front a certain amount of reserve money to guarantee payment to the affiliate network.

The affiliate network path can obviously drive a lot of sales quickly, but you have to make sure your offer converts well before approaching the affiliate networks.

Eventually you may want to look at some of the information from Perry Marshall here:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/products/

As PPC can not only drive quite a lot of profis, but also give you a lot of statistically significant results very quickly.

In the long run, I'd also highly recommend in investing in at least ONE of the training courses by http://www.marketingexperiments.com such as the Certified Online Testing Professional course:
https://www.marketingexperiments.com/ge3/offer.php?id=3

You will want to hold off on that course until you have quite a bit more online experience under your belt, but I'd recommend taking a look at their research archive as it will take you out of the realm of online marketing nonsense into how professionals run and test their businesses:

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/research-topics/research_archive.html

Hopefully this isn't too overwhelming for you, but it is all free and high-quality information and more suited to what you are trying to accomplish.

A: Here are the problems I see.

1) The sites appear to be cookie cutter sites.
2) The sites I've reviewed that were set up by the owners of this system seem to be poorly optimized for the search engines. John Mann just wrote a very good article about the basics of what you should strive for when optimizing your web pages here.
3) I don't see any backlinking being done. If that is in fact correct, then it will be even harder to get any reliable traffic to the sites.

I used  http://www.backlinkwatch.com to check for backlinks to the sites listed on this complaint: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/421/RipOff0421783.htm

You will still need to pay for hosting and buying the domains. That's not a problem per se, but if you are going to pay for hosting and domains you should make sure you're getting proper training and learning to optimize your sites correctly for traffic generation.

I actually think that in general that when you are FIRST starting out it's a BAD idea to let ANYONE do your work for you unless you're getting a recommendation from someone you really trust. Although even then you are MUCH better off learning enough about the the type of work you're farming out to make sure you are choosing the right person for the job – otherwise you are just flying completely blind and really have no idea whether or not the person that's doing the work for you even knows what they're doing. You both need to speak enough of a common language to make sure you are really getting what you're thinking you're getting.

I would suggest you start with the article about researching a niche market by John Mann here to understand the basic elements needed to start ranking your sites in the search engines. And you can also grab an excellent free book on search engine optimization at SEOFastStart here.

Related sites:

• www.247ClickBankGoogleCash.com
• www.3500Weekly.com
• www.BigCashToMake.com
• www.EasyBigChecks.com
• www.EnvisionIncome.com
• www.MyHelpIsFree.com
• www.MyServiceIsFree.com
• www.MyWorkWillBeFree.com
• www.OnlineDailyCashCow.com
• www.WebPayChecks.com
• www.Work-Home-Money-Internet-Business.com
• www.WorkIsFreeToday.com
• www.YourWebsiteIsFree.com
• www.YouWillGetPaid.com

Note: I am NOT saying that MyHelpIsFree is a scam. I'm just explaining some of the issues I have based on the websites I looked at and how the offer is structured.

I ran across a product recently called FastCash with Google after seeing an advertisement in a bizopp magazine for a site called GoogleThisMoney.com which redirected to a page promoting FastCash with Google.

As you'll see in the rest of this blog post, these aren't the types of programs you'll find on the Top 10 Recommended Home Businesses list. And you'll also see that there are a lot of new products coming out that are leveraging the popularity of the original Google Cash product that came out many years ago. These new products have nothing to do with the original Google Cash product by Chris Carpenter.

I started getting some comments about Google Cash that didn't make any sense until I found out that there is a totally DIFFERENT product called Make Google Cash that apparently is somehow related to a product called GoogleRevenueStreams.

I want to point out that NEITHER Make Google Cash NOR Google Revenue Streams have anything to do with the Google Cash product that is reviewed on WorkAtHomeTruth here.

The original Google Cash (also known as AffiliateJackpot) by Chris Carpenter came out in 2002 (although the site GoogleCash.com apparently wasn't created until 2003) and was a breakthrough product at the time.  For the most part it was fairly easy to make money with the Google Cash system and those of us who got in on it early did quite well…but more importantly those of us who continued to work on our fundamental internet marketing skills stayed in the game, while others seemed to fade away.

Some people just don't like the four-letter word "W.O.R.K." even if the work can ultimately provide them with more flexibility and freedom than most business models.

I don't know if products like Make Google Cash are trying to leverage the Google Cash name or if it's just a coincidence. There's no real way to know as both "Google" and "Cash" are hugely popular keywords – meaning that it's very possible that it's a complete coincidence.

As I said, I don't even know what the products MakeGoogleCash and GoogleRevenueStreams are. I know as much as you about them which is that GoogleRevenueStreams apparently involves some sort of 10-day trial period followed by a $49.95/month fee according to this section of the Terms and Conditions in the "Monthly Fees" section:

"The initial shipping fee of three dollars and eighty seven cents includes the Federal Grant Resources Kit as well as ten (10) days worth of access to the online directories and training. After 10 days, you will automatically be billed a forty nine dollar and ninety five cent recurring monthly fee for the greenteaxtreme.com membership."

The bottom line is Google Cash is a totally separate product from BOTH Make Google Cash and Google Revenue Streams and has nothing to do with those two products at all.

You can read about the original Google Cash product here. I don't know the other two products.

I tried to understand: How it works?

Nobody (including you with your analysis) opened  this subject. It is SO strange!

OK. I tried to find any feedback or anything on pointed Brow'n web-site. No way! It is not a web-site. It is just AD with the goal to sell some "black cat in black box", labeled as a Tiger (it's my opinion): "give me, give me, give me a little bit money and you will become healthy and happy".
)))

I am researcher. When some grandma will ask me about my area of occupation and about some fundamental problem, I can explain it to her in several phrases without math and special terms.

You presented yourself as experts in web-marketing, etc.

Please, tell me in e-mail: what is the sequence of actions of any user of this stuff. How he will get money? From whom? Why? Please some examples (not regular AD blah-blah-blah about prices and tons of free super gifts for me).

I will appreciate your correct explanation.

Thank you forward.

Actually, the problem is not in money to buy these programs, the problem will be, if this business will be just a little fake house of success.

My best regards

G.

And please a few words about Levenhagen's Campaign Blasts Method, namely: how regular people could use these adwords to make money, whom you call about this usually? ))
(I understand – is good to get such diamonds. Unfortunately, diamonds are not a money)"

A:

Regarding Niche Blitzkrieg:
Niche Blitzkrieg is pretty basic niche targeting but with a twist on the upfront research that increases your odds of success.

1) Identify potential niches.
2) Do compeititve research to determine how
hard it will be to rank in the search engines
for a set of 5 to 10 keywords in the niche.
3) Do a test with RSS feeds using the keywords
to confirm step 2.
4) Build a niche blog around the keywords.
5) Build links via article directories and
social bookmarking and feeds.
6) Repeat steps 1 through 5 over and over.

You might want to get free training instead
to get your feet wet. I posted 10 sites that
give excellent free training. They won't be
as focused as Niche Blitzkrieg, but since
it sounds like you've been burned a lot
you might want to start with them:

http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/category/home-businesses/recommended-home-business-sites/

You should not START with Adwords.
You need to build some throwaway money for
testing as I discuss here:

http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2008/01/05/bootstrapping-your-business/

As for how the "average person can make money from Adwords"?

They can't. The "average person" will sit around all day doing nothing
no matter how good the information is that you give them.

Paul Schlegel
Founder, WorkAtHomeTruth.com

Related pages:

• Niche Blitzkrieg Review
• Campaign Blasts Method review
• Niche affiliate marketing winner
  

And that is that the philosophy of WorkAtHomeTruth is for you to be as self-funding as possible – in other words to make money with low-cost low-risk methods BEFORE spending money on monthly subscription products like MaverickMoneyMakers.

Think about it. Full membership for 1 year in Maverick Money Makers will cost you $1,164.00. Whereas you can get unlimited support – including a very active and helpful forum –  from a great product like Niche Blitkrieg here for a ONE-TIME cost of $47.  In other words you'll be paying $1,117.00 LESS, getting high quality support and using a system to build income that is LESS RISKY and can be used to leverage into other forms of advertising LATER. Kind of seems like a no-brainer when you think of it that way, doesn't it? 

Nevertheless, I keep getting questions about Maverick Money Makers. In fact I got so many questions about Maverick Money Makers I thought it was a bit strange…especially since Yanik Silver had recently launched a product called Maverick Business Insider.

Let me be very clear about this, Maverick Money Makers is NOT Maverick Business Insider.  And as far as I can tell it's a complete coincidence that the two sites launched around the same time as the MaverickMoneyMakers.com site was registered on September 4, 2008 and the MaverickBusinessInsiders.com site was registered on October 16, 2008.

I can't really comment on Yanik's MaverickBusinessInsiders' course as I didn't have time to review the first months material he sent. In general, most of Yanik Silver's materials are of very high quality, but I'm not going to recommend something I haven't reviewed first hand.

There certainly have been a fair amount of negative comments about Maverick Money Makers and anytime I see the old "As Seen On" claim my red-flag alert goes up. Usually it just means the company BOUGHT ADVERTISING in those places.

8/13/2009 Update: How "limited" is "limited"?

I just noticed this paragraph on the MaverickMoneyMakers:

"Also, my staff and I can only handle giving personal one-on-one support to a limited number of new members at any given time in this program. That is why if you want to get in, I advise you to sign up now, today, before spots become unavailable again. "

So what is MaverickMoneyMakers considering "limited"?

Of course, I'm willing to concede that if there have been no MaverickMoneyMakers complaints then it's posible that it doesn't matter.

It just doesn't seem probable that it's limited as I've seen so many affiliate reviews of MaverickMoneyMakers.

Now, I should state that I'm ASSUMING that any domain starting with the keywords MaverickMoneyMakers is probably an affiliate site. I just did some quick research and turned up what looked like close to 3000 domains starting with either MaverickMoneyMakers or MaverickMoneyMake.

The following is just a SHORT list of them.

• MaverickMoneyMakers | allday | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | alldays | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | alley | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | alliance | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | allied | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | allies | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | allin | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | allstars | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | alltime | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | ally | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | aloha | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | alon | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | alone | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | alpha | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | also | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | alumni | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | always | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | amber | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | ambition | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | america | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | amp | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | an | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | andco | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | andme | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | andmore | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | andshakers | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | andyou | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | angel | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | annex | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | annual | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | answer | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | answers | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | ante | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | antigua | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | anton | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | anytime | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | anywhere | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | aone | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | apex | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | aplus | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | apple | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | apply | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | apprentice | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | approach | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | apps | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | aquire | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | ar | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | arcade | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | archive | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | are | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | area | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | arecool | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | arehere | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | arena | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | areok | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | arerich | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | aresuccessful | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | areus | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | areview | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | arewe | .com
• MaverickMoneyMakers | arewealthy | .com

Recommended instead:

• Niche Blitzkrieg Cash Harvesting System 

Can you spot the reason this person hasn't been able to succeed online?

Step 1: Read the following pages (REALLY do this and READ the discussions):

• http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2008/12/13/bradsmoney-wheres-that-government-check/
• http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2008/11/19/google-money-tree-complaints/
• http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2009/01/01/earncashfastwithgoogle-complaints/
• http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2009/01/05/googletree-complaints/

Step 2: Read this baffling feedback from a visitor to WorkAtHomeTruth:

"While surfing facebook, I saw this add stating; "I got $11,668.00" clicked out of curiousity, was directed to another site that stated Step 1 Go to this link, fill out a basic online form and hit submit at Google Cash Only pay the $1.00 for shipping.

Website is [link removed by WorkAtHomeTruth as it's a site we do NOT recommend].

Think to myself, well, for a buck, why not. Click on the Get Google Cash link…oups. Doesn't work.Do a Google Search. Well…now it's 67$ to start up. Of course. Get the lowly living paycheck to paycheck consumer, needing even an extra 100$ a month to put food on the table -Isn't it sad that we can make 90k a year as a family and still barely make it each month, without spending on anything other than food, gas and shelter?- 67$…meh it's below 100 right?? False adverstisement. It says, Only pay the $1.00 for shipping. The "the" makes it seem like "HEY!! I only pay a buck!!" Prove to me that this works, charge me the advertised "buck" then we can see if this is a scam or not.

It is a sad world to have not only sick predators on the prowl…now they are hidden behind computer monitors, faceless, nameless and untoucheable, taking the poor dumbass consumer out for a ride.

What ever happened to paying it forward?? Helping your fellog man/woman?? Actually GIVING what you are offering-no B.S. no hidden agenda.

And the worst part?? You sleep well at night…"

Step 3: Look at those pages in Step 1 again (I've even added a few more):

• http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2008/12/13/bradsmoney-wheres-that-government-check/
• http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2008/11/19/google-money-tree-complaints/
• http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2009/01/01/earncashfastwithgoogle-complaints/
• http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2009/01/05/googletree-complaints/

Step 4: Consider the following:

This person wrote to WorkAtHomeTruth complaining about a product that WorkAtHomeTruth does NOT recommend and then is surprised that "we can sleep at night".

Step 5: Read the following response from WorkAtHomeTruth to this person:

"I don't quite understand your email. I have close to 10 separate pages up warning people about the types
of sites you mention. Here are a few:

http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2008/12/13/bradsmoney-wheres-that-government-check/
http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2008/11/19/google-money-tree-complaints/
http://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2009/01/05/googletree-complaints/

What does your comment mean:

I really don't understand this email.

Paul Schlegel
Founder, WorkAtHomeTruth.com

Step 6: Read the person's response and see if you can spot the REAL reason she's failing online:

"Hmm…the website I got your email informationand feedback form from was rather different and honestly, I did not care to take it down as it was just another random google searched link that I clicked.

Had it been clear that you are trying to help people not be scammed, I wouldn't have emailed you. If you truly are helping and are successful (I have yet to find ANY internet work at home…initiative that actually works) then great.

Best of luck to you."

Here's the question and how MoneySiphonSystem plays a role:

Q: Hi there-I love your newsletter and information. I have a concern though. The top 10 businesses you recommend all require a fee of some sort. I thought any legit wah would not request any money.  I also did research and most of them and they have been stated to be scams. Would you please clarify what I am missing?

Thanks.

A: That's a good and simple question with a surprisingly complicated answer. Of course if it wasn't complicated people wouldn't be so confused about what's legitimate and what's not. One thing I'm going to try to do more of this year is see if I can help people understand how to make those determinations themselves or at least know how they COULD go about doing it, because while the rules that places
like the BBB put out are good, they aren't good enough and in fact sometimes they're misleading.

So here's my answer:

The no-fee usually applies to telecommuting work, not businesses. It's common sense, really. Most businesses have a start-up free or some sort of licensing fee where as most jobs don't.

However, there are some legitimate databases for telecommuting work that require a fee, but if you follow the http://www.workathometruth.com/rules.php you'll do alot to avoid scams sometimes found through the free resources.

The paid telecommuting job databases  are getting paid to aggregate the listing and to weed out the scams.

If you go to http://www.telcoa.org/ (which is an important telcommuting with an extensive and impressive board of directors you can see here – http://www.telcoa.org/id20.htm).