A disappointment this morning was Marketing for Writers (marketingforwriters.com; [...]]]> While I’ve learned to recognize the come-ons by snake oil sales people on the Internet, I sometimes give one a chance to prove me wrong. (I’m actually planning a post on how to recognize at a class an obvious bottom-feeder.) So far, none of them have.

A disappointment this morning was Marketing for Writers (marketingforwriters.com; and it’s not a link for a reason). They come up first in Google if you search on the term, however, don’t waste your time and certainly don’t waste your money there.

The URL takes you to a landing page optimized for Google with Yahoo text ads at the top, a bit of out-of-date copy on the absolute basics (and hardest way to promote your writing) and on the right side promotion for her own e-books and materials including a sign-up for a “Free E-course: How to Earn a 6 Figure Income from Your Writing”. So I signed up (Not with my real email address; this is what email forwarders are for and many blessings on my hosting service for allowing me unlimited forwarders. I make a custom forwarding address for almost everything I sign-up for that might sell my address).

I’m then taken to a funneling page that pitches an incredibly overpriced collection of “web marketing tools and tips” — which are actually free or another MLM/Affiliate scheme — that happens to be on sale right now for a limtied time only (and if you believe that one, I have some lovely beach-front property to sell you in Nebraska). But if you want your “free gifts” scroll to the bottom of the page.Yep, there’s a link for free stuff, but…

When you click on the link you are redirected to another pitch page for “Internet marketing for free” at another URL that informs all of the free gifts have been consolidated on this one page (obviously a more recent WordPress based page), so just scroll down and click below. I had a couple of more minutes before the library opened, so I scrolled down to find the link “marketing for writers” and clicked…

And found myself back at the original pitch page with the same article, the same Yahoo ads, the same product pitch and sign-up box. I had come full-circle.

I can assure you that the primary way this person is earning a six-figure income from writing is getting suckers to pay big money for, at best, a repackaged collection of old, freely-available-online-or-at-your-local-library tips, affiliate sales, ad sales and reselling your email address (among other things there’s absolutely no privacy policy or terms and conditions statement for any of the sign-up forms). She’s not interested in selling your book; she’s interested in selling her “books” to you!

So don’t waste your time or risk your email box.

I hope to have up very soon (finally, getting through my classes and consulting gigs) a resource page of legitimate and recommended guides to marketing for writers. In the meantime, read Ariel Gore’s How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lightsand Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networkingfor starters (and yes, they’re an Amazon Affiliate Link, but to titles I highly recommend and a lot cheaper than a scammer’s self-pubbed drivel).

And if you believe that I’ve got some desert property in South Louisiana to sell you.

About once a week I [...]]]> You! Yes, YOU! Can make thousands of dollars a week writing articles, blog posts and the occasional short story from the comfort of your home! Thousands of smart people like you are doing it!

And if you believe that I’ve got some desert property in South Louisiana to sell you.

About once a week I check my Junk mail file to make certain there isn’t something worthwhile that was mislabeled (just before I erase everything). This week I came across one with the subject “Can we pay you to write something?” and a header Freelance Job Opportunity. Now it so happens I occasionally apply for a gig through a legitimate freelance jobs board, so I decided to open this one. Here’s how the email started:

Hello, 

We would like to know if you would be interested in working from home in your spare time writing short articles for us. You will be paid $25.00 – $45.00 per hour writing these articles.

We will also pay you $12.00 – $50.00 per hour for posing in blogs, and up to $450 for each fiction or non fiction story we ask you to write.

Not exactly personal, but I was curious so I checked the link beneath this come-on, found no attempts to add anything to my system and clicked it. I was taken to what in the hard-sell (read scam) online marketing business is called a “Squeeze” page — a page that requires you to give an email address before continuing. This site (Freelance Home Writers Network) calls theirs the “Create Log-in” page. Now I knew it was a scam, but was curious about exactly what kind of scam. Fortunately, I make good use of the unlimited email forwarders and created a new one just for this site and then entered it into the squeeze page.

Instantly I was taken to the come-on page (which they amusingly call the “Job Description” page). This is the big pitch page that all of these scammers use (these are often referred to as “micro-sites” now). It’s the standard “Earn Big Money In Your Spare Time From Home” pitch for would-be writers. Here’s the start of this one:

Congratulations!

You’re just minutes away from making great, easy money from the comfort of your home, just from writing simple articles, easy blog posts, or (if you want the really BIG bucks) by writing short fiction and non-fiction stories…

Thousands of smart people just like you are are already brining in an easy $1,000, $2,000…even as much as $5,000 every single week just by doing this easy writing in their spare time…and now it’s your turn!

How Is This Possible?

If all of this sounds too good to be true, let me put your mind at ease by showing you the reason why this is all possible:

The #1 thing all online businesses need in order to survive is more people visiting and buying from their websites. Think about it…the more people who go to their site, the more sales they can make…simple enough right?

Now here’s where you come in:

Since 90% website visitors come from the major search engines (Google and Yahoo)…the more content pages a business has, the more times one of it’s pages (articles) will show up in the search results when a potential customer does a search…

Which is why…

These businesses are starving to put up
as many content pages as possible!

They know that the more content pages they have on their site, the more people they will get to click over to their site, and the more money they will make.

And because these business are too busy doing other things, they will gladly pay YOU top-dollar for writing simple articles, blog posts, and even fiction and non-fiction short stories…for them!

How Much Can You Make?

Don’t let the easy nature of this opportunity fool you, because even though the work is dead-simple, the pay is amazing!

They’re absolutely right, the pay IS amazing — amazingly small!

(BTW, I took out all the H1 and H2 headers used throughout the come-on — I mean “Job Description”.)

You’re assured “It’s a never-ending supply of high-paying, simple and easy writing jobs that come to YOU…”

Uhm, I guess some folks would consider it “high-paying” if you live in a hovel in a war-torn wasteland. If you read carefully when they start calculating how much you can “easily” earn, you discover you’re being paid $10 per article. Now at 500 words per article that comes out to .02¢ per word. Even at a mere 250 words per article (and exactly how much content would that be for a web site), it comes out to .04¢  per word. These are the wages Depression Era pulp writers earned! but wait, a bit of hunting on my part unearths that many of these “assignments” are for 1-2,000 word articles — which comes to .01-.005¢ per word!

Anyone who’s tried the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) competition knows how hard it is to knock out 2,000 words a day without worrying about  writing well. So how in the world can you possibly write enough relevant and quality content for all these web sites who are going to be hiring you through this “network?” And how do they know you’re good enough?

Oh, relax. As the pitch page — er, Job Description puts it:

And if you’re worried that you might not be the best writer, or that you never attended any college or higher-learning institute…it does NOT matter one bit!

Because…

These Companies Don’t Care Who You Are, Where You Live, Or Your Level Of Education

The writing tasks you’ll be doing will be so easy an 8-year-old child could do them…

You just follow the simple instructions that come with each job…and everything you need to complete the job will be right there for you!

 If you do any research on these kinds of come-ons, you discover that what you are actually getting “hired” to do is copy-and-paste content from other web sites or copy from books and magazines (if you’re slow and don’t want to make as much $$). Then you change a couple of words here and there, maybe move a paragraph around and — voila! — instant content.

Oh course, it’s immoral, unethical and illegal, but hey, it’s easy money “writing” so come-on, click the “Complete Registration” button.

Don't fall for these writing job scams!

Now I’ve read enough of these scam-artist programs to know that I wasn’t going to get the “opportunity” to work for slave wages for free, so I wasn’t surprised when clicking on the “Complete Registration” brought me to a page where I needed to give them a credit card.

I was receiving a once-in-life-time, limited-time offer (you knew it was a limited-time offer because there’s a little box in red counting down the seconds). Instead of paying the “normal” $69.95″ Per Month (!!) for Unlimited Access Membership to the Freelance Home Writers Network, I could sign up in the next 1,400 seconds for a low rate of $2.95 for 7 days followed by a mere $47 per month fee.

Let me get this straight. I pay these jokers $50 for the privilege of seeing a list of unethical thieves who are offering me  $10 per article so they can scam Google by appearing to have relevant content on their sites to improve their Page Ranking?  Wow! What a deal! 

And this is assuming these guys actually pay me after I do the work. But since I know none of the people  involved in this operation are ethical, how likely are they to be honest.

The truly sad part of all of this, is that I’ve read pieces by writers of no integrity who would do this sort of thing. At least the ones who write term papers get paid a half-way decent rate.

When I think of all the people I know who actually care about their work and writing and all the desperate souls who lose good money to these sleaze balls, I just want to go Nietzsche on these festering maggots.

But wait there’s more!

As you attempt to leave the site you’re get a pop-up javascript alert offering you a chance for a “Work From Home Success Kit” where you can “Make Money Working at Home With Google!“ 

Clicking on the link takes you to another come-on micro-site promising me I can earn $100-1,000 per month “fast, free, profitably” with my “free Google Automated Income Kit”. Of course to get my “Free” kit, I get a 14-day free trial BlogToolKit.com web site. And after 14-days I will be billed $39.95 a month. For a blog page. The kind I could get for free from Blogger or WordPress.com or LiveJournal or a dozen other sources.

Oh, and if you want to unsubscribe from all of these spammers and scammers? Well, you’re suppose write a snail mail to this address in Florida to request being removed from the list, however, the business is owned by someone in Juneau, Alaska. Is there some kind of residency requirement in Alaska that one out of three residents must be embarrassing examples of knuckle-dragging, selfish, greedy creatures on the cusp of evolving into homo sapien?

Grrrrr! She says, Grrrr!