Yesterday I got back from a weekend away where I was without access to the internet for four days. It was a risk – sometimes automatic digital delivery can go wrong and people need help – but luckily I got a nice break from the internet and didn’t come back to any screaming customers.

Which gave me a little time to think…

I found an ad in a national paper over the weekend offering what seemed like a great bargain. A 19th Century gold sovereign for just £120.

The ad made it clear that there has been a huge increase in the price of gold and that it has been a great investment over the last few years. And it has. Since I’ve been into financial trading, gold has risen from around $380 an ounce (late 2003) to around $1,000 per ounce.

My immediate thoughts were that it may be worth investing £120 for one of these coins. Of course, without the internet I had no way of finding out whether it was a good deal or not.

The ad made it clear you’d be offered further coins in the future unless you opted out. I thought that the first coin might have been offered slightly below actual value as a “loss leader” to gather names.

Buying gold at slightly below what it is currently worth was very attractive to me and so when I got back to a PC, I went to work.

Gold, today, is trading at about $980 per ounce and a pound is worth about $1.9875. So, back of an envelope calculation, gold is about £493 per ounce.

These sovereigns weigh 0.2354 oz which comes out at about £116 if it is pure gold.

However, and I didn’t know this before, 24 carat gold is considered “pure”.

22 carat gold is considered 91.6% pure and these sovereigns were 22 carat so their “fineness” is 916 out of 1,000.

Technically, buying one of these sovereigns would result in me getting about 0.2156oz of gold.

Which I work out as being worth 0.2156 x £490 = c. £106.

Net result: the sovereign is available for £119 but is worth roughly £106.

Glad I did my research before blindly sending off for the coin…

I also came back to several not-too-pleasant comments on the blog. Somebody pointed out to me that a couple of these comments could actually be considered libellous.

Needless to say, they were removed.

And I am now considering whether or not to remove the comments feature altogether. As I was told by a business associate:

“…the problem with running forums etc as I once found when I ran one too is that anyone who feels a little brave behind a keyboard can post anything and you as the forum owner are responsible. I closed mine down long ago as I saw no sense in spending time monitoring posts from nutters that could lead to legal action and me possibly losing my house. It just didn’t seem worth it to me…”

Scary stuff and so I will be monitoring comments very closely from now on!

Lastly, I found I had some money sat in my BetOnMarkets account so I had a little punt:

Bear Contract: Win GBP10 if, at the close of trading on 13-MAR-08, GBP/USD is lower than 2.

My thinking was, looking at the chart, there seems to be a resistance level at 2.00 so it was worth a very small wager for a bit of harmless fun. It only cost £7.45 so it’s a couple of pints worth of risk!

Just for the lawyers: THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE – please don’t copy my trade blindly.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Ben

Somebody wrote to me this week and asked:

“I would also like to subscribe to Nick Laight’s “What Really Makes Money” but I have only used my credit card on High Street websites that I know are safe (Tesco, etc). How would I be protected if I gave out my details over the net to a site I know nothing about? I have heard of something called “PayPal” but again, I know nothing about it.

I hope you can answer my queries, as you can see I am a complete novice but I want to learn.”

I understand your concerns about paying with a credit card over the internet. The media has done a great job of making the world completely paranoid about spending cash online!

The truth is, as long as you are careful, you shouldn’t have any problems when you use your credit card to pay for items on the web. You just need to make sure that the site uses what’s known as a “secure server”.

For example, if I got to Nick’s site and click on the button that says “Click Here for a 30 Day Risk-Free Trial” then the resulting page is a secure page. I can tell this from 2 different things:

(1) The address of the website starts with https rather than just http. The extra ‘s’ means the site is secure…

(2) There is a closed padlock icon somewhere on browser program. In my case I use an Apple Mac so the icon is in the top right but with other internet browsers it could be towards the bottom or in the top left etc. Look around and you should find it somewhere.

Ok, so from those two signs we now know the site is safe.

Next, you asked about how you are protected if your credit card is used without your consent.

This happened to me recently where my card was used to buy mobile phone top-up cards online. I rang my credit card company and told them that the transactions were fraudulent and they sent me a form to sign. I returned the form and the charges were removed from my card.

I couldn’t figure out how anybody could’ve got my details as I rarely use my credit card for anything. I eventually traced it back to a transaction I made in Portugal back in May – which was the last time I ever used my card in a shop (i.e. not online).

Many people use PayPal to buy items from eBay and also from other marketers – Clickbank allows you to pay via PayPal, as do domain registration companies like GoDaddy.

Perhaps the main reason a lot of internet entrepreneurs use PayPal is to receive payments on their websites.

I would suggest that you do sign up for a PayPal account if you think you are going to buy a lot of things online and also if you think you will be selling online at some point.

Paying via PayPal involves using just an email address and password so that the seller never gets to know your credit card details. If you want to be extra careful it is probably worth getting an account just so you know that you are more protected.

In any case I think it’s a good idea that you get an account now so it is ready when you need it.

Got an email yesterday which was typical of the types of questions I get asked a lot.

I figured it would probably be a good idea to answer them here so the answers could reach a lot of people.

The email said:

“Basically, I was made redundant from my job in November. Being at home gave me time to trawl the internet for a new job. I started reading various web sites about making money using the internet but I am convinced most are just a scam. Then I came across BizOppsUK It was a breath of fresh air but I am still wary of losing money to a scams. I am currently looking around for a job but after reading your articles I am seriously considering trying to earn a living using the internet.

Firstly, you should know that I am a complete novice when it comes to internet businesses and have not yet used e-bay so if there is any advice you can give it would be well appreciated. The same applies to any websites I should read before I start.

I read with interest your review of Google Cash and thought that would be an ideal way of making money. I did a bit of research on the web and came across “Rich Jerk” and something similar called the “Millionaires League” by Brian Wynn. The only thing is I do not want to be ripped off so if you have any views on this please reply. The second part of this query is that the price for this is in dollars so how would I pay for it? Would I use a credit card and then it gets converted to dollars? I’m not sure. “

OK, I’ve never heard of the “Millionaires League” so I am afraid I cannot help you there. The “Rich Jerk” ebook is a couple of years old but I would say that it is probably a good starter for two reasons:

(a) It’s cheap. I think it is only $10 now which is about £5 or so. In the grand scheme of things in internet marketing, this is very cheap for an ebook and I have paid much more for some pretty crappy information products.

(b) It covers the basics. Whoever the Rich Jerk is, he has written a pretty good book for beginners. This eBook will give you a few ideas and also a good, if very basic, introduction to AdSense, Affiliate Marketing, Pay Per Click and other standard internet marketing ideas.

What I would like to make clear though is that you should only buy the $10 eBook, do not buy any of the extras such as the “Free Website worth $1049” or the audio files – just the $10 option.

Google Cash is very good but it may be a little too advanced for you at this point and could possibly confuse you rather than help you!

The price of most internet marketing and “make money from home” products is usually quoted in dollars. The dollar is the internet’s currency of choice.

At present, it is good to be a buyer because the pound is very strong against the dollar so we get more for a pound.

If you were to buy the Rich Jerk’s eBook for $10 it would be automatically worked out by your credit card company and debited in pounds on your statement.

$10 is roughly about £5 – £6.

As for quitting work and going it solo on the internet, I would tread carefully. My advice would be to get another job and work at this internet stuff in the evenings and in your spare time.

Get things up and running part-time, outside of work, and then once your income from the internet is greater than the income you would make from a day job, consider resigning.

I wouldn’t recommend trying to earn a living from the internet straight away because, despite what some internet marketers may tell you, it isn’t easy!

Just over a year ago I spent a great deal of time investigating an extremely dodgy pyramid scheme called the Prosperity Automated System or “PAS” for short.

Shortly after I wrote a couple of articles about the scheme, it was shutdown by the SEC and the organiser found himself in a legal nightmare that is probably still ongoing. In addition, thousands of people were left nursing extremely heavy losses after ploughing money into PAS which promptly disappeared along with the “sponsors” who introduced them to the pyramid scheme.

Anyway, PAS died a messy death and is pretty much forgotten now on the message boards. When one pyramid scheme dies, another soon takes its place and there are always plenty of suckers ready to join up and max out their credit cards.

One dodgy HYIP which has just recently been shut down by the SEC goes by the name “Colon End Parenthesis” which stands for 🙂 – a smiley face.

Warning signs in this one were typical of these unsustainable schemes….

Firstly, it was promised you could earn 2% per day on your so-called investment – always a big, big danger sign. NOTHING pays 2% a day, absolutely nothing and anything that claims to is almost certainly a scam.

Then it was hyped that the owner of this particular scheme was a Christian pastor or something similar. For some reason, people really trust people who say they are christian when, in reality, it doesn’t matter what race, religion, colour, sex, nationality, height, weight or hair colour someone is. ANYONE can scam you out of money. ANYONE can make fraudulant promises.

Thirdly, there were very few, if any, negative reviews of this scheme – mostly because everyone who had joined had an agenda. They had to promote it and say it was the best thing since sliced bread in order to draw more investment into the scheme.

Also, the promoter (the “Christian” fella) was very cagey about how the money was being made. He wouldn’t divulge exactly how he could pay all investors between 2% and 10% per day. No real surprise there!

In the end, the SEC stepped in to close down Colon End Parenthesis and bring an end to the cycle of investor’s money.

What was found was that all money invested was basically being paid back out to early investors to give them the “2%” return.

The promoter was also ploughing money in autosurfs and other dodgy internet investment schemes and HYIPs – not the real, offline business that he claimed.

So, in reality, when the SEC stepped in, there were no real records of how the money was distributed and it was revealed to be a complete financial mess.

As it turns out, the official receivers are now contacting people who made money from CEP with the aim of clawing back all the money invested.

It’s fair to say that the “winners” are going to be forced to give all the money back so that the “losers” have a small chance of getting a small percentage of their losses back.

You can read more on the huge thread on the “Money Maker Group” forums. I’m am not going to link to that site from this site because I do not want to promote those forums, they are full of dodgy HYIP promoters and people with Vested Interests in seeing you buy into a range of dubious pyramid and ponzi schemes.

Search them out on Google (and be very, very wary of a very dodgy female Moderator who heavily promoted the PAS scam).

http://www.bizoppsuk.com/prosperity_automated_system.php

A subscriber to the my newsletter recently sent an email to me asking for advice about an opportunity called “Stores Online”.

Now, I haven’t come across this one before so I can’t comment but I though I would write a post giving some details to see if anyone knows more about them.

Have you had any experience with StoresOnline (storesonline.com)? Could you shed any light about whether their sites can bring in a good income?

Here is the email I received (I have removed some details to protect the identity of the sender):

“Could you advise me on the following:

My colleague purchased a package from a company called www.storesonline.com based in Utah, USA. Purchased after attending a workshop here in the UK.

It consists of:

Six websites, which you then customise from all the tools supplied.
Reverse Search facilities, Keyword reports, Online Tutorials, in fact it seems about everything that would be required to make them successful.

Unfortunately my colleague is [not a computer expert] and like myself clueless where the net and web design and web mastering is concerned.

The only thing not included are products. I wonder if you know of any people in your organisation who may be interested in helping for a percentage of the income from these sites?

It cost about $19,000 and she has had no luck at all in getting them going. I hope you can help.”

Now, my personal thoughts on this matter are that for $19,000 this person should have 6 singing and dancing websites online and making money. If they are not then there is something seriously wrong with the opportunity.

$19,000 (just under £10,000) is a hell of a lot of money to pay for a few websites and so if this kind of money is being spent, it is not out of the question to expect excellent, problem-free service.

My reply was as follows:

“Hi,

The short answer for your problem about the websites is:

Your colleague should go back to StoresOnline and get help from them until she has all of her websites up and running.

If she has paid out $19k she should at least have the sites working. And if not, she should push for a full refund because this is not good value.

Ask her to go back to them and explain the problems she is having – she should not stop until everything is working for her.

Thanks,

Ben”

Now, I haven’t heard anything further about this problem yet but it has only been 5 days.

In the meantime, if you have any information about StoresOnline that you would like to share, please do let me know. You can leave a comment on this blog post or send me an email to the usual address.

By the way, don’t forget to check out the forthcoming seminar in Coventry – more details can be found here:

http://www.bizoppsblog.com/125/recommended-robert-puddys-coventry-seminar/

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!