The Internet is full of opportunities, for example, you are currently on a website where you can get rewarded for reading this and many other posts, and should you wish you can also become an author and get rewarded for writing posts.

But with opportunity, comes risk, because the Internet is also a place where scammers operate, either trying to steal your money or, and sometimes of most value, your data or identity.

So it really comes down to one thing, being able to take advantage of the opportunities, while avoiding the scammers… and that is not as easy as you think.

Since 2012, I must have joined around 200 online money earning opportunities, today I am operating on 63 of them. In some cases, I decided that the income was not worth the effort and left of my own accord, but in other cases I got scammed, a couple of times for money and quite a few times for one of my most valuable assets… my time!

Back in 2012, October to be precise, I was new and naive to the game, I kind of trusted everything and everyone, and that’s when I lost the most money and time. I was unemployed and looking for a fast buck, so I made a search for “earn money online” and, as you can imagine, a lot came back in the results. I used my usual tactic, just looking at the first three pages on the results… and I joined my first site, it was called NeoBux.

At the time, NeoBux was amazing to me… I could click an ad and get paid, then I could click another, and another, and keep going until there was none left. I found out about their referral system, and shared my referral link with family and friends. On top of that, when December came and  a family member asked me what I wanted for Christmas, my response was “an upgrade on NeoBux”, and on Christmas Day that family member kept their promise and I was upgraded, and I was now clicking one cent ads instead of clicking 10 ads to earn one cent.

Yes, I earned money… but reality was if I had paid for that upgrade myself, it would have been no more than a few dollars. I still tick along on NeoBux, it’s not a scam, but it ain’t going to make me or you rich.

Around the same time, I joined ProBux. It seemed much better, you could easily earn $0.05 a day without upgrading… but I chose to upgrade, and shortly after, the admin decided to stop paying and take the money and run… the first time I got scammed. Since then, there have been a few reincarnations of ProBux, I never bothered to find out if they were scams or not.

So, that was my first lesson, and since then there have been plenty more, and unfortunately the scams have got even more sophisticated of late, so it scares me to think that there are people who will be searching “earn money online” today, and will fall victim to even more serious scams then the ones I was stupid enough to fall for.

This is why I want to do all I can to highlight the true opportunities, while ensuring as many people as possible are made aware of the scams that are out there. Part of that is using my website and social media outlets to spread the news, and now being an author on here will add to that. This is a genuine site, I got paid Monday, now I want to help keep the members here safe but pointing them in the right direction and away from the scams, and I hope this is something you can all value and appreciate.

My next post will provide a few simple tips you can put in place to protect yourself from being scammed… please stay tuned!