I've Tried That - We lose money so you don't have to!

Almost three years ago when we started this blog, our main focus was fake job announcements. You know the kind—ads posted online that pretended to be jobs, but were actually sales pages.

When you responded to the ad, you were told to pay money up front for a “membership” or for “training” or special software or whatever. Our mantra, never pay for a job, started back then.

The scammers and their tactics have only changed slightly. They still pretend to be offering you a job when what they really want is to sell you crap, but now, big names in cyberspace are fighting back. Google cracked down on scammy ads; the FTC is pressing charges. The good guys have won some victories.

Craigslist is one of the good guys. Our e-book teaches you how to find legitimate jobs through Craigslist while avoiding the scams, and now, Craigslist is helping fight the bad guys. If you go to a Craigslist site and click the Jobs heading to browse the job listings, you’ll see this warning:

SCAM ALERT – affiliate scammers are posting bogus ads promising (nonexistent!) employment, paid research trials, or other compensation, but then notifying repliers that they’ll need to jump through a hoop first…all in hopes of earning affiliate marketing commissions or otherwise profiting at the expense of persons seeking employment.

The warning then goes on to list some of the tactics we have been warning about from the beginning. Again, we have nothing against affiliate marketing. But we draw the line at deceptive practices that pretend to offer you a job while taking your money on the sly.

This is excellent news. It means that, FINALLY, one of the big ad listing sites is taking another step toward responsibility for the crap posted on its pages. If Monster and Yahoo and other sites would follow suit, we would have fewer victim stories.