Make Money Blogging pt2 ( w/ BIG update)

You may be aware that I am the inventor of Whalanol. Whalanol is a blubber-based petroleum additive- 'Google' it and any link you find will eventually lead back to this very blog.
(Before I invented it, whalanol yielded zero hits)
Some sites actually picked it up as a news item , re-wrote it slightly and used it as filler.
Some just flat-out cut and pasted the whole post.

I wonder how often my blog ( and yours, yours and yours...even yours) gets plagiarised and used as 'content' for bogus web-sites?
Offhand, I'd guess this happens all the time.
I just got lucky because 'whalanol' is Google-friendly , which made it easy to find the culprits.

Months ago, at the urging of a blogpal, I sent some posts in as submissions to this site, 'X' , and never heard a word again...just another scam, I figured. Months and months have passed since then...
The emails from site 'X' must've gone into spam limbo, but I recently got a note from Paypal- money from site 'X' had been deposited into my account...payment for an article- which was just a pasted post, really.

So whatta ya get for inventing something that doesn't exist?

Man, I was all trembly with anticipation at opening this email.
Trembly with anxiety.

My first thought was: " It's a good thing my Paypal doesn't link to my main personal bank accounts, because someone has certainly hosed me."

Surprise! Money was placed into my account from 'X'. It seems that they went out-of-business shortly after purchasing three (@ $ 6 ea.) nonsense blogs from me and were closing all their accounts. The stuff they bought was utter shit, which might explain why they don't publish any longer...


Eighteen bucks! Whoo.

Still, it beats Google Ads.

Scam Update: The publisher is still there- I didn't make the minimum pay-out amount. Not sure why they paid me...

That's the scam , see? All these pay-per-click ruses don't pay until you reach a certain amount of revenue- say $25 or so, but almost no one actually reaches that level- and those that do are er, um, totally fucking insane, even by my own extremely lax standard of sanity.
Here's a good one
I got the link from site 'X'.
It's a Ponzi scheme involving junk email. There should be a specific sub-division in the Inferno for the perpetrators of this sort of con.
Check it out- you get $0 .02 USD for every junk email you 'read'. (I'm guessing this means clicking it open, maybe hitting a link)
So- how long could that take? Ten seconds?
OK.
At 10 seconds per junkmail, you can read 6 emails a minute.
That's 12 cents a minute.
Or $7.20 per hour, assuming you can receive and read emails at the given rate for an entire hour without taking a single break at all.
If it works as well as stated, you can earn up to $288 just for spending 40 non-stop hours staring into your monitor and scanning junkmail. You'll need to open 2,640 junkmails a week to make that $288- I don't know how you feel about junk email , but to me 2,640 is an awful lot of junk mail, more than I am emotionally equipped to handle.

2,640 junkmails a week. Imagine what sort of dreams you'd have after reading 2,640 spams.

Madness.

Oh, yeah- you also get referral cash.
Always avoid schemes involving referral cash- it's code for 'pyramid scheme'.
See, you sign up someone, and they sign up two more people and so on- usually there is a 'start-up' fee involved (this is where the actual money comes from) but in this specific link the cash comes from sleazy advertising brokers (spammers) with less than scrupulous clients- those Gift Certificate ! Free Laptop! Take Surveys for $$$ emails - read the fine print.Those things do send themselves, but they don't do it for free.
Someone is paying someone else to send you that spam- and they've got a network of monkeys opening the mail they send mail for 2 cents a pop.
That way, they can point to the 'click-thru' statistics to convince clients that their advertising dollars are well spent- see, they'll say, look at all the traffic you'll get...you will reach your target audience!- especially if your target audience works in an internet-based virtual sweatshop.
Read that fine print.
(Actually, don't read it -opening the mail puts money into the bastard's pockets )
You will find the emails are almost always sent by a second or third party and aren't endorsed by or remotely connected to the product or service offered. It's still legal, but just barely.

Curiously, $288 per week is about average for working at the local McDonalds- and McDonald's will also pay you to refer your friends as new employees.

Curiouser- I just submitted this post to site 'X'- I haven't even blogged it yet- and it was returned as being a duplicate of an article already submitted. I just wrote this!
What gives?
(And yeah, I thought to remove the link- I thought that it was the duplicate...)
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Geekdom Update:

I updated my links using what must be the laziest method yet devised:

I just copied the source code from another blog, cut out the redundant links and pasted the whole mess directly into my template.
Took 40 seconds.
See if you can guess who I ripped off.

I've also learned why I can't switch to Beta- it's because I'm a 'Team Blog'- my West Coast blogpal Susanne sometimes posts here and has access and stuff.
She's been reading my blog for years and I'll be damned if I 'kick her out' just so I can easily add doo-dads to my site.

Some new links added- check them out- and some old ones were removed.
Mostly, this was done because the sites are defunct, notably:

- My Old Pal Jerky has closed up shop at the Daily Dirt, which is a shame. His site was a much better news source than the TV, with the bonus of being really, really funny.
His site was my first bookmark- in fact, I contracted blogging fever as a frequent political conspiracy ranter on Jerky's site, which was sponsored by porn ads- the money from those ads has vanished and now, so has the Daily Dirt...Jerky continues to rock on, though!

-And...eh, why bother? Life's too short.