4. Write an excellent article review of their web site, products or services. Then publish review on your web site. E-mail web site owner and tell him or her about it. They may link to your web site so their visitors read it.

5. Ask owner of web site if they would want to trade advertising. If you don't get as much traffic as they do, you could throw in some extra incentives.

6. Propose a cross promotion deal with web site. You both could promote each others products or services together in one package deal. This means a mention and link back to your web site.

7. Give web site a testimonial for their product or service. Include a little text link for your web site with testimonial. You never know; it could end up on their ad copy.

8. Post your advertisement on their free classified ad section on their web site. You want to be sure you have an attractive headline so they will read your ad.

9. Sign their guest book. You could leave a short compliment about their web site on their guest book. Just include your signature file and link at end of your message.

10. Tweak your own website so that your pages are search engine friendly. There are steps that you can take that don't take long to implement but can dramatically improve traffic you get from likes of Google and Yahoo! Louis Allport has a great video guide which shows quickest and easiest way to do this. It can be found at: http://69.44.170.93/google-friendly-ebook-software.htm

Chris Towland 2005

Some lottery schemes work on same principle and ask you for tax on winnings before you can get paid your lump sum – basically another variation of same 419 scam. Even though these people are dangerous criminals, there are some victims who have met them face to face and have been kidnapped for ransom, tortured or even murdered. Never agree to meet anyone over internet and be very wary of this type of fraud.

Despite obvious dangers it would appear that many internet users are fighting back. Several websites designed to fight scammers are now hitting these criminals hard by wasting their time, replying to their emails and spinning them along into uncessary expense and confusion. This is a kind of reverse 419 scam but not for financial reward. This type of activity is not for faint hearted and not something we would recommend for any inexperienced internet user.

In 2003 a Nigerian diplomat in Prague was shot by a 72 year old Czech in revenge for fact that he had lost his life savings in an oil investment 419 scam. Nigerian banks and corporate business has been hampered severely by Nigeria’s bad reputation to extent that many foreign companies no longer accept orders or trade with Nigeria as a result.

Once on internet it is amazing to find how easily you have won a car, lottery or have found confidence of a complete stranger other side of world who wants to give you millions of dollars. Or, how about that fantastic little program that you downloaded that lets you watch free porn all day long, what was it called? Porn dialler. The happiness is short lived after you receive your first telephone bill.

If you receive strange emails ‘out of blue’ that contain offers just too good to be true, fact is – they are just that – too good to be true. Delete them and move on.

Source: http://www.birminghamuk.com