According to US Securities and Exchange Commission internet is an extremely easy place to promote a scam. The internet allows people to reach a large populace with a very small amount of money. "Anyone can reach tens of thousands of people by building an Internet web site, posting a message on an online bulletin board, entering a discussion in a live "chat" room, or sending mass e-mails."

It's extremely hard to spot fraudulent opportunities from real ones and you can end up losing a large sum of money.

Message boards are an extremely easy way to post a scam. All you need is an alias. The scamster simply creates a post under a false name. He then starts creating a thread. For instance, "Has any one heard of xyz company, I heard they offer a great opportunity." A bit later, he'll follow up with something like this. "Yes, I heard of them. I've only been an associate for a month and have already made $2,000 dollars."

He'll keep on creating threads with different aliases to create false credibility.

When people market their business, they pay little attention to their competition. However, they can learn a lot from them. Your competition plays a large role in your business and in your marketing efforts, so don't ignore them.

There is an old saying, "Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer". In this case, your enemy is your competition. You shouldn't look at your competition as an enemy, but, as a guide or a valuable tool.

Your competition can be an asset to your business. I want you to think about this for a minute, your competition is like having a one stop shopping center, they have it all. Let me give you an example, take a look at your fearsome indirect competition, they have it all. They may have targeted an area of market that you've missed, on web that's not hard to do.

Who Are Their Link Partners

One day when I was analyzing my competition I immediatley noticed something about their link partners, a lot of them were different, but some were same. Let me give you an example, if you were to take three of your competitors, you may only find a few of them with same link partners, other than that, a large portion of your competition's link partners will be different.

Once you've found out who your competitor's link partners are, persuade them to link to you. By getting your competition's link partners to link to you, it will take some of your competition's traffic away and give it to you, bringing targeted traffic to your web site.