The cost of living is rising daily almost all over the world. Thus, both parents ought to go for a job. However it becomes difficult to spend time with their children. Work at home aids those who want to stay at home to look after their youngsters and also want to stabilise their financial position

Your friends or neighbours who might already work from home, could give you some ideas. Another way is to check your local newspapers for some home based job opportunities, as well do not forget to use the internet. There are many proven ideas available on the internet, all it requires is a little effort on your behalf to research for them.

However before selecting any idea, ensure that it actually suit you. This is because any idea that benefits your neighbor or friend may not be suited for you.

There are some books and ebooks available in online that furnish some successful work at home jobs or business ideas. These ideas can aid you in your cash raising projects. The ideas are given to each and every person to suit his or her age and interest. Some books even furnish step by step instructions to get success in a work at home business and job.

Here are some work at home ideas for you to consider:

1. The majority of home based workers acquire their work by asking their friends, relatives or neighbours whether they know some local employers who are searching for home based employees. You could as well approach any local companies, by phone or email to find out whether they use home based workers.

2. While you are searching for a work at home job online, try to get a suitable job in a firm near to you so that you can collect and deliver work easily and can sort out any problems.

3. You can also get recommendations from other work at home employees who have worked and get payment from the company.

4. Before you accept any form of employment, make the time and make the effort to find out if the company is a reliable one. This not only stops you wasting your time, but will ensure you get paid.

If you are looking for a home based business that suits you and your life style, then use some of the following work at home business ideas:

Starting a candle business, decorative gift baskets, wall paintings, fashion jewelry, photography and party rentals, also if your rather handy then you might like to consider a working at home making crafts as an ideal business for you.

Kid’s oriented businesses are on the rise. Arranging children’s parties, running a kid’s day care, and so forth.

There are literarily thousands of work at home jobs that are available to you. But for you to successfully achieve your goals, ensure that you have real passion for your idea. Last not least always make a business plan or you can be sure to fail.

Image courtesy: cmdlpyle2005

Internet is like an ocean where you will find all sorts of culprits like pirates, mafia people and smugglers. A general person, who is new or not aware about it, will get into trouble when they meet these culprits and make connections with them. I mainly focus on revealing those kinds of scams to you all to save your hardly earned money and protect your personal life style from those culprits. That’s why I chose the domain name as “best-internet-guide.com”. In this I will explain about another way of a scam. It is called an automated online money making system.

You might have come a cross websites which says that they have discovered an online money making system which automates all the work you need to do and they promise a six figure (number of figures might be slightly different ) income per month. They say that you will not have to do anything and what you will have to do is just buy their system and install it, have fun with your family and the promised number of figure income will flow. You will see more than 10 testimonials of the people in the website who bought their package with attractive family photos background surrounded by luxury things like big apartments, vehicles, farms, high priced vacation tours, etc. Normally these websites maintain a very attractive and proving tone of language. And the amount you have to pay is always under $ 100. They also say that their system is distributed to others as they want to see all the people around the world are getting rich with their automated system. Some websites show discounted prices for few hours. Some asks for referral codes. By seeing this all, you will believe what they say. But to tell you the truth all of these are not real. I say this due to the reasons explained below.

If these people have actually found a system like this, they will never reveal it to others. What they will do is finding more and more ways to improve it and find more profits.

Let’s assume that these people are thinking in a socialist pattern (They say that they want to see all of us get rich with their system. That is why they distribute it). Then if they have really found this system, they will not sell this system. They will distribute it freely for the sake of other people.

Let’s assume that they have really found the system and they don’t like to freely distribute it. Do you think that they will sell this system to a price less than $ 100, which they promise a six figure income per month? NO. I don’t think so. If they sell it, it will be priced to an amount which will be greater than the Warren Buffet’s assets or may be combined assets of him and Bill Gates .

Most of these online systems they sell are a bunch of newly created websites which falls into different niches. All of those websites are furnished with latest advertising systems and traffic generating systems. To tell you the truth the amount of websites doesn’t make any sense if you are really keen on finding some money on the internet. A one website is enough for that to start with. But you have to work hard with it to make it a high ranked one. You can’t automate all the processes related to the improvement of your website. You have to look after it like a small baby. You have to make right decisions at right time. You have to invest on it. You have to change with the emerging technologies if you want to survive in this field. You might say that the providers of this system also take care about it. But actually if they do that, you will definitely have to pay much more than what they ask to pay for the system.

I hope that the factors I mentioned above will make you to think twice before you buy this kind of an automated online money making system. If I could do that, I think that this post was an important one to you.

Image courtesy: CrystalAnn

Most of our traditional ways of living are being replaced by the internet every day. We do banking, shopping, ticket booking, hotels booking, dating, making friends and many more through the internet which we used to do in the traditional way. With the evolution of the web technology, we have the facility to learn things online, do courses; you can even get a degree online. But similar to all other things done in internet, there are many fake websites pretending that they offer the best online courses and degrees. Many people lose their money by following these fake courses without any knowledge gain from it. I will explain some important facts that you must consider when planning to follow an online degree or course.

Before everything you must find out whether the course material contains the things that you really want to learn. Before making the final decision on the particular website, it is better to find few other websites or institutions offering same material. And you must also find out about the history of that organization. If you simply type the name and do a Google search, you will find some information on that. Sometimes you may find comments of the past students or teachers. This is a very important thing you must do before selecting the particular website.

Don’t always go for the cheaper place. Because there is a great chance that the quality of that website is lower compared to the websites having higher course fees. It is better to go for a medium priced course if you are considering about the cost. Another very important thing is to consider is the way the courses are conducted and what special facilities you require to follow the course are. If it costs more than to follow the same course or degree in the traditional way, there is no point of going for an online course if the traditional course provider is not far away from your place.

You must also consider about the advisory and learning consultation they provide. Otherwise you find it is hard to follow and complete the course even though it is a well reputed one. Most of these online courses and degrees must provide mock exams in the same way that you face the real exam. Check whether those mock exams are available. You must also find out whether you can follow the course in balance with the general daily tasks that you do.

If you are confident with the above mentioned factors, the risk you face will be very less and you will complete the course or degree successfully. I wish you good luck on you future online education!

Image courtesy: mathowie

The seed for this post was an email I received yesterday. I’m a verified PayPal user using a Gmail address for the login user email address in PayPal.com. I haven’t made any transaction through PayPal within last 3 or 4 months. But I received an email to my admin email address of this website (admin@best-internet-guide.com if you are willing to contact me and don’t know my email address :-)), informing me that I have made a payment to a person having a PayPal login email id digishopbay123@macintosh.com and asking to click a link to dispute the transaction. The email I received is given below.

From: service@intl.paypal.com [mailto:service@intl.paypal.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 4:50 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Dispute Transaction

Dear PayPal Member,

This email confirms that you have sent an eBay payment of $47.75 USD to 

digishopbay123@macintosh.com for an eBay item. 

———————————–

Payment Details

———————————–

Amount: $38.75 USD

Transaction ID: KSUGS10992LAKLLX0909

Subject: Pioneer Cd Player 138

Note:

If you haven’t authorized this charge ,click the link below to dispute transaction 

and get full refund

Dispute transaction (Encrypted Link )

*SSL connection:

PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information

in transit from your computer to ours using the Secure 

Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length 

of 128-bits (the highest level commercially available)

———————————–

Item Information

———————————–

eBay User ID: multimediacdplr

—————————————————————-

Michael Rotenberg’s UNCONFIRMED Address

—————————————————————-

Michael Rotenberg

879 Markenson  St. 

76649 Iredell, TX

United States

Important Note: Michael Rotenberg has provided an Unconfirmed Address. If 

you are planning on shipping items to Michael Rotenberg, please check the 

Transaction Details page of this payment to find out whether you will 

be covered by the PayPal Seller Protection Policy. 

—————————————————————-

This payment was sent using your bank account. 

By using your bank account to send money, you just:

- Paid easily and securely

- Sent money faster than writing and mailing paper checks

- Paid instantly — your purchase won’t show up on bills at the end of 

the month. 

Thanks for using your bank account!

—————————————————————-

Thank you for using PayPal!

The PayPal Team

PayPal Email ID PP980

I was confused by hearing that I have made a payment which actually I didn’t. 

I was little curious and felt the scent of another probable scam. 

Therefore I thought to click that link and explore about this. 

The link which was asked to be clicked was having the URL given below.

http://mail.moraga.ca.us/users/manager/www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr.php?

cmd=_flow&SESSION=60-SQEaP_wWvhPmjul-DllC5OkU8dzThCY4mF5LzvZxGdMv

LhBSjCflCmUW&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1f02baca35d810c8ec1c019f6b4e949c

a66922b381ebbdcb08

It starts with http://mail.moraga.ca.us which is not http://www.paypal.com or a sub domain of paypal.com (Ex:http://dispute.paypal.com). My assumption was correct and I thought to explore further. When I clicked that link, I was taken to a webpage which I was stunned to see. It is added below.

It is identical to the real paypal.com home page except the URL. An average person will definitely click that link as he/she hasn’t made that transaction and visit this webpage. And he/she won’t notice that even though the home page is identical but the URL is different. Actually most of us don’t look at the URL of a familiar website. As I mentioned above, my real PayPal email (xxxxx@gmail.com, I will send you my real PayPal email address if you like to make a donation for me ), is not the same one which I received this email. Next part is the most interesting.

I wanted to check the mistakes these dangerous cheaters have done. Therefore I opened the real paypal.com webpage also. First I hit the submit button without entering the user email id or the password. A popup message box appeared as shown below.

Then I checked the same scenario with the real paypal.com website. It took me to another page and showed an error message which was embedded in the webpage (not a message box). The error message shown is given below.

You must enter both your email address and password. Please try again.

Then I hit the submit button only with the user email id. The fake PayPal website showed another error message box as shown below.

When I did that with real paypal.com, it gave the same error message mentioned above. If you noticed, you will find the title of the fake error message boxes have a URL http://mail.moraga.ca.us not something like http://dispute.paypal.com.

Then I added the email address a@a.com and password as 11111, which both are fakes. Surprisingly I was successfully verified and taken into another webpage which asks my credit card details to verify my payment and refund. That page is shown below.

If you don’t provide your real credentials to the real paypal.com, you will not be allowed to proceed further. My assumption was becoming a reality. I didn’t add my credit card details. Then I logged in to the real paypal.com with my real credentials and checked whether there are any pending dispute transactions. I couldn’t find any and I also checked all my transactions. But I couldn’t find any transaction related to that email address. I thought to do some research on this. But it didn’t take a long time as I found some information from the paypal.com site itself. They have mentioned about phishing emails and asked to report about those types of messages to an email address (spoof@paypal.com).

I forwarded the email received explaining everything as mentioned above. They replied me indicating that it is a phishing message. I have added the reply below.

—–Original Message—–
From: spoof@paypal.com [mailto:spoof@paypal.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 6:21 PM
To: Sampath Wijeratne
Subject: RE: Q510 - Thank you for your email to PayPal (KMM95898866V11853L0KM) :kf1

Thanks for taking an active role by reporting suspicious-looking emails.

The email you forwarded to us is a phishing email, and our security team

is working to disable it.

————————-

What is a phishing email?

————————-

Phishing emails attempt to steal your identity and will often ask you to

reveal your password or other personal or financial information. PayPal

will never ask for your password over the phone or in an email and will

always address you by your first and last name.

Take our Fight Phishing Challenge at

https://www.paypal.com/fightphishing to learn 5 things you should know

about phishing. You’ll also see what we’re doing to help fight fraud

every day.

————————-

You’ve made a difference.

————————-

Every email counts. By forwarding a suspicious-looking email to

spoof@paypal.com, you’ve helped keep yourself and others safe from

identity theft.

Thanks,

The PayPal Team

_______________________________________________________________________

This email is sent to you by the contracting entity to your User

Agreement, either PayPal Inc, PayPal Pte. Ltd or PayPal (Europe) S.à

r.l. & Cie, S.C.A. Société en Commandite par Actions, Registered Office:

5th Floor 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg RCS Luxembourg B 118

349.

_______________________________________________________________________

I hope that everything is clear for you now. Millions of PayPal users might have been trapped into this when you are reading this post and they might have lost millions of Dollars. I thought that informing others by posting this post will at least save some of their money. If you don’t believe what I mentioned here, just visit that URL and enter a fake user email address and password. You will experience the same what I experienced. But NEVER add your credit card details. If you think that this will be interesting for your friends, click the topic of this post. Then you will be allowed to tell a friend about this by sending an email. I will come with another interesting topic like this with the next post.

Rank of a website directly shows how important the website is and the frequency of the people who access it. There are many websites dedicated to rank every website in the internet according to various ranking formulas and algorithms. Therefore the rank of a website definitely varies from a ranking organization to another. But there are mainly two organizations to find a reasonable rank value where most of the people around the globe trust. As I promised you in the earlier post, I will explain how to find the rank of your website or another website using these two organizations. It is very important to find the rank of another website when you plan to purchase a good or service (for SEO, to register in paid web directories and to publish press releases).

The first rank I recommend is Google. The Google’s ranking algorithms are so complex and changing time to time. It is the most respected in the Internet as far as I know. There are many websites who shows the Google page rank of a website by asking to enter the URL of the website. But we can’t be 100% sure about their accuracy. My advice is to download the freely available Google toolbar for your web browser (offered for Firefox and IE). After downloading and installing it, restart the web browser. You will find the Google toolbar attached to your web browser as follows.

Now you are ready to find the page rank of any website you prefer. All you have to do is, go to the website you like to find the page rank. After it is fully loaded look at the small horizontal box in the Google toolbar as follows.

If Google has started ranking for the website you accessed, the box will appear activated and if the website has a rank > 0, it will be displayed in green color. When you take your mouse over it, it will show the page rank as a fraction of 10 (Ex. 1/10, 2/10 to 10/10).

Oops! I forgot to tell you about the Google rank range. Google rank starts from zero and ends with 10. If the website has a rank 10, it is the best (I couldn’t find a website ranking 10 up to now.). If the above mentioned box in the Google toolbar is inactive, most probably the website is new. Otherwise it is not publicly listed. You have to e careful when you pay for these kinds of websites. My personal advice is to find a website which has a rank greater than or equal to 5, if you plan to pay for a good or service offered online.

The other most respected ranking organization is alexa.com. It is more informative than the Google toolbar. But the ranking algorithm and criteria is different from Google. The websites having higher ranks in Google also have higher ranks in alexa.com normally. Therefore any respected and trusted website will have similar rankings in Google and alexa.com. Those ranks will not be the same. But both will show higher ranks for trusted and famous websites. Alexa.com shows a graph of website traffic for any website which is among the top 100,000 websites. It also shows the number of visitors from each region/country. And there are many other statistics displayed. With alexa.com, you also have the facility to compare traffic of multiple websites up to 5. This is a very good feature provided there if you are in a situation where you have to make a choice from multiple numbers of websites. I used this technique to find my webhost as I had to make a decision to choose a web hosting company from multiple websites.

If the website you wanted to find the rank shows higher ranks in both Google and alexa.com, you can trust it. I advise you to find traffic details of it using alexa.com ranking as it will show you the recent progress or decline of traffic of that website. Always try to choose a website which has a steady traffic. It is better not to choose new websites for your payments.

Now you know how to find the rank of a website and sometimes you might find the page rank of this website :-). You won’t be able to find a higher rank as this is a new website. But I hope that you will trust me on the future information that I’m going to provide freely. In the next post, I will move back into SEO and I will explain you about the most common SEO abusing methods which will affect your website badly.