The world is full of scammers and the internet has certainly brought out the worst of them. As a columnist I have tried several of the online posting sites for some of my non-committed works. In the end, most of these sites are the same; they sometimes enough for coffee money. Having talked with others who started posting on these sites long before me, I knew what to expect, or so I thought.
I got a rude awakening from one site, Neowide. The scammers who own this site really did a number on us contributors. They agreed to pay us for our works, from $1 to $10 per posted item. Obviously, most of the works were tagged with the $1 value, so one needed to post numerous pieces to build up a $50 reserve which was required for payout.
When I reached the $50 payout I received an email telling me that Neowide could not afford to pay me, or any other contributors. However, I was encouraged to sign on with Google Adsense so Neowide could continue to make money from my work through Google…go figure. There is no limit to the lack of conscience that the Newide scammers have. They sent a gutsy email telling me they were stealing my work; then asked me to help them make even more off of that work.
Work with me here. How many of you have received similar emails? More importantly, how many of you are still writing because you have not reached the magic $50 threshold? Stop writing now! You will not receive a dime from Neowide! Those of you who are still writing for Neowide and have not yet been told that you will not be paid are proof that this is nothing more than a scam. Trust me, and many others who have received the “we cannot pay you” emails, you will not be paid!
What can we do? Band together and let Google know what the scammers who run Neowide are doing and that these scammers are trying to use the Google name to do it. Google has a reputation to uphold and it has the money and resources to track down the Neowide scammers. If we let Google know that work accepted from Neowide is work on which copyrights have been infringe, Google will not touch it.
