In my quest to help our members profit online I decided to dredge up this old article from past archives and edit it to fit the times. I originally wrote the following article on August 11, 2005…

Since the majority of businesses we would want to learn about are privately owned and therefore not legally required to disclose information to the public, a large percentage of businesses should be researched before investing too much time and money. That has never been more true than when dealing with online businesses.

Add the anonymity of the internet and we have a huge dilemma. We need to do business online and we are saturated daily by every type of online solicitation conceivable. Each ad boasts being the latest greatest unheard of miracle on the net. Even when we know exactly what we’re looking for how do we keep from being burned?

One thing to keep in mind is just because someone screams the loudest or uses the flashiest graphics doesn’t mean they have the best product or price. But what I’m talking about today is much more deceiving. I’m talking about companies that are likely to take your money and run. Or at the very least sell you an inferior product and welch on their promised support or guarantees.

Shady online companies can do some real damage and cause you a lot of grief and heart ache when it comes to a major purchase. But what about when it comes to a turnkey business or even an affiliate program? Now our risk can compound very quickly. Especially if you wasted a bunch of time and invested your hard earned money promoting it. Now add in the likelihood that you have drawn in other people that may have trusted your judgment and WOW it turns into a real nightmare. Now you are out time, money and your reputation may be seriously damaged. This kind of problem has shut down many well-intensioned and eager online businesses. It has hurt some to such a degree that they’ve given up on doing business altogether.

I don’t mean to bring anyone down by drawing such a dark picture. I only want to stress the importance of doing our research and make the most informed decision possible. I’m not suggesting that we search their trash cans or follow them around for a week but we can spend a couple minutes searching for potential problems.

The fact is that most companies we look at won’t show any results on our searches. This could mean they are just getting started or it might be a sign of some shady activity such as scamming a bunch of people and moving onto the next site. But we won’t know unless we check.

Search It

So what’s first? Well, without spending some money, we have very limited resources. We should try a Google search. We may find a mention on a bulletin board, Blog or forum that can give us hints as to what kind of company we’re dealing with. In fact, I recently Googled the home warranty company that we deal with after we had a big problem and found hundreds of negative items in the search results. If only I taken my own advice ): After all, I did originally write this over three years ago.

Site Registration Check

If the online search looks good but we are still unsure we need to find the true identity of the business in question. It’s not foolproof but we can try a ‘WHOIS’ search at www.DomainTools.com. By typing in the site name, we should be able to see the registration details. We can also sometimes see their postal address and phone number. Keep this information for the next step. This information may be outdated, wrong or even be omitted for a private domain registration. Private domain registrations are available for those sites that wish to conceal their identity and stay anonymous. Personally, I think this information should always be public but they haven’t asked me what I would do yet. I’m sure they’ll get around to asking my opinion soon They can also simply give the wrong information to start with because, after all, who’s checking? Either of these two cases should be a big red flag. Are they hiding something? Or maybe they’re just protecting themselves from scammers and spammers. Unfortunately, spammers, identity thefts, and other scam artists often mine the public WHOIS for contact names and addresses they can use to do us harm. So as you can see, there are no clear answers to such a complicated subject.

Better Business Bureau Search

Now lets say we have a name – so what do we do next? I’d say try a simple Better Business Bureau search. www.bbb.org Here you can search a company free of charge by name, phone number or URL (web address).

Other Resources

There are a few other sites to check if you feel you need to:

• Consumer Reports WebWatch
• RipOffReport.com
• ComplaintsBoard.com
• Complaints.com
• Epinions.com
• ComplaintsBoard.com
• My3Cents.com
• GetSatisfaction.com

There are also plenty of investigation and detective agencies out there. I don’t have any experience with this type of paid service but if you are planning on investing your entire life savings you may want to consider a little professional assistance. Otherwise, all it takes is a little time.

No Phone No Business

I have a hard and fast rule about doing business with any online company or site that provides no phone number. I don’t do any business at all that requires money to be paid. I don’t care if it’s their home or cell phone or a bank of switchboard operators, I require a contact number.

Common Sense

Common sense will help in most cases. Not everything has to be researched. If you received it in a spam message then don’t waste your time. If someone is trying to sell you SEO services and they don’t have any page rank or traffic themselves then why bother looking into anything. If someone is selling traffic, links or blasters then run away.  These posts might help with those:

• Don’t Get Hung-Up On Buying Links
• Buying Traffic Is A Waste Of Time
• Ad Blasters Are Dag-Blasted Junk!

What’s your solution? Do you have another way of protecting yourself from fraud? Click on ‘Comments’ now to share your ideas!

Tags: Helpful Knowledge