In a recent comment I noticed Monika had mentioned a passing curiosity with the world of black hatters, not that she wanted to become one - more along the lines of wondering if there might be some value in knowing what it is that they do. I think this is a natural query for most people and I get asked a lot of questions regarding black hat techniques.

There is something about cheating and short cuts that appeals to people. Everyone wants to get a leg up and in most cases if laws aren’t broken and it isn’t too unethical people will bend the rules a little bit. We all have lines that we won’t cross - usually it’s the point where we may harm someone else or our own conscious starts screaming at us to pull in the reigns.

First off, Black hatters are not spammers - at least not the good ones. Spammers are for the most part beginners who have read just enough to be led astray and not enough to know better. They waste our time and theirs posting crap all over the net and eventually get educated and move on. Unfortunately there are new greenhorns flooding the web everyday to take their place.

Black hatters have one goal in mind. Making money fast. They don’t care about Google, indexing, PR, Alexa ranking or any of the other staples of long term business planning. Most projects are short lived and then they either duplicate it again or move on to another scheme. In fact the term “scheme” is probably the best way to describe their activities.

So what do they do?

Basically they look for and take advantage of weaknesses that have been and still are present on the net. In the past they gamed the search engines - read Google - and with the aid of software they created thousands of sites filled with thousands of pages of keyword rich crap in order to cash in on adsense. It worked like a charm.

Then Google got wise, changed the algorithm and the blackhatters simply changed course and set up real content anchor sites and using software created thousands and thousands of blogs backlinking to the main sites thereby lifting them to the top of the serp’s and once again cashed in on adsense. Once again Google had to change the algorithm.

This pattern has been recurring endlessly and each time Google comes up with a fix the black hatters find a new system. If you think of all the rules imposed by Google - every one of them leads back to something the blackhatters were taking advantage of. The latest Google slap was in response to paid links - something the blackhatters started doing long before PPP and Text-link-ads came on the scene.

So is Google winning? In a sense yes but it is a hollow victory because most of the smart blackhatters quit the adsense game some time ago - a far more lucrative way to make cash showed up in the form of web 2.0.

Lead generation.

Most people have heard the term but aren’t that familiar with it. There are real world companies that pay good money to people who send them leads. Think of credit card companies, lawyers, real estate brokers and travel agencies just to name a few of the better paying businesses.

With the advent of myspace, youtube, facebook and ultimately all the social sites that have sprung up over the past year or so blackhatters have hit paydirt bigtime. They no longer need search engines, in fact they don’t need much of anything at all anymore - just a computer, a few proxy servers and some ip cloakers and away they go. Oh and a few pictures of unbelievably good looking girls.

There is an old joke that men think about sex every 7 seconds and so do women - just substitute shoes for sex in the latter case.

There is truth to this however and blackhatters have been exploiting it for a while now.

It started on myspace, using proxies a blackhatter creates dozens of accounts, posts a picture of a gorgeous woman in his profile and then sets out making friends. Several nanoseconds later every hotblooded male on the site is his/her friend and then the fun begins. The blackhatter simply messages everyone of his new friends about this program or that program and asks for their opinion on the matter. They aren’t dealing with internet marketers here - just John Q Public and with several accounts the blackhatter can solicit thousands of clicks for whatever program they send out.

“Hi John, I recieved this email about a special offer for a free trial of…. I was wondering if you could look it over for me as I don’t understand it.”

Most of these offers pay between $.50 and $5 for everyone you get to sign up for a free or reduced trial. Lawyers and real estate brokers can pay in the $1000’s for leads. It’s easy to see why adsense is of little interest these days.

I recently joined mybloglog and had to laugh as it didn’t take long to spot the blackhatters. The tell tale scantily clad bombshell shows up and joins my community and makes me a contact. I played along and added them and sure enough the messages started - hey could you check this out for me. Delete…

Keep in mind that these are the moron blackhatters - the good ones are far more sophisticated and in most cases will create relationships over a period of time and then slowly and subtly bring up the offers. They take the time to find out stuff about you and then casually bring up possible solutions to your problems.

“hey John, I think I found a good solution to your computer problems - I used this spyware removal tool and it worked great…”

Because of the new internet social scene blackhatters can instantly come in contact with literally millions of potential customers without having to do much work at all. They needed search engine traffic and email addresses to do this in the past - all in all it was a lot of work.

It’s ironic that now they don’t have to work nearly as hard and the customers come to them. Brilliant even if it is scummy. As I said - they are only after one thing - making money fast. Like them or hate them they are always one step ahead of the rest of us.

Grizzly

How to Make Money Online for Beginners

Filed under: Guest Blogging