Andy owns a new website we found that accepts guest post.

Same as most scammers he tried to get paid by bank directly which I obviously refused as such payment can’t be disputed.

Not that Paypal disputes have much meaning as Paypal stopped protecting buyers of digital services years ago without solid proof.

How to deliver solid proof if the site owner can change it in a minute?

I can’t and as such lose disputes over and over and those scammers are well aware of that.

His Scam Explained

He runs a double category system, one for his main posts, one for his guest posts.

After I complained he instantly put it in the right category and made it show up on the homepage simply to “proof” all was correct only to change it as soon as he would be paid. Obviously I did not pay.

Have a look yourself how similar those categories are.

These are his real (non-orphaned categories) on the right.

And here are the fake/orphaned guest post categories:

• https://andysto.com/category/destinations/
• https://andysto.com/category/remote-working/

These are the real ones:

• https://andysto.com/destinations-for-digital-nomads/
• https://andysto.com/remote-work/

Makes you question why he would have such similar categories and there is only one reasonable answer.

To hide the paid posts from Google so that his website can’t be penalized by Google because as far as they are concerned those posts don’t exist.

Scammers Always Fight Back

No scammer will ever admit he tried to scam you, instead they always counter attack.

Andy undid his scam and presented it as evidence claiming the post would be on the homepage for five months which is a pure lie.

Our post was not on the homepage till the moment I called out his scam.

He even changed the orphaned category: https://andysto.com/category/destinations/, and populated it with posts from the real category, (https://andysto.com/destinations-for-digital-nomads/), essentially burying every paid post entirely.

Turning it into two identical categories (look at the browser bar to see the URL’s):

No one runs identical categories as it’s a bad SEO practice.

Only scammers do.

So they can hide your post from the loop and escape Googles wrath.

This fool even accused me of delivering guest posts to clients and fabricating scam stories not to pay the site owners.

Funny, if that was the case we wouldn’t be in business for 14 years and I would lose all my clients within weeks.