There is a spate of burglaries going around in the mother city.
Especially University Estate in Upper Woodstock is feeling the heat. Cars towed off at night, maids held hostage and electronics stolen to be sold on the black market.
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A resident in Fryde Street reports that his car, which he parked in the road, was broken into, rolled down the street and loaded onto a towing truck. He can report back on the exact happenings because his security cameras taped everything.
Another resident living in Fryde Street was more lucky. Her car has central locking, which the thiefs were not able to crack. However, she herself was not able to open her car and had to get a pricely fix. At least this resident remains with a car.

Residents in University Estate are also smart to get home content insurance at this crime stricken time.
Last Wednesday, on October 12th a group of three African (Xhosa speaking) men in a black panel van, burgled three houses in University Estate. One house located in Baris Road and the other two in Gerrick Street.

The three men used blunt, crude force, de-railing and lifting gates and crow-baring front gates, security gates and front doors. One of the affected properties had multiple dogs on the grounds, an electric fence, security entrance gate, a Magnadoor, as well as a solid wood front door. The burglars managed to distract the dogs, without harming them. They then smashed three doors and managed to get away with a laptop, sound system and multiple other electronic equipment.

Another house hit in the area had a maid working on the premises at the time of the incident.
The owner reports: They didn't expect my maid at the house, because she had not opened the curtains. The lifted and de-railed my gate and got into the house. They surprised the maid and put something over her head. They then told her to lie on the floor and hit her head with something hard.
A neighbor saw the burglars walking around the house with a microwave and called the police.

This resident had only moved into the rental properties two months ago and newly furnished the entire house. The thiefs managed to get away with tens-of thousands of Rand in electronic ware. Luckily this particular resident managed to conclude her household insurance before the incident.

Another house down the road was burgled on the same day.

Residents of the affected Baris Road house report that they have observed multiple black man scoping out their and adjacent grounds on Monday of the same week.

The stricken maid of Gerrick Road reports to have seen the face of one of the man clearly and will be able to identify the group once they get caught - that is of course, IF they ever get caught.



Police presence in the area has notably increased, but police also told the residents that the burglaries had been occurring in the area for quite a while and that the criminals move from area to area and are unlikely to come back.

Never the less, residents are worried and those not affected are counting the hours till the thiefs also hit them.

Reassuringly, the men mostly hit during the day when people are at work and don't seem to intend to harm anybody. 

 

Making money online

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Working from home and making money online as a sole income is not as easy as it sounds, but it is possible. I am not saying that you'll become the next Mark Zuckerberg or Andrew Mason and will earn millions. But you can supplement your income or even get your sole income by working online.

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We have touched on making money online in the blog article about paid online writing jobs.
There are literally thousands of online writing jobs out there. The most legitimate sites to work for are Elance and Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Payment is guaranteed, however if you work any of the jobs on Mechanical Turk, unless you live in the USA or India, you will not be able to get paid out into your bank account. Workers from countries other than the USA and India can only convert the money they make into an Amazon.com gift certificate.

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Another way of making money online is to start up your own group buying website a la Groupon. Consider though, that you will need to go out and get deals and if the site is not going to be just a small  Groupon-clone, you'll most likely have to employ sales personnel and spend money on advertising.

If you live in a country where the group buying industry is not yet established you will do well in starting such a site a.s.a.p. Who knows, at a later stage Groupon might even buy you for a few million.
But hurry, Groupon spreads like a virus and who knows when it infects you.

In South Africa for example, group buying has only become popular during the later half of 2010. Sites who were preparing to go online late 2010 / early 2011 had already come to late. Little did they know that small local group buying site Twangoo had approached Groupon for a buyout and cut a deal for a few million Rand. Groupon hit South Africa in early 2011 and right away many other group buying websites started emerging. Entering the market with no budget, after Groupon and with a few other major players already established, makes no sense. The main players in the market are backed by big media houses and multimillion Rand companies, who have the money to advertise on TV and radio stations.

There are other more subtle ways to make money online, like joining Leapforce and becoming a qualified-at home independent agent. They offer jobs like Search Engine Evaluation, available in different languages like English, German and French.

If you want to play it on the morally rather shady side, consider entering into the sex trade. Even during the recession the industry was still booming. There are many options, that offer a lucrative income - running an adult dating website, an escort service or a porn website.

Whichever way you decide to earn your income online, be aware of scammers like PaidOnlineWritingJobs.com who require you to make a payment before you can start working. There are many free sites that allow you to start working and earning money immediately.

Be prepared to invest a lot of time and hard work before you will start earning your sole salary online.

 

Beware! - www.PaidOnlineWritingJobs.com a Scam.

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What's the best job you can imagine doing?
For most people it would be doing the absolute minimum and getting paid big bucks while doing so.
People flock to Google, searching for "make cash online", "make money from home", "get instant cash", and many more similar keyword phrases. If you have ever thought about getting into the online writing business, would have likely gotten many hits on Google. Such jobs are writing blog posts, SEO articles, re-writing of articles, proof reading and so on. The top featured websites on Google promise you that you can earn your entire income online.

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One of such websites is PaidOnlineWritingJobs. They tell you that their website has a database of thousands of online writing jobs that can be started immediately, and you can start earning money right away. On the homepage you’ll find a big button that says "Click here to search jobs".

Sounds all really good, of course you assume you can just search for a job and write away and the cash will come pouring in.

Oh yes, but once you click on the SEARCH button you'll be asked whether you are a member yet. Of course, you’ll click - NO.
Next you would expect a sign-up page to pop open, but instead you are presented with the latest available writing jobs from their database. Naturally you are going to spend a few minutes browsing to figure out which of the jobs is best suited for you and your set of skills.

When clicking on CLICK TO APPLY, you are asked to either sign in if you are already a member or provide your details below - next hit APPLY NOW.
Easy, isn't it?

Now you can start writing and earn cash, right? - NO!
You will be re-directed yet again and after reading through a whole lot of Bla Bla about how great it is to get paid for online writing jobs, finally get asked to join the site!

All you need to do is pay the 1 Dollar Administration fee and you can join PaidOnlineWritingJobs’ three-day fast track training program.
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The training normally costs 49.95 Dollars and after your three-day training you even have the option to become a life-time member of PaidOnlineWritingJobs for 77 Dollars.

You have the option to pay the 49.95 Dollars once off or pay just 1 Dollar and pay for the rest with the cash you’ll receive for your first online writing job.

Once you pay the 1 Dollar to get started with the training, while in the payment screen a future payment of 77 Dollars gets reserved on your credit card.

If you went through these steps you are now a member and start your three-day training program on the following day. Each day you can only see the info for the specific training day you are on.
On day two you’ll receive your first online writing job, which will pay for the rest of your training if you have chosen to pay only 1 Dollar at signing up.
While on the training, you are also supplied with apparent insight information and plenty of PDFs to read about online writing jobs. Trying to open the actual PDFs will take you to a site that doesn't exist.
Throughout the entire training program you are being prepared for Day 4, when you'll finally have access to the database with thousands of online writing jobs.

When training is finally completed, you will be disappointed to find out that all the jobs on THEIR apparently enormously big database are actually linking to Elance. After completing the training program and writing two SEO articles for PaidOnlineWritingJobs, you will also discover that your bank account has been debited with 77+1 Dollar.

Ultimately you’ll have paid 78 Dollars to be told stuff you already know and to be linked to Elance, which you can access for free by simply going to www.elance.com.
How frustrating it is to realize that you have fallen prey to a scam by PaidOnlineWritingJobs.

But, luckily their website has a 100% money back guarantee advertised, thus all you’ll need to do is open a support ticket and ask for your money back. Of course there is no contact number or address, but you can send an email.

Disappointingly, a canned reply from “Amy” will have to suffice. And responding with bad language will lead to a Mail Delivery failure. Bothering PaidOnlineWritingJobs too often by opening one support ticket after the other will lead to exclusion from the use of their support system.

In conclusion, avoid PaidOnlineWritingJobs.com, it's a scam that will even catch out online-savvy people. It’s easy to think to yourself that 1 Dollar is such little money that it won't hurt trying it out. Unfortunately you do not realize that the 77 Dollars are reserved on your credit card for later debit. And you will certainly not get your money back within the money back guarantee promised on their website.

If you really want to earn some extra cash working online from home, try out Elance or Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Those websites are free and offer genuine paid online writing jobs. They can be accessed from anywhere in the world and pay real money. There is no such thing as a quick buck – unless you are highly skilled or put in a lot of time and work.