I get a lot of email from people who claim to have found some sort of magic, money making secret code. They always make the same approach and offer the same promise. They will give me a free copy of their amazing income generating system plus a referral fee for any customers I send their way if I write a positive review.

Of course, I’m not alone in being approached by these pan handling idiots. If you’ve ever wondered why so many bloggers, many who have thousands and thousand of gullible readers, review so many get rich schemes now you know why. Because they are offered the products for free and given money in return for sending those gullible readers into the waiting arms of the con artists and their one typographically challenged one page sales letters.

A fool and his money are soon parted and many bloggers exploit this unfortunate truth with sickening ease. They simply write a review claiming that they have made piles of cash with minimal work using the latest version of the Atomic Brute Force Blogging Mastermind System and then sit back and watch the aforementioned fools walk right into the trap.

Today, despite being a holiday, was an interesting day. An interesting evening to be more precise. I checked my email and found what I consider to be a genuine message from a genuine person. A genuine person who, like many before him, tells me that he has developed a money making system that works. A system that, in his words, is scalable, sustainable and can be implemented in under four hours a week.

Four hours a week. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

I’ve always believed that their are two ways to make money with a blog. Honestly and dishonestly. The honest approach takes more work, requires integrity, but is far more rewarding, both personally and financially, in the long run. The dishonest approach requires a silver tongue and the shear nerve of a crook.

The honest path will carry it’s own rewards. The dishonest path carries it’s own risks.

Clearly, if you are blogging for any other reason than to simply make money the honest path is the only realistic game in town.

Honest blogging can still make you rich. My 30 day blogging course shows anyone how to make money with their blog in a totally ethical way. No tricks, no cheating, just intelligent techniques that get results.

However, the realist in me accepts that the fine line between blogging with integrity and ruthless money making can, at times, be very fine indeed.

And this brings me back to the email that sits before me right now. I’ll be blunt and get to the point. It’s a system that I believe would work. More than that, it’s a unique system since it harnesses a loophole that I have never seen before.

I am not convinced that it’s use is absolutely ethical. But, given the nature of the system and the way it generates traffic, I am confident that anyone could use it without appearing to be in any way dishonest. For instance, if other legitimate blogs and Twitter accounts started to link to your blog no one would suspect that you were using any sort of trickery or foul play. Especially if those linking blogs and Twitter accounts were clearly not automated in any way.

The system takes some aspects of syndicate marketing, cleans them up a lot and applies them to both Twitter and the blogging. It is perfectly legal but, from my point of view, cheating. It won’t get anyone banned but it isn’t what I, or anyone I know, would call totally honest.

Importantly, it is a million miles away from the dishonest smash and grab techniques that litter the pro blogging corner of the internet.

Even though I believe the author of this system to be genuine, he has not offered me any sort of incentive nor does an affiliate system exist for his product, there is no getting away from the fact that cheating is cheating, whichever way you slice it and however mild it is.

Question is, what would you do if you were told that you could increase your traffic substantially every day working just four hours a week?

If you knew the system was legal, possibly unethical but would be seen as cheating by most people with any understanding of social media or blogging, would you use it?

That is a question that only you can answer. The question that I must wrestle with is whether or not to test the system and review it for myself, linking to it if it turns out to be as clever as it appears to be.

Your thoughts on this matter are very much appreciated.