Making money online isn’t confined to legitimate businesses that sell and market products and services using websites, social networks, blogs and email initiatives. 

Following the horrific events last week in Connecticut, a number of scammers have gone into high gear in their attempts to fleece a saddened and generous public.

The good folks over at the site Notb4Coffee have laid out a pretty good description of the activities of these scammers, and you might want to take a look at the laundry list of techniques.

Of course, the popularity of social networking has prompted malicious folks to set up faux pages in memory of many of the kids shot, in hopes of collecting “memorial donations” for their families and community.

Legit business can take a lesson from these scammers. The action of “liking” a page has benefits these folks are attempting to cash in on. Take this explanation from Technorati’s Shea Wong:

“Every time you like and share one of these images, the algorithm in the social media platform you are using assigns that image a level of importance – the more people who like and share, the higher importance that image has. That explains why sometimes you see the same image three or four times on your news feed. When people ‘like’ the page that created the meme (usually a name like “All The Newtown Babies Are Now Angels”), that page also rises through the algorithm rankings. The creator of the page then sells the page wholesale to the highest bidder in online marketer forums. The name of the page is changed (usually to a cheap product page) and your facebook feed gets flooded with sales spam.”

Tags: massacre, online, Sandy Hook, scams