Basic Truths About Working At Home Online
What Do I Know About this subject?
For two years I sat at my computer every day and tried to start an online business. Here are some of the basic truths I learned about online businesses.
What Kind of Online Business Do You Want?
Let’s have a look at what kind of online businesses there are. I will talk about five types of internet businesses, three of which I recommend and the other two I have doubts about.
A. THE TYPES OF BUSINESSES I RECOMMEND
1. Selling Good or Services
Many people have made a respectable living on the internet by selling goods such as clothing, groceries, books etc. Others have successfully sold services such as job directories, writing services and training courses in fields as diverse as udon noodle making to university degrees. These businesses do not differ much from those down your main street except that you can see their wares displayed on their websites.
2. Selling Someone Else’s Goods and Services For A Commission.
On the internet this is usually known as Affiliate Marketing. In this situation you find a business that is already running successfully, and you advertise and sell their product in any way that you can. When you make a sale, you receive a percentage of the proceeds as a commission – often as much as 75% or even more.
You can find affiliate programs that will suit you by googling ‘affiliate programs’ into your browser, or going to sites such as AffiliateSeeking.com or Clickbank.
3. Taking Surveys
There are a lot of programs on the internet that offer money for taking surveys or for testing a product and writing an appraisal of it. These are usually not big money earners, but can provide good pocket money.
I have only had one problem with these programs. I am retired and don’t belong to the right demographic group. It seems that there are very few companies that are interested in feedback from retired people!
B. THE TYPES OF BUSINESSES I HAVE DOUBTS ABOUT.
1. Multi Level Marketing (MLM)
This is one of the main types of business offered on the internet, and in the real world too. It is basically a system of selling in which you sign up other people to assist you, and they, in turn, recruit others to help them. Any income earned from recruiting or from sales of the product is divided between the “levels” of agents that have been recruited.
However, there are many multi-level distributorship schemes that are nothing more than sophisticated chain letters, which we have probably all received and delegated to the “trash” file. They operate as a “pyramid,” claiming participants can earn lots of money by concentrating most, if not all, of their efforts on recruiting distributors rather than selling a product.
“Multi-level marketing is system of marketing which puts more emphasis upon the recruiting of distributors than on the selling of products. As such, it is intrinsically flawed. MLM is very attractive, however, because it sells hope and appears to be outside the mainstream of business as usual. It promises wealth and independence to all. Unfortunately, no matter what the product, MLM is doomed to produce more failures than successes. For every MLM distributor who makes a decent living or even a decent supplemental income, there are at least ten who do little more than buy products and promotional materials, costing them much more than they will ever earn as an MLM agent. The most successful MLM scheme is Amway. It has millions of distributors worldwide with sales in the billions. At the turn of the century, the average Amway distributor earned about $700 a year in sales, but spent about $1,000 a year on Amway products. Distributors also have other expenses related to the business, e.g., telephone, gas, motivational meetings, and publicity material” Check out the full article at: http://skepdic.com/mlm.html. Also have a look at my blog: Doubts About Internet Marketing! – http://raym82.blogspot.com/ – As you can see, I am not recommending this type of “business”.
2. Selling Websites
By this I mean those programs in which you pay a fee to be given a website, and your business is to get other people to link on to your website and pay a fee to get a website of their own. They then do the same thing and try and get people to their website to pay a fee . . . and so on!
Both of these are capable of bringing in an income of sorts, but you have to be an exceptional salesperson to make MLM work.
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