Greetings fellow entrepreneurs,
How much time and money have you spent trying to make money online? If you're like me, it is far too much for the poor results at the end of the day. I have only recently started to have success in my business endeavors after years of trial and error. My goal in this article is to share some of my experiences and hopefully help anyone out who is serious about trying to make money on the internet or other non-traditional sources of income.
First off, let me tell you that MLM (multi-level-marketing) schemes are darn near impossible. This is also known as Network Marketing Only a handful of people out of a hundred will even recoup their initial investment and far less will become "diamond" level sellers, or whatever fancy title they give to top level earners. Unless you are a master salesman and a very very outgoing person, you will probably fail and lose some friends in the process. In my opinion, MLM business models usually end up making you look foolish for telling your friends and family how rich your going to get, and then end up not making a dime. I have tried three of them; Monavie, Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing, and Life Force International, all with little or no success. Actually, with zero success. I was left with empty pockets and a broken spirit. After these, I then tried going online to make money.
When trying to start an online business, you must keep in mind that millions of others are trying to do the same, and more importantly, that people know this, and will try to scam you and all the others in your quests for financial freedom. There are so many products out there guaranteeing you success that it's disgusting. You must be a hard-nosed skeptic when trying to decide what is best for you. Do not jump into anything until you weigh several different options and make sure you have a good idea of what you are getting into before you make the leap. All of the products out there will have a millionaire mastermind behind it and will claim that it alone has the secrets you need to be successful. Some will claim to be fully automated, foolproof, or incredibly easy but we all know that can't be true. And it isn't. All of them will have testimonials of people who made it work and screen shots of accounts showing how much money somebody makes. Those testimonials are required by law to be accurate and so are the earnings snapshots, so people really have made it work and really do earn as much as they say using the system. But like the MLM schemes, only a handful of people who try it will become a success story. I believe that if you search long enough and are picky, you will find a system that will work for you. A good way to tell if the opportunity is even worth considering is if they have links for a privacy policy, an earnings disclaimer, and a contact page. If just one of these is missing, it's probably a good idea to move on. Another good way of sizing up a product is to listen to the testimonials. If they are the success stories speaking for the product, they better be doing very well, right? If some guy has been using it for a few months and has only made a few hundred dollars, it is probably not that great. These products are a dime a dozen so you must also be careful when you decide to buy. Many times if you exit out of the page, they will offer you a "special discount" if you stay on the current page. Always try exiting to see if you can get it cheaper. I wouldn't recommend spending more than $100 for such things because many contain almost identical information and you can afford to shop around for what seems best for your current situation. When you do decide to purchase a guide from somebody, the best advice I can give is to go all out. You must completely buy in and truly believe you will succeed, and this alone will boost your chances significantly. Make sure to read everything before you start so you can have a clear picture in your head of what you will be doing and you will know what potential costs might be involved. Be patient, those people who make a thousand dollars their first day are one in a million.
Many of these products are simply regurgitated formulas developed by someone who became rich using those techniques. They come in the form of ebooks and software usually. The vast majority of them teach the same basic principles and slightly different strategies to reach your goal. The formula usually goes something like this:
1)Create a website to sell products or become a power seller on ebay
2)Market your website (advertise)
3)Watch the money roll in
Sounds easy right? Wrong. Creating a professional looking website can be very difficult and expensive if you don't know what you're doing and they often require a lot of babysitting to maintain. Selling on ebay is hard to make profitable without selling hundreds of products and also requires babysitting. Advertising is probably the biggest hurdle anyone faces when trying to get traffic to a website. You have to remember that when you try to advertise online, there is loads of competition and you will be going up against pros who have been doing this for a long time. A google adwords campaign with a small budget won't get you very far. Try to find as many free ways to advertise and don't just advertise on one search engine either, use as many as you can. The money rarely just rolls in without a continued effort so don't think you will just set up one site and then you're done. All that being said, I do believe that this is the way to go for most, especially beginners, and there is some very valuable guides out there to selling on ebay, selling on your own website, or selling downloadable products using clickbank. Becoming a clickbank affiliate is my personal favorite way to make money online so far and has been my most successful endeavor. I will probably be trying ebay at some point and I am currently in the process of building my own website using dropshippers. Dropshippers eliminate the need to have inventory or buy in bulk, and they ship their products directly to the customer without you having to do anything. Even returns and complaints are handled by the product manufacturers and not you. One guide that I find to be pretty good at showing you how to do some of these things can be found here:
http://bruzzese1.webs.com/index.htm and it is only $20. There are 5 ebooks which can be downloaded immediately for you to save to your computer. These are just a few of the things I've come across and there are literally thousands of other strategies out there that have nothing to do with what I have mentioned, but I am not adventurous enough to dive into them until I do more research.
Another path that I have traveled is using automated robots to trade on the FOREX market. FOREX is an exchange that trades currency instead of stocks or bonds, and many trillions of dollars are traded each year. This can be highly lucrative but the majority of new investors end up losing all of their initial investment. I started a small time account of $1500 and bought a bunch of robots that were supposed to make good trades automatically. However, the bots can be difficult to set up correctly, which happened to me, and I ended up losing everything. FOREX trading can be very confusing and is very risky, but if you have the stomach for it, have more to invest than I did, and you can set up the bots correctly, I believe that it can work for you. This is a potentially good option if you are familiar with trading in general and have a lot of money for an initial investment.
The last thing I would like to talk about is hiring a professional service to coach you personally on a certain subject. This can be extremely useful, especially when learning to advertise online, because you will be getting great advice at every step of the way and you will always be able to talk to someone when you have a question or trouble of some kind. They will probably do at least some of the work for you and they will have a clear picture of your success, if even if you don't. This can be very expensive so don't sign any contract unless you know exactly what services you will be getting and at what price. Depending on what you want, the price for something like this can be anywhere from $100-$200 all the way up to $10k+. I am currently using a service like this to set up my website and it cost me $2000, which includes 6 months personal coaching and a website that was practically already set up for me. I only had to choose products to sell and pick a business name. Again, advertising proved to be most difficult on a reasonable budget but I now feel pretty confident that I could advertise the next website I create on my own and do a good job. If you are dead serious about getting things up and running and you can afford it, these services are invaluable.
Well, that's just about all I have to say for now and I hope that when I write the next article, I will be well on my way to being a millionaire. Remember that you CAN succeed, just be patient and think as positively as you can. I believe in you.
I am a 22 year old recent college grad starting my own company online because I cannot find enough traditional work. I have a degree in biochemistry from a university and I have been turned down from about 100 jobs or so since graduating. Everything from dishwashing to forensics. Ridiculous, is it not?
