Can You Make An Honest Buck On The Internet?
By Bill Knell
Each day my e-mail box is filled with people begging me to try this internet money
making system or that. So it's been since the late 1990s. I'll bet you receive them as
well. Although I have never tried any of these systems, I have come across many
people who have. What they have to say is troubling and should be a warning to those
who might decide to try.
Although the emails we receive would have you believe that each system is new and
different, there are basically three types of internet money making deals offered:
Auctions, Multi-level Marketing and Resales.
There are thousands of books, ebooks and electronic content sites for sale about
making money on Ebay. Most of these sources tell you where to find inexpensive
imports and other wholesale items that you can buy cheap, then sell on Ebay for a
profit. At one time that might have been a great idea, but today you have ten thousand
people trying to sell the same imported Winnie The Pooh phone for the same
price at the same time.
Each seller is likely to be lured into paying extremely high Ebay Fees to try and get their
particular item out in front of buyers. Most people that buy stuff just to sell on Ebay either
end up breaking even or owing Ebay a huge amount of money in upgrade fees. It's a trade off,
either pay the premium listing fees to get your item noticed, or risk not selling it at all.
Purchasing any of the ebooks that promise to make you a fortune on Ebay will probably
just make the ebook seller rich and lead you down an expensive path that is unlikely to
produce any profits. Before you sell on Ebay, ask yourself if what you're selling is a
desired item and if the auction service is the best way to market it. Buying things just to
sell on Ebay doesn't seem to work for the vast majority of people.
If you've got household items that are no longer needed or wanted, a garage or
apartment sale would probably be a more profitable way to clean out the attic. Ebay
works better for people with unique or much desired items that can be offered at a
competitive price. These include collectibles, antiques, original gifts and valuable art.
Sellers with such items can test market on Ebay by placing one or two things up for
sale, without paying premium listing fees. If the items move and you're satisfied with
the profit verses the fees, then keep at it. If not, drop it.
MLMs, or multi-level marketing plans, make up the bulk of what I receive in the
category of `get rich quick' email offers. No matter what they say, promise or claim,
most MLMs are merely reworked pyramid schemes. Many have learned to operate just
enough inside the law to keep the originators out of jail, but that doesn't mean they
still can't cost you money or get you in trouble.
Aside from the cost of participation which you are unlikely to recoup unless you`re
at the top of the pyramid, most MLMs require you to email huge numbers of people.
Even though these programs promise to show you how to use safe lists (people who
want to receive email from those offering internet money making ideas), email
marketing is always a bad idea. Not only does it tend to annoy people, but you are
likely to find that those `safe lists' still contain the email addresses of people that don't
want to receive marketing offers. Then you're involved in sending spam (unwanted and
uninvited email). This can result in complaints to your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
Since most people who get involved with MLMs are individuals, not companies, they are
likely to be connected to the internet with a non-commercial type ISP deal. What the
MLM programs don't tell you is that people connected by non-commercial deals often
get cancelled by their ISP, once the service sees that they are sending huge amounts of
outgoing email. ISPs dislike being caught up in email or scam investigations and consider
such cancellations a pre-emptive strike.
You can lose a lot more then just your ISP! If you use PayPal, for example, to collect
money for the MLM you're participating in, you are likely to have your account frozen
and later cancelled, with all the money refunded. In fact, PayPal recently stopped
allowing people to accept payments for MLM programs through their service.
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