Types of Internet Opportunity (What's It All About?)

Types of Internet Opportunity

Here I present to you the main types of "Internet business opportunity" which have been for some time now in the foreground. This is not meant to provide a platform for blanket judgement of such things. I wish merely to transfer some knowledge to those who are about to be ensnared or have already been caught up in some ready-made business venture that they discovered over the net and paid to join.

The main contenders (and there are others that I’ve not mentioned) are:

1. Home Working
2. Multilevel Marketing (MLM)
3. Affiliate Programs
4. Reselling
5. Surfing For Cash
6. Survey Participation

We'll talk about each in the following paragraphs ending with a section on the conclusions.

Home Working

This could be anything. We have all heard of envelope stuffing and we all know how the offers are usually bogus or dishonest. There are Internet home working opportunities too. They offer you something that costs some amount. You part with the money, they send you the something and the something turns out to be nothing. Only gullible and circumstantially vulnerable people will fall for this. Please don't. There are genuine offers of this kind too but they are few so please do all the preliminary checks advised above before parting with money. In general, if you are going to do some kind of work from home, your potential employer should not be asking you for money.

The usual excuses are:

- to cover expenses
- to cover administration costs
- to cover the material being sent and postage costs
- to elevate you position in some pyramid scheme
- to place recruits in your down-line

Almost every opportunity presented on the Internet involves working from home but this is unavoidable because you will be working for yourself and you need a computer so where else can you do it?

Multilevel Marketing, Matrix Selling, Networking, Pyramid Selling

I don't think there are many people in the world who have not come across this in one form or another. However much emotion the above terms conjure up, it is true that Single Level Marketing is quite legal, more often genuine, is used by some of the largest multinational companies and can be an extremely lucrative way to earn honest commission. Let us now explain the difference. Single Level Marketing (SLM) involves only two parties. The company and a recruit. The recruit sells the company's products and on each sale earns a percentage. Finished, end of story. MLM goes further. It says, if the recruit now goes and recruits another person, the company will pay the first recruit commission for all of the second recruit's sales also. So this is now a Second Level Marketing (two-tier) plan. The second recruit may recruit still others and we have a Third Level Marketing scenario. If any opportunity or offer proposes any MLM of any sort greater than the second level, it is most likely bogus and possibly illegal depending on where it is being conducted. Watch out for this, it can be the cause of much heartache and falling-out with friends and relatives because these are the people you are most likely to recruit as your next level and hence the people who are likely to lose out when the MLM collapses. The inevitability of the collapse stems from the fact that eventually, the recruits will dry up. So the people at the very bottom (i.e. the vast majority) will lose and the people at the top (a tiny minority) will gain. In general terms, if you are required to pay to enter a scheme, regardless of whether it is a single or multilevel system, keep well clear.

Chain Letters
Chain letters are a primary example of the type of MLM to avoid not least of all because they are illegal. The instigators will always try to convince you otherwise. It is MLM in its purest and ugliest form. There is often a pretence that a product is being sold (this is supposed to make it legal) and it is usually some kind of useless report on things such as credit cards or mail order sales or a report which itself promotes or perpetuates similar schemes. Do not be fooled by this.

The simplest scenario is a letter containing a list of say 10 people with their names and addresses. Your instructions (in the hope of making $1000s) are to send a sum of money (usually cash and frequently small enough to be affordable to most people) to the person at the top of the list, this name then to be removed, the other names moved up the list and your name and address goes to the bottom. You then make 10 copies of the amended letter and send to 10 of your friends or relatives in the hope that they repeat the process. Even if you cannot see the mathematical impossibility of this system working such that all participants make money, please take it from me that the whole thing is nothing more than an illusion designed to accumulate large sums of money for the instigators, who are always at the top of the pyramid, funded by the vast number of hopefuls at the bottom.

Words of Wisdom
There are some genuine offers out there that accept second level marketing. The proposal usually is that you get a lot less commission from the sales of those under you than you do for the sales coming directly from your own efforts. If you follow the guidelines given below you should be able to spot a scam before you are snared by its obvious charm.

1. Avoid plans that promise commissions for additional distributors. It is probably a pyramid system and probably illegal.

2. Beware of plans that insist on you purchasing very expensive goods or paying an introductory sum at the outset. This is probably the first sting.

3. Be cautious of plans that promise you extra income via growth from your recruits.

4. Beware of plans that involve selling goods or services which you know instinctively can't be right. For example serious illness cures, hair loss potions, slimming tablets, etc. etc.

5. Beware of false testimonials implying that lots of other people have already signed up and are making money. At worst they are made up and at best they are from the protagonist's friends or relatives.

6. Do not make any payments or sign contracts if you are even the slightest bit suspicious. Don't be afraid to talk to other people about it because they may know something you don't. If you have a friend who is a financially clued up, ask for their advice.

7. Finally do a lot of research. Either via the Internet or through your local advice bureau. If you see complaints on discussion boards or sometimes even whole websites dedicated to warning you about a particular scam then steer clear.

8. If the scheme sounds too good to be true, then it is. When an attention-catching statement is made it is designed to induce emotion not logic. Although this is an accepted method of capturing and keeping your interest, (big advertising companies also do it) people instigating a scam also use it to defraud readers. So beware.

9. Final bit of advice and possibly a golden rule. Do not rationalise. If all the danger signs are there and you still go ahead with the scheme because you think or hope "it is OK" then you are falling victim to yourself.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are designed to increase the market share of a particular product by large websites forming alliances with smaller ones. The smaller website becomes the affiliate earning a percentage of commission on the sale of each product. A company who has an army of affiliates selling a product will undoubtedly reach a greater number of people through the sheer multiplication of effort. So affiliates are very valuable to large organisations selling products over the net.

The first problem is how to keep track of who sold what and how much to pay them. This control is exercised via the link from the affiliate's site to the site where the product is actually sold. The link contains a unique affiliate identification reference and that way if a sale is made, the account of the affiliate is credited with the commission. Good affiliate programs use a tracking facility so that if the same surfer visits the company's site again via a different site, the first affiliate still receives commission on any sale. This is done by writing what is called a cookie on the visitor's computer so as to identify the first affiliate used. Cookies are valid from a month to anything up to two years or even for life depending on the affiliate program's terms and conditions. Do remember though that cookies can be removed manually by the computer owner whilst others are configured not to accept cookies at all so this system is not as concrete as it sounds.

Sizeable income streams can be earned by becoming an affiliate but beware of programs that use affiliates and do not pay them the commissions due.

Reselling

Reselling is essentially selling a product on behalf of a merchant. It usually involves purchasing the resale rights of the product (for example ebooks) and selling it at your own website or one designed specifically for that purpose with your name being printed somewhere on the page as the presenter of the product. The difference between an affiliate and a re-seller is that the affiliate works on commission and refers the customer to the merchant's site. The re-seller receives payment for the product and keeps the proceeds.

Again, the main advantage of merchants allowing their products to be resold in this way is that the Internet is such a vast market now that it is impossible for one merchant to dominate it using the myriad off possible marketing strategies available. So, for a small fee, you receive the resale rights to the product and sell it yourself. Often, the resale rights are given for free. This is not simply because merchants want to help people out. When the product is distributed it will usually have in it references to a lot of links to websites and will contain paid advertising for a great deal else besides. So by selling the product you are repaying the merchant by advertising other products.

The possible scams to look out for here are related to quality. If you are reselling an electronic product such as an ebook, ensure that the contents are of use to people. If it contains nothing but advertising and no real information then not only will the product stop selling but it will also degrade your reputation.

Again, the idea is research. Word gets out very quickly when something is amiss with a product or service so before you commit to reselling it yourself, check out the search engines, the newsgroups and the relevant forums for information. Basically, you look for dirt. If you find any, put paid to any idea of reselling that product no matter how convincing the sales letter is and regardless of the testimonials and all the other standard methods used to entice you. Incidentally, research may in fact reinforce your confidence in a product or a resale program and make the decision of going ahead a little less painful.

Surfing For Cash

This is quite genuine but not really a business opportunity for serious people. If you are an avid user of the Internet, i.e. you spend 10 or more hours per day surfing the net then by joining certain surf for cash schemes you can earn anything in the region of $0.50 for every hour you spend surfing. It isn't surfing just anywhere though, you are usually given special sites to visit, you can be paid to receive commercial e-mails, to sign up for programs, to play games and buy products online. It is not a good idea to join such schemes if your ISP is pay per minute. Again, do the usual research before you join. There are some bogus schemes out there.

Survey Participation

This is probably the most benign form of undertaking you will come across in that it is likely to waste a large amount of your time than money. The deal is very simple. You sign up to receive or undertake surveys there and then, for some “reward”. The survey is usually quite long and is geared towards gathering demographic information on which areas the richest and the poorest live, what jobs they have, which cars they drive, which supermarkets they like and so on and on and on. This information is processed by computers and it gives advertisers the upper hand when trying to persuade you (or those likely to be in your status group) to buy something that somebody wants to sell. It is a very cheap form of gathering information. The alternative is to employ armies of people to turn up at your home or phone you up or interrupt your shopping experience in the mall, to ask you the same questions. For me it really is the most laborious, mind-numbing, soul-destroying experience you can hope to have. But, different people look at it in different ways so if you feel this is your thing, don’t let me keep you from leaping off your chair or making a quick dash to your favourite search engine to find a survey to complete.

The reward is mostly not very much. You may be offered entry into some draw or you may get $1 or you may accumulate points towards “something”. The higher paying surveys, i.e. $10 to the very optimistic $150 are extremely rare as to be virtually non-existent, and if you do find one it’s probably bogus or embroiled in something that is too elaborate or time-consuming to do.

There are certain sites that have over recent times cropped up to sell you information on which companies, catalogues or websites to visit for the best paying surveys. You would think that if they knew where these were, they would do it themselves and avoid saturating the market. Logic would dictate that you should not sign up to such offers. If you search hard enough, you will find them yourself.

Conclusions

If you have read and followed the comments above you will see that there are many dangers and unnecessary risks to be avoided much like any other business venture in the real world. The Internet is really no different in this respect.

However, to conclude the articles on this page I should like to make a direct comparison between having a business on the Internet to having one in the real world. Owning your own business in the real world where you deal in real products (food, transport, plastics, etc.) predisposes you to house your stock of goods in some premises. This usually means having to pay rent, rates and a whole host of other expenses such as staff salaries, electricity, water, telephone, cleaning costs, hygiene inspections, repairs, stock control, transportation, travel costs, weather damage, insurance etc. etc. The list is enormous. So if for some reason the business does not achieve the sufficient sales to cover the above expenses and make a healthy profit, it will fold. It can be seen that most of these expenses arise simply because the business is dealing in tangible goods. Even mail order firms have to house their goods somewhere so almost all of the expenses still apply.

Suppose we now dispense with the tangible good and sell instead quality electronic products (e.g. ebooks, software, services) which may be delivered or accessed electronically. You can see that the above expenses no longer apply.

Of course, you may have already gathered all this. There is however a reason for stating all of the above. You see, it is directly due to the Internet that genuine home businesses are now possible. The crux of the argument lies in the tremendous reduction in risk factors which translates to how much money you stand to lose if the real world business does not succeed.

The beauty of the Internet business is that once everything is set up, you simply work towards one thing and one thing only. How and where to promote your website. You can devote all your time to this very important task without worrying about any ongoing costs, bank loans or overdrafts. It does not matter how long it takes for the Internet business to take off. It can take months, or it can take years. You can afford to wait. Given that you have followed the guidelines in my articles on these subjects, the process can be made quicker and less painful given time, knowledge and experience. Plus of course, you will be open for business 24 hours a day in all time zones in all countries.

The statistics are quite blatant. Only 1 person in every 20 actually makes a sizeable income on the net. This is not to be taken simply as a probability statement. The 1 person in the 20 must have done things right and put in the effort in order to achieve that status. It is not a matter of luck or circumstance. It is entirely up to you to be the one person in every twenty that succeeds.

Good luck.

There aren't many people with any surfing experience who've failed to encounter some example of so called "business opportunities" above. It is to them that I speak because a large number will be wondering about the validity as well as the veracity of these things. So it is really for their benefit. To the more seasoned users, all this is equivalent to showing one's grandmother how to suck eggs.

My name is Yigit Djevdet and I am the author of a fantasy/supernatural novel called "Will of Dreams", for which I have a dedicated website http://www.willofdreams.com awaiting the command finger hovering impatiently above your mouse to click on it.