By Emmanuel Chukwu
Nowadays many people are making money working from home via the
internet. There are many different ways this can be done but there are
also many scams out there so one must be very careful.
First let
me start of with a legit no fee work from home business. There aren't
too many of these types of home internet businesses, but this is one of
the few. It is called "Niche Marketing" among other similar names. The
basic principle is to create a website about a certain topic that has
the ability to make it to the first or second page of the Google search
results. The main reason being that if you can get to the first or
second page of Google then it's highly unlikely anyone will ever find
your site.
This Niche Marketing has no fee whatsoever attached to
it. That doesn't mean however it is without costs. You will need to buy a
domain for each site you make (about $10 per year) and also have
webhosting. It is by no means a scam but of course it is by no means
easy either. You need to have some computing knowledge as you need to
buy domains and create websites. Many use WordPress which is fairly easy
to use but even for an experienced computer guy setting up your first
WordPress website will take some time. Once you have done one, of
course, it gets very easy.
Further you will need to do "keyword
research". This is possibly the longest part of the job as you need to
find "niches" i.e. keywords where the competition is low so that there
is a good chance you will reach the first page of Google, or close to
it.
Once you have found your topic then there are a couple of ways
you can make money with your new website. The most popular and perhaps
easiest is with Google AdSense. This is completely free to join and you
basically give Google some space on your website and when people click
on the ads you earn money. Very easy!
You can expect to make about
$1 per day with Google AdSense on a niche site. (Unless you are lucky
enough to find a niche with high search traffic - very hard to find).
The idea is to have many of these websites so that you can make possible
$100s per day depending on how many sites you have. The nice thing is
that once the site is set up and running it shouldn't need any work
afterward. So you spend a lot of time creating the sites but then you
just relax forever as the sites earn money.
You can also make
money through affiliate programs. So if your site is about Pet Toys then
you can find another website that sells pet toys and become an
affiliate for that site making a commission off of each sale that is
made from the customers you send to that site. Therefore you can have 2
potential forms of income from the same site.
Now perhaps you
aren't very good at creating websites but you are eager to try to make
money online. The other very popular way is by joining some sort of MLM
or Pyramid scheme. Many people think that these are scams but they
aren't really. Sure there are many that are scams, but just because some
are scams doesn't mean that all of them are.
Things to avoid are
anything that sounds like "Google Cash Kit" or "Make Money With Google",
these are very scammy in that they try to sell you a kit for $2-$5
(very low price). They make it out that this is all you pay, a small fee
for the shipping but what you don't realize is that you have just
signed up for a subscription service that might cost you $50-$100 per
month. The crazy thing about this is that it's completely legal. The
reason being that at the bottom of the page where you provide your
credit card details there is some very small writing about the monthly
fee. Of course it is never mentioned anywhere else and all the sales
pages make you think that it is just a cheap kit you are buying and all
you have to do is pay the shipping.
Another scam to avoid is the
work from home stuffing envelopes scam. The websites promoting this
supposed work from home job make it out to be that many companies are
willing to pay people to handle and process their mail for them. This is
by no means true. I should know because I used to fix the machines that
are used to perform this job. Companies like Francotyp Postalia, Pitney
Bowes and Neopost all make machines that automate this process and work
infinitely faster than any human can. Further many companies offer this
service in bulk (because they have these machines) and it works out to
pennies a piece. So what company in their right mind is going to pay
anyone $10 or more per hour to do a job that can be done by a machine at
100 times the speed and therefore much cheaper?
If you have seen
any sites trying to promote this type of work you will notice that you
will need to pay a fee in order to do the work. This is your first alarm
signal. They say the fee is to weed out the people who aren't serious
or to purchase the names and contact details of companies who want this
work done but it isn't true. You are just buying into a scheme whereby
you try to get others to do the same and earn a commission for doing so.
The companies promoting this are not very up front about this so that's
why I would label it as a scam. You can of course make money from
promoting this, but you make your money by duping others into falling
into the same trap. Not a really nice way to make money.
Other
scams should be easy to identify. Any site that has a "guarantee" about
the income you can earn is a scam as no one can ever guarantee anything.
All success is down to how much work you put in and a little bit of
luck. This is something that no one in their right mind can make a
guarantee for.
Another very popular way to make money legitimately
online is to join a real MLM scheme. One of the most popular and well
known schemes is GDI (Global Domains International). You basically pay
$10 per month to be a member and that $10 gets you a very basic
webhosting service. Illegal MLM schemes don't give you anything for your
money (ie no product), but this is a real product. It just so happens
that most people don't really care about or use the product.
Nevertheless it's real and legal. They have been going for about 10
years now and I even think they are traded publicly on the stock market
(I could be wrong).
You earn money by getting others to join, so
you advertise on the internet wherever you can. Most people use free
advertising like traffic exchanges and so forth. The commission is $1
per month per person. But you also get the same commission if one of
your referrals gets a referral. This happens up to 5 levels down. So,
simply speaking, if you got 1 person per month, and everyone did the
same, you would be earning $1000s per month after your first year. It's
very slow going in the beginning but it picks up as you stick at it and
the idea is to get the snowball rolling. Now the goal of 1 person per
month seems very easy but in reality it isn't. Not necessarily for you,
but perhaps for others. The numbers all seem very easy in theory, but in
practice it just doesn't happen that way.
However, if you are
very skilled in sales and marketing then you will likely be successful
with GDI. They also offer a very good bonus scheme. If you get 5 signups
within a week you can earn a $100 cash bonus. This is possibly the best
bonus scheme available on the internet.
The drawbacks with GDI is
that it's been around for so long so almost everyone is in it or
already has been. The only possible or potential customers are the new
people who come to the internet in search of work and haven't heard of
or tried GDI yet (like me a year ago - I am no longer a member now
however). These people can be considered "fresh fish" for GDI marketers.
The thing is there are thousands of thousands of GDI marketers online.
It's kind of like fishing in a lake where there are thousands of people
fishing at the same time. If 1 new fish enters the lake what are the
chances that you will catch it? So in the end I dropped out of GDI as I
didn't see a great future in it. However, that may not be the case for
you so by all means give it a try. The most you can lose is $10 per
month. Don't let me put you off if you were considering trying it out.
Nothing ventured nothing gained right?
However before jumping into
GDI, you might want to consider some of the new competition that has
come on the scene in the last year. One of the best, in my opinion, is
Teamwork Revolution. They are very similar to GDI in that they are
$10/month and the product is again webhosting. Their webhosting product
however is far superior to GDIs. GDI only offer 100MB of web space or 10
pages, whichever comes first. Teamwork Revolution offer full blown
cPanel webhosting service with 700MB of space and unlimited pages as
well as unlimited traffic and other necessary things like MySQL
Databases. Therefore GDI can't even hold a candle to Teamwork Revolution
when it comes to product comparison.
Their compensation plan is
also much better. First of all it is a forced matrix program. If you
aren't familiar with what a forced matrix is it basically means you have
the possibility of getting spillover. The whole point of these MLMs is
to get people to join under you. Well, if you are in a forced matrix
it's possible that you will receive spillover from your upline thereby
earning commissions without even doing anything. This isn't only a great
benefit for you, but it is also a huge selling point for future
potential recruits. Everyone loves forced matrices, so if you aren't in
one it will likely be much harder to entice people to join as there are
so many forced matrices now.
As for compensation, you earn up to 6
levels down, unlike GDIs 5 levels. Further, Teamwork Revolution give
you $2 per month per person for the first 5 people which means once you
have 5 people on your first line you break even, unlike GDI where you
would need double that (ie 10 people) in order to break even. Moreover,
Teamwork Revolution give you $2/person per month commission for the
recruits on your 4th line as well. All in all, the commission structure
is far superior to GDI's.
The only advantage GDI have over
Teamwork Revolution (and pretty much every other competitive company) is
their bonus scheme. I already said that GDI pay $100 for every 5 people
sponsored within 1 week on top of the $1/person per month residual
commissions. Teamwork Revolution don't offer this so if you think you
can sponsor 5 or more people per week into GDI then GDI is definitely
for you. However, for most people, 5 people per month is hard enough
never mind 5 people per week. So for these reasons I would recommend
Teamwork Revolution over GDI any day. I hope I have given you some food
for thought if you happen to have been considering GDI as a way to make
money online.
Now you may be wondering if I think it's such a
great company and money making opportunity why did I leave? The main
reason is that it didn't quite work for me personally. I tried it out
for about 5 months and I was able to personally sponsor about 10 people
but the problem was is that's where it stopped. Those others weren't
able to replicate the process. Possibly because they didn't bother
trying (an unfortunate drawback with forced matrices is that they
attract lazy people who think they can get rich purely on spillover -
impossible!) or it's possible they did try but they just didn't succeed.
Whatever the reasons, eventually the people I recruited dropped out
after they didn't see the expected or hoped for success. This is a huge
challenge with these monthly payment matrices. You feel like you are
constantly bailing water out of a leaking boat. Although you have no
boss or anyone telling you what to do and when to do it, you still feel
under a lot of pressure to recruit quickly. If you don't keep the ball
rolling then it's very likely your matrix will implode as people drop
out. If you aren't able to keep recruiting new people and providing
spillover then people drop out, which in turn causes others to drop out
as they see their own downline dropping out. So for this reason I
decided to give up all together on the monthly payment matrices. I don't
like working hard to build a business only to see it collapse. It feels
like you are building a house on water. I prefer to build on concrete
(so to speak).
Where I have had most of my success and profit is
with 1 time payment matrices. These are great and also have excellent
potential. You can make just as much money with these MLM programs and
possibly even more. What I like about them is you only ever make 1
payment so your risk is limited entirely to that 1 payment as apposed to
monthly payment matrices where your risk is dependent upon how long you
stay in the program. Further, with 1 time payment matrices if you
decide to take a months holiday there is no risk. People don't drop out
of 1 time payment MLMs. If you stop marketing for a while, there's no
leaky boat feeling. Theses MLMs never implode or go backwards, this is
like building on top of concrete.
One of the successful programs I
tried was 4x1 Fortune. It is only $11 to join and it is a "Cycler
Matrix". What that means is you need to "cycle" before you make any
commissions. Once you make 6 sales you will cycle and earn $30. So you
nearly triple your money after only 6 sales which is pretty good. If you
make 5 sales you earn nothing. The commission doesn't happen until the
6th person. It is also a forced matrix so you will possibly get
spillover or spillunder once in a while but I always stress this should
never be relied upon. If you do this you won't get anywhere. Although
it's possible to get spillovers I recommend just carrying on as if this
didn't happen that way when it does it's just a nice bonus. The
"product" in this case is just some e-books and videos and stuff to help
you with online marketing. Most people don't care about the product,
they just want the chance to make some money. So if you are looking for a
simple program with low risk and one that actually works and pays, then
4x1 fortune is definitely one to consider.
If for some reason you
don't want to risk $11, or you want to try something that is even
easier, then I recommend Work for $3 (WF3D). This is only $3 to join as
the name implies (well there is a $0.40 alertpay fee). This is basically
a mailing list builder. This is a highly useful tool especially for
online marketers. As you recruit others to join this list you earn a
little bit of money. It is by no means a lot of money but it has the
potential to turn into millions. For example, if you recruited just 3
people in your first month and then never recruited again ie retired,
and everyone else did the same thing, then in your 11th month you would
earn almost $18,000. It seems crazy but it's a fact. Only 3 people in
the first month seems easy, especially considering I recruited about 30
people in my first month. However, I am in my 7th month or so and the
reality is that other people are not able to recreate the same success I
had. In fact there are many who after 7 months haven't recruited a
single person. Possibly because they haven't tried or perhaps they have
tried and failed, and then there are others who consistently get signups
every week which is contributing to the growth of my downline. I have
personally now recruited about 100 people, but my downline is about 500
because some of the 100 that I recruited have become successful
recruiters themselves. It's all about what you put into it.
So if
you are looking for a really easy program with the potential to turn
into decent residual income then give Work for $3 (WF3D) a try. The
worse case scenario is that you lose $3.40 right? But the best case
scenario is you will have a residual income for years to come like I am
enjoying right now. Even after 7 months I am only seeing about $10/month
in residual commissions, but it's still free money and I'm not really
trying hard at it anymore. Further, it definitely has the potential to
grow into a lot more than that.