Can you make an honest buck online? If you're tired of hype, try this. I have nothing to sell you.
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.

Resales are another popular scheme among internet marketers. They get you to buy a number of reports or ebooks available with resale rights. The deal almost always includes a plan for you to market these items. The problems begin when you discover that most of the reports and ebooks are merely all the same rehashed marketing ideas, schemes or scams others are trying to sign us up for through email offers. Even those with honest advice are simply not affordable or attractive enough to make you a profit. And, again, there’s the need for email marketing.

In some cases, all you are selling is what you have already bought. That turns the resale program into a pyramid scam and is likely to get you in trouble. I once spoke to a representative of Clickbank, another popular online credit card processing service. She told me that one reason Clickbank stopped accepting payments for real world goods and moved to a strictly online content based payment service was that people involved in these resale deals were selling things of no value and the major card companies were complaining. One person was actually selling software on a CD that told you how to resell the same CD for a profit, with no other content on the disc! Most payment services have also stopped accepting payments for phone cards, sports event tickets, debt consolidation services, xxx sites, downline schemes, gift certificates, money transfers, lottery tickets or stuff they can prove is pirated. These, obviously, are more online business opportunities to avoid.

The internet was never designed to be a place where people buy and sell things. It was supposed to be a place for information exchanges. Even though that’s all changed, the system is yet to catch up,

If you already have a real world business, the internet offers a great opportunity for exposure or expansion. You can offer goods and services, provide a pricelist or just have a sort of online business card with contact information to let web surfers know you’re out there. Most people that go online will look there for local, national and international goods and services, rather then ever pick up a phone book. I can’t remember the last time I did?

If you don’t have the ability to accept credit cards online, you can easily sign up with reputable credit card processing and payment services like PayPal (for physical goods or content) and Click bank (for content). Both provide you with the ability to accept credit cards or online checks right at your website, for a small processing fee. PayPal is free to register with, but requires an active credit card and bank account to verify your identity. Once verified, you can receive payments from or send money to anyone with an email address. Clickbank charges a low, one time set up fee and doesn‘t require a bank account. Both services are very user friendly and offer easy to set up html codes to accept payments for individual items or services. I like PayPal’s Shopping Cart feature, which allows the purchaser to select several items before checking out. You can even get an ATM card from PayPal and have immediate access to the cash in your account. PayPal and Clickbank have good anti-fraud measures designed to help protect you against credit card fraud. I have links to both services and much more on my website at http://bkspeaks.cjb.net. You can also sign up there for my free, weekly column, Make Life Work For You!

If you already have an existing merchant account for your real world business to accept credit cards, you should be able to purchase the software needed to accept transactions online. Contact your merchant account provider or bank before you do anything. You can use an 800 number for people to call when they want to buy something, orders can be placed by fax or you can easily write the code for a form to collect purchase and card information and have it emailed to you. But the best way to sell online when you accept cards or checks is to allow for instant, secure, live transactions. Be sure any software or programs you use for card processing includes good anti-fraud measures. Credit card fraud online is a rampant and growing problem.

While it’s true and regrettable that pornography is the number one revenue producer online, it’s not something most people would want to be involved with and can get you in a lot of trouble. If you’re not already a business owner and lack physical goods to sell, you can still experiment with a few different ways to make money online. Check the popular search engines (like YAHOO, EXCITE and LYCOS) each week to see what the most popular searches are. The idea is to try and anticipate which websites people will be looking for in the next several months. Then take your shot at building a website that’s likely to be searched for in the near future. Find affiliate programs that pay you money for sales made from your website, through their links. You can read my free article, How To Affiliate and find links to all the top-rated affiliate programs at http://bkspeaks.cjb.net. It costs nothing to sign up for these programs and all pay high commission rates. I’ll also show you how to submit your site for free or inexpensively to the top search engines. Although you probably will not get rich using this method, you can easily make a few hundred or even a thousand extra dollars a month by placing a few links on your site.

When done right, Content Sales can be a lucrative way to make a nice extra income through the internet. The idea is to avoid all the prepackaged content deals, and create your own. Most people do not realize that what’s in their head, can make them money online. Is your knowledge or experience something that people might be interested in? If so, you should write it all down. Unfamiliar with writing? There’s lots of free resources online to teach you how. Once you have content, build a website that promotes and offers what you have to sell. There’s lots of places to get a free website and most offer site building help. You can use services like Clickbank and PayPal to collect payments for the content (I list all these resources on my site). These services will then redirect the purchaser to a page with your content and pay you, minus a small service charge. Just read and follow all the directions carefully. It’s not complicated and anyone can do it. See what others are charging for similar content to find out what yours is worth. The idea is to keep it real, keep it inexpensive and offer a refund to dissatisfied customers.

The internet isn’t and never will be exactly like the real world, but it is a community of people that has become an important marketplace. You can set up shop, buy stuff, sell stuff, make offers, receive offers, rip off or get ripped off. Being a good and honest community member will insure your access to the internet and ability to do business there for a long time to come. It’s an opportunity and what you make of it is up to you.

About the Author

A native New Yorker now living in Arizona, Bill Knell is a forty-something guy with a wealth of knowledge and experience. He's written hundreds of articles on a wide variety of subjects. A popular Speaker, Bill Knell presents seminars on a number of topics that entertain, train and teach. A popular radio and television show Guest, you've heard Bill on thousands of top-rated shows in all formats and seen him on local, national and international television programs.