10 December 2007 2 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

What if I said if you give me $1000, I will give you $5000 a month for the rest of your life. You’ll say I’m crazy right? Yet many people are expecting this from companies who sell so-called home based businesses or training programs. I hear the same thing every time on the radio, and it usually starts off with “would you like to make two, three or even four thousand dollars a month from the comfort of your own home?” Then I see the awful and corny TV ads with fake testimonials from regular looking couples who claim their website brings in $6000+ a month and supposedly the company who put out the commercial helped them set it up. I’m getting so sick of these crazy companies that I literally change the channel or station every time something like that comes on. These are the online versions of get rich quick schemes, and there are many varieties. I’ll go through some of them so you don’t get tempted to spend your hard earned money on them.

Consultation or Educational Products

This is when a company will charge you hundreds or thousands of dollars for CDs and some workbooks. You may even get some consultation from so-called work at home or internet business experts. The only thing they are experts on is how to convert people into sales for their program. I’m sure some of these programs do offer some decent information, but you don’t need to buy their programs for that. If you want to start an online business, there are tons of books out there costing much less and even more free information from websites like this one. I write about e-commerce all the time, and being that I make most of my income online, you’re getting first hand insight with no strings attached.

You Pay Us, We’ll Start Your Business

This type of product is common with product based e-commerce. Many companies act as middlemen between wholesalers and potential business owners like you and I. They are retailers posing as wholesalers. They will charge a fee to build you a site. Usually the site is a duplicated site they sold to many others before you and its jam packed with products. They claim that they will dropship for you so you never have to touch the product. They’ll also charge you an inflated hosting fee and maybe even website design and promotion fees. You end up with a site thats filled with overpriced products that you won’t ever sell. You won’t want to cancel immediately because you’ll lose your initial investment, so you stay longer all while paying them hefty hosting and other fees. I personally know of people who have wasted thousands on stuff like this. These companies prey upon those who are unfamiliar with e-commerce and those who want an easy way to get started. Nothing comes easy, period.

The TurnKey Website and Business for Sale

You’ll see this on ebay mostly. Basically web designers will make cookie cutter sites, I mean hundreds of them, and sell them off for a few hundred bucks each on eBay. Some people will pose as a business owner who are selling their business for whatever reason. The main problem I have with these sites is that you won’t ever make money from them. If they had any potential, wouldn’t you think the sellers would run the sites themselves? Also, these are cookie cutter sites so you’ve got tons of competition. The barriers to entry are far too low so anyone can get in by buying a site. You’ll see these turnkey sites in the form of web stores, informational sites and sometimes clones of big time sites like YouTube, Google or eBay.

The common theme of all these money wasting products is that the companies that produce them all prey on those who want it easy. Online businesses are relatively less risky and easier to start than others, but its not as easy as these companies make it sound. If you take a bit of time to learn about online businesses, you can build yourself a nice stream of additional income, but don’t cut corners. Stay tuned to learn more about building online businesses as an additional stream of income.

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