Home Based Businesses - Which One Is Right For Me?
I have dedicated this lens to those who are interested in starting an internet or home based business. I am going to be brutally honest on this lens and intend to state the facts as I and many of my colleagues have witnessed over the years with regards to home based internet business. Some of my comments are not meant for the weak or for the ones whose feelings can get hurt so very easily. If you are lazy or looking to make a million in a week go somewhere else, because you won't find the answers here or anywhere for that matter.
There is no such thing as, "Get Rich Quick", and anyone that is telling you that is just going to steal your money and you should run as fast and as far away from them as possible...Now with my "Disclaimer", out of the way let's get to it...
As it states in my bio, I have been doing Internet Marketing for about 10 years and I didn't become the success that I have become overnight. If you are looking to spam the Myspace forums or blast your Latest Survey deal, you will probably last about as long as your ad. It takes hard work and perserverance to get to the top and stay there.
To find out which business is right for you, we must first look to see what your needs are.
1. Do you need to keep your current job until your business kicks in?
2. How much are you willing to invest in a business?
3. Do you have any special skillsets or abilities?
4. Are you a self starter?
5. Are you disciplined?
6. Do you get frustrated easily?
Those are just a few of the questions you need to be asking yourself before choosing a business for you. Lets take each question individually and elaborate on why.
1. Do you need to keep your current job until your business kicks in?
In many cases the reason people are looking for a home business is to get away from their current job. In most of those cases those same people can't quit until they replace that income from their current job. For an instance such as this I would look to a business with a low start up cost (at most under $1500), has an established management team, a branded company, and has a great and unique product. Things to avoid are the old envelope stuffing scheme, home assembly programs, surveys...things of this nature. You will want something inexpensive yet has the ability to turn a profit quickly and consistently. I will list some great sites in the body of this page for you to check out.
2. How much are you willing to invest in a business?
Again this is going to be dictated by your particular situation, if you can afford to quit your job you may want to look at a franchise type of business. There are a few internet businesses that are turn key and can be started for as little as $10,000. These are established companies with awesome reputations and histories. Again avoid the work at home scams. Remember you get what you pay for, if it states Free...chances are that you are only making the person that introduced it to you money. Look any real entrepreneur or business person never started a business for free and made millions. You won't either, so quit looking for something for nothing.
3. Do you have any special skillsets or abilities?
Perhaps you work as a marketer now in your current profession or maybe you can write killer ad copy. If so then an internet business may work well for you. Everyone has a special and unique skill set, find yours and exploit it. An example is this, lets say you love to fish and fishing is your passion. Well you could start a site about fishing, write your own content and monetize that site. You are already an expert, so exploit your expertise. This is called niche marketing and it works well if you know something about the subject you are trying to sell. You couldn't for instance sell someone great advice on investments if you yourself weren't an expert or had specific knowledge about investment advice. Of course the one business that doesnt require any of these things is listed as my Number 1 Business Choice.
4. Are you a self starter?
5. Are you disciplined?
If you are not a self starter then I am sorry but an At Home Internet businesses are not going to work for you. Internet businesses are not "Fire and Forget" types of businesses. You must be disciplined to perform your daily tasks without fail and with complete and total dedication. If you can't tear yourself away from "Days of our lives" for 1 hour to conduct your business than it just won't work for you. You must be able to stick to your plan and never become complacent. There may come a time when you will be able to walk away from your business for a couple of weeks, but you will have to come back and get back to business.
6. Do you get frustrated easily?
Again I hate to burst your bubble, but if you get frustrated easily then an Internet Business From Home may not be for you. Here's why, the competition is fierce, and I mean viciously fierce. Take a look on this site for instance (Squidoo) look at some of the top lens, and look at the ratings. 99% of the negative ratings are coming from other Internet marketers whom are jealous of someone elses success so they try and sabotage the lens by giving a 1 star rating. Besides being juvenile it actually increases that lens ranking. Anyways, it is brutal, if you become successful you will have to deal with others competing with you, and they will write terrible and incorrect things about you and your character. It is an unfortunate fact of online types of business. I have experienced some of these same things.
I currently operate about 40 websites, some selling specific products, some are promoting others products. Some sell easy, some do not. There are many and vast techniques for making money on the internet and in the next section I will introduce a few of them.
Types of Internet Businesses
First you have to agree that there is money to be made on the internet. Once you agree, we have to find out what it is that sells.
Here is my list in order of the Top 5:
1- Network Marketing or MLM (Residual, Residual, Residual)
2- Affiliate Marketing
3- Sell Your Own Product
4- Adsense
5- eBay
MLM: The Misunderstood Cash Cow
There is only one MLM that I can recommend, after many years of looking them over and trying to understand the difficult compensation plans, I came to the conclusion that MLM may not be for me.
After discussing with my colleagues and obtaining their thoughts they are in total agreement:
Agel - Is the one MLM we can recommend above all others. If I had it to do all over again, I would do nothing but this. This is the business above all others that I would choose. It affords me the greatest opportunity for success, with the least amount of chance to fail.
Heres why:
1- Agel has a unique and unreplicated product
2- A generous compensation plan through 7 levels
3- You can be in business in 5 minutes
4- A simple system that duplicates for maximum profit
5- Tax benefits for owning a home business
6- You can be profitable quickly
7- They give out money for Free cars
8- They give out money for expense allowances
9- Residual Income (note this)
To find out more about this company visit Agel Enterprises, You can also receive a Free DVD from this site explaining in detail this company.
So why MLM, in the simplest terms I can come up with, Leverage. Leverage is Why. If you owned real estate for rent, would you make more money owning one or a hundred houses. Of course it's one hundred.
Well it's the same thing in MLM, you find the group of people that like your products and together you create leverage. The more people that join your business and use the products the more money you can make.
Residual Income is the key, this is income that you receive every month. We get income now that we don't put in hours for. It's not about trading time for money. That's what I love about this business. I can walk away from it today and still come back in a month to an income. No other business I will discuss here can do that.
What makes people not want to join MLM, because most people think it's a get rich quick scheme. In fact it is the complete opposite. Most people will take from 12-18 months to build a sizeable organization of dedicated people.
You will find that some will join an MLM and drop out within 2 months. They will all say it doesnt work, well the fact is they didn't work. These are the same ones that re-dedicate their lives to health and fitness every year, stating that they are finally going to get into shape, they join the gym in January and by March they are all done. (Quitters for short)
If you are a quitter, then again this business isn't for you..I know that I sound harsh but the reality is that the majority of people will come into any business with their eyes wide open and then realize that, "Hey, I actually have to work at my business too..."
Any business that you run will take time and effort to grow, it took Sam Walton of Wal-Mart nearly 30 years before his store became the noted success that they are today. Amazon was launched in 1997, it took another 5 years before they hit the big time, if at anytime these people decided it was too much work and "quit"...just imagine...
Books From Amazon about Network Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
This is another way to make money on the internet. However it doesn't provide for the residual income that MLM does.
Affiliate Marketing is nothing more than promoting a companies products and when it sells you get a commission. Some programs pay high and some dont. There are some programs that sell actual physical products and some that sell digital products.
Here are a couple of links to some of my favorites:
1- Clickbank sells and promotes digitally based ebooks and software. This is where I would start. It doesn't require any start up money and you could literally be making money in minutes promoting these products.
Look at my module below on How To Effectively Market Clickbank products for massive cash.
2- PayDotCom another site similar to the above, I prefer this site as it has a more manageable and asthetic back office. Much more information about your sales and promotions.
3- Amazon , what needs to be said here is this, You can make alot of money promoting through Amazon, however you will have to make many sales to make a decent living. One book may sell for $5.99 and you may make only 4% of that sale. You do the math.
4- LinkShare is perhaps the best physical product affiliate program around. They offer companies like 1-800-Pet-Meds, Wilsons Leather etc...You simply put the company creative on your site and if it's clicked on and a purchase is made you get paid a percentage. The best part is that some companies will have cookies placed and that ensures you of even making a sale 60 days after they originally visited your site.
5- Commission Junction is another great site to promote name brand companies products. Works very similar to LinkShare, you post a creative or text link to a product, if they buy it you get paid.
These are my top 5 Affiliate Sites, I have made quite a bit of money using the above websites. I had no out of pocket expense to start these programs, and the return was incredible. I happen to know of a young lady in California who started with LinkShare she promoted one product, and 2 months later was raking in nearly $12,000 a month. So if you are looking for no start up costs with a huge possible return this may be the route you take. Of course that's pocket change compared to the money to be made in Agel.
DataFeeds
I have an update to the affiliate marketing portion of this lens, and it has to do with datafeeds.
Datafeeds are basically product catalogs. and if you know some php you can capitalize on them by having cloaked and direct to merchant links straight from your site.
I have been working with datafeeds for about 2 years and it has been a real project, but once I got a site up and running it was nearly clear sailing. Just the standard SEO type of stuff to get listed quickly and highly.
You can visit LinkShare or CJ for more information on datafeeds, they are NOT free however so make sure you know what you are doing first before you delve into this.
A site that offers Free datafeeds so that you may test your sites is ShareASale.com. This is a useful tool because you dont want to shell out hard earned money for a datafeed to find out it isn't what you'd hoped it would be. GoldenCan.com also offers a free datafeed and an interface to use it. This is what I would suggest that all of you wanting to utilize datafeeds should start out with.
The beauty of using datafeeds is this, you build a site, monetize it with some ads, some adsense, have a product module, an advanced search feature, use mod-rewrite in your .htaccess file, set up a cron job to update the feed whenever neccessary...and forget about the site. Its now on autopilot, well about as auto pilot as you can get. SEO and ad updates are always neccessary and usually a manual task.
Massvie Clickbank Profits
First lets find a product to promote, I like to promote recurring billing products because my income will exponentially rise as I sell more and more subscriptions. So lets go with the Doubling Stocks program.
Doubling Stocks is a monthly subscription to a weekly newsletter for picking penny stocks. (By the way, their picks are awesome and I have been subscribing for 8 months now and it really does work), but that's not what we are here for, I am here to show you how to make money selling it.
First if you don't have Aweber, than get it and get it now. No Internet Marketer on earth that is successful is getting by without an autoresponder. Next we are going to set up an email list in our new Aweber, its pretty self explanatory on how to do this, so you shouldn't have much problem. For now this is all we will do, we will come back to Aweber here in a little bit.
Next you need a landing or lead capture page, for those of you well versed in html this won't be a problem. For those of you who aren't there are many for sale online, there are some packages that offer hundreds of different capture pages for mere dollars so do a search or look below for my list of good ones.
Here is an example of my lead capture page for Doubling Stocks, Doubling Stocks is Now Free To Join. As you can see from the example I have incorporated some information that will entice the user to want more information, they will put there name and email in the box and I will build my list.
Now back to Aweber, in the set up screen for your newly created list you will notice a tab named List Settings, hover over this and then click on the Web Form link. Set up your thank you page there, this will be a page that simply tells your reader that they must confirm their email before any more information will be sent to them. A note on this, you will lose people here, plain and simple, don't worry about it, those are the ones that probably put in a fake email and name anyways.
Next under the same List Setting tab, go to the Verified Opt-in link, now you will make this your url "hoplink" for the clickbank product you are promoting, make sure you have your user name in the url or you wont get any credit for a sale. ie http://roozak.affstocks.hop.clickbank.net/ is mine(I actually go a step further by cloaking this link, not mandatory but it helps with sales) you would simply replace "roozak" with your user name.
Now when the user goes to his email and clicks on the confirm link, they will be taken directly to that sales page for the product.
Pretty neat huh! Now one more step is to get traffic to your new squeeze page. You can optimize your site and wait for organic search engine traffic or you can go the PPC route. I use the PPC route while in the building process, I prefer Adwords.
Now this works in Google Adwords because they have taken away the ability to simply run an ad and have that ad link directly to the sales page, they just don't allow it anymore. So you must actually work at it a little more, but thats ok because we dont want something for nothing do we. Well yes we do, but it wont happen, so I will show you the next best thing.
Adwords is still the best way to get targeted traffic to your site if you know what you are doing. Now this is actually an entirely different subject that would require alot more than what I am going to show you, basically these are the cliff notes for Adwords. If you want a complete explanation visit Perry Marshalls - Complete Guide To Adwords, you can sign up for a Free 5 day course there.
The key to Adwords is this, keywords, its all about the keywords. To find the best Keywords you need to search for them, you can do this by hand and take days trying to compile a list of 100 good ones or you can get a Keyword research tool to do the work for you, my opinion is that Keyword Elite is the best one on the market. Once you get your keywords you need to test your ads, you should always have 2 running at a time to be able t compare them to each other and find which one is the best. Then make a new one and continue the process, its called split testing. Once you find converting keywords and ads, you will be well on your way to making alot of money on Clickbank.
In the beginning I talked about spending and this is the biggest mistake of new marketers. They make their Adwords campaign spending limits at like $5, you aren't going to make a million spending $5 a day. Now I know what you are thinking, I can't risk more than that, heck $5 a day is $150 a month...well here's the thing, I spend about $550 a day on the Doubling Stock campaign, with sales roughly at about 1 for every 100 clicks, and about 2000 clicks a day, thats 20 sales a day. If they only get the basic package thats $47 to me, or $940 a day total or $390 profit per day...not too shabby. But wait there is more, its a recurring billing product so guess what I get paid next month also, if they continue to get the newsletter. So if only 50% of the signups continue thats still an extra $185 a day more plus the $390 average for a total of$ 575 a day. After about 6 months can you see the power of that?
So lets recap everything really quickly:
Here's a flowchart to help you visually see what we just did...

Now I may be promoting up to 10 different program at a time, you do the math!
If you use this formula I can almost guarantee that you will make money online with Clickbank. The great thing is this once you figure out this formula, you can use it on all your Internet Marketing projects. It works with PayDotCom products also.
I hope this helps, Keep on Rockin'...
Great Books on Affiliate Marketing
Heres A Couple Of Good Products To Start With
I have listed 5 good products to start promoting..first make sure you have signed up with both Clickbank and PayDotCom to be able to retain the commissions. Next look over the products, then you can scroll to the bottom and see the specifics of this sellers terms.
I happen to know this guy and he does well selling these products online. He gives out a 65% commission rate for each product, there are also incentives for each depending on the amount you sell...Sell More, Get More - up to 75% each sale.
Check Them Out Here:
An Anger Management Solution for You - This is HOT!!!
Cure Genital Warts Naturally: This is a Great Niche product - Easy to Sell - I also have a page dedicated to affiliates - providing keyword lists and Adwords ads that are proven. You can find it here - CuringGenitalWartsNaturally Affiliates
Organic Cooking Guide This is Brand New and has never been on the market before.
Choosing Your Breed of Dog Guide This is also Brand new and hasn't been mass marketed yet.
A great place to start with your e-book or niche marketing career is NicheRevolution.com, they are about the best I have seen as far as quality of products. They also give you 30 Adsense sites per month with your membership. It's definately worth the money and a good look.
Sell Your Own Product
Another option I have entertained myself which is to create and market your own product. Maybe you are an expert on a particular subject, well you could write about that and market the book in a number of ways. The best part is that if you write a good, informative, and pertinant book other affiliates will pick it up and sell it for you.
So what you will need to do this:
1- A Hosting Account - My personal favorite is HostGator they have everything you need to get your business up and running. A most generous hosting company, in my opinion the best in the business.
2- A Domain Name -It is my suggestion that you do not buy your domain names at the same place that you purchase your web hosting. My suggestion is to use GoDaddy to purchase and store all your domain names. The reason you want them all in one place is if you change hosting accounts, it is a nightmare to get your domain names changed over from one registrar to the other. Having them all in one place serves you the best.
Stick with .com names and try and use at least one of your keywords in the domain name ie. homeinternetbusiness.com would be one that I might use for this topic.
3- HTML Editor- There are many that are free, but think about it you get what you pay for. If you are looking at this lens chances are you may not be very experienced in HTML either..So here's my pick
XSitePro is the best for internet marketers. It provides the easiest way to get a site up and running in literally minutes. Definately the way to go if you are going to build your own site. Over 100 Templates to choose from gives you much control in how your site looks.
Once again after you have your product completed you will need to market it. The best is perhaps Clickbank and the other choice is PayDotCom. Clickbank will cost you $49.95 for your first product and $29.95 for each additional product after that. PayDotCom is Free and you can promote up to 99 products.
Books on How To Build Your Own Website
Adsense
This is probably the one that will be the most difficult to explain. Adsense is basically a network of sites that display Adwords ads. Everytime a user visits a site hosting Adsense and that user clicks on an ad, the owner of the site is paid some money.
So it would seem that all you would have to do is build a site and get traffic to it, right? Well hold on now, not so fast. First, does your site have relevant content. Second, is it updated frequently. Third, is it just an ad farm.
These questions need to be answered before a campaign for Adsense begins. I mean look you want to make money right?
Some things to NEVER do with Adsense. NEVER click on your owns ads, use the preview tool that you can download from Google.
NEVER tell others to click on your ads. Google will find out and then you will be banned. DO NOT have arrows or other text pointing to or advising someone to click these ads. YOU WILL GET BANNED!!!
Now with the major Don't Do's out of the way, lets begin with how to profit from Adsense.
First thing is you have to sign up, visit the link below to sign up, it's Free and takes only 5 minutes.
Sign up Here for Adsense then look here to begin your Adsense Empire
Now that you have signed up it's time to monetize your site. Let's first look at where your ads should be placed. For an example I will refer to one of my favorite sites: All About Gardening is a good example of ad placement. Its not too over the top and I only have 5. For maximum benefit you should limit your ads to 4-5, these are the ads that cost the most (the 1-3 positions are the most expensive). Now when someone clicks your ad you will receive an amount based upon Google's algorithm.(No one I think actually knows this.)
Continue this process with your site or sites and you will start to see profits begin to accumulate.
I have 24 adsense sites with over 4000 pages of content, if I only get 1 click a day worth .50 x 30 days I will have made $360. Now multiply that by 50 clicks a day. Get the picture!!!
I have used a couple of programs to huge successes with Adsense, I use Keyword Elite to find profitable keywords and also to populate my content pages, there are some demonstration videos about the product, just follow the link above.
I also use SEO Elite to automate my Search Engine Optimization process, this software is incredible. I went from a nothing search result, to first page on Google for a very competitive keyword in 3 months. I exclusively use these tools for Adsense also because of the fact that organic searches don't cost me any money. The traffic is Free.
Another tool I have used in the past is HyperVRE , this software totally automates the Adsense content problem, put your Adsense on auto-pilot with this one. You should be turning a profit with these tools within 2 months if used to their full potential.
Currently the number one Adsense Revenue generating site is --- Myspace, bringing in a whopping $30,000,000 a month.
Get your share today, but be smart and follow the rules.
Books on Adsense
eBay - Can Still Make You Money
EBay could be perhaps one of the last goldmines left that have been tapped to the core. eBay still makes fortunes for those who know how to work it.
eBay is a basic buying and selling site, find something valuable, mark up the price and sell it. Thats how money on eBay is made.
The problem lies in where do I find the good deals. There are a number of answers here:
1- Dropshippers - These are companies that allow you to sell their products at a retail price, but you buy them at a wholesale price and pocket the difference. The best part is that these companies ship the product to the consumer. You never stock anything. This works well for people with a little bit of business experience. (One note about Dropshippers, make sure you investigate thoroughly the company, you should NEVER be charged a joining fee) I used DBL Distributing in the past and they are reputable.
2- Make your own product - Again if you have a special skill or ability you may be able to exploit yourself by selling it on eBay. Digital products may also be sold on eBay, but be careful some people don't want their products sold on eBay, Why? I don't know, a sale is a sale to me.
3- Refer others to eBay through your site. You can also monetize your site with products from eBay. A great example are lens here on Squidoo, there is an eBay Plexo that allows you to input specific keywords of products and have them displayed on your site.
4- Yard sales, garage sales, flea markets, and estate sales, these are great places to find stuff that people want to get rid of but don't know the intrinsic value of. Maybe you get lucky and find a Hornus Wagner baseball card for $.50 at an estate sale (if you do you could retire on that one alone), my point is that one man's junk is another man's treasure. So start searching.
5- Cashing In Using Craigslist - I have used this method to some great success. This one is absolutely perfect for the Stay At Home Mom...You can purchase the program here - Cashing In On Craigslist
If you don't have an eBay account you can sign up for a Free account here. Find hard to find items on eBay!
EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it, eBay is not dead. I have just stumbled upon a great new way to market eBay products. I have been using Wordpress...for more information on how to build literally hundreds of profit pulling sites visit Build an eBay Affiliate Store in Less Than 30 minutes.
Books on eBay
The Last Word - My Rating
What are my criteria, Cost vs Reward, Ease of Operation For Someone New, Earnings Potential, Does One Need Special Abilites, Simplicity and Support.
Using the above criteria I have come to the conclusion that the following is true:

Agel - Gets my highest rating. Cost is minimal and the reward is tremendous. Anyone can do this business, it doesn't require any special skills or abilities. The earnings potential is limitless. Simple, it couldn't be any easier, I do it part-time, and generate a substantial income, and the support is outstanding. 5 Stars
Visit my Blog to see weekly updates concerning Agel and where the business is going. Here's the link:
My Agel Enterprises Blog
All the other businesses have their own unique pros and cons. All of them require an exchange of time for money. If you aren't a genius marketer, a few will be more than challenging.
Each has an ability to make money based upon your own efforts and no one else's. With Agel you have leverage, leverage of thousands of others all with the same goal in mind to make money for themselves and their own group. When you realize what leverage is, you will finally understand why Agel is so powerful and why it is my choice.
As I stated in the opening I will be brutally honest and truthful. (I have been told by others that this is one of my faults) With that I hope you found the information above exciting and helpful. Look here in the future for other lens about similar topics.
Again for more information about Agel visit Agel Enterprises.
Here is a Blog about Agel
See for yourself Why this is My #1 Choice
This is the number one source for up to date information about What's Happening in Agel. Sign up for the weekly newsletter and be updated automatically each week.
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Some MUST HAVE Internet Marketing Tools
I personally endorse each and everyone of them, I have used them extensively, and continue to use them and profit. I have put FREE next to the ones that are, guess what, FREE!!!
1- Keyword Elite - Keyword Elite is a keyword research tool on steroids - Features include:
- In Depth Keyword Drill down
- Spy on your Adwords Competetion
- and many more...
2- SEO Elite - This software took my site from a dismal non ranking dud- to a 1st page of Google dynamo in 3 weeks, and in a very competitive market and keyword set...EXTREMELY VALUABLE!!!
3- HyperVRE if you are into Adsense and don't utilize this tool, you are simply and positively stupid...(well maybe not stupid, just less financially secure)
4- This is the Bible of Adwords- Perry Marshalls's - Definitive Guide to Google Adwords I went from a uneducated marketing loser to what I am today and it all started with this book...Worth it's weight in gold!!!
5- The Rich Jerk , as brash and brazen as this guy is, he simply knows how to make you money. This program comes with access to a forum that alone would be worth an extra $1,000 a month...A+++ Highly Recommend...
Current Articles and Blogs Related To Home Businesses
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Gimme Your Opinions
If you found this information helpful let me know
markbestweb wrote...
Great lens! Best thing to do GO ONLINE!!!First thing you need to do, think of your domain name , don't hesitate on being creative, make sure peiple will be able to remember it, and then explore your creativity with your design.
Silver_Lotus wrote...
Very good lens! I'm always glad to hear someone discuss the fact that you have to work at internet businesses to be successful - even residual income programs require work in the beginning and tweaking as you go along. My motto - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! I have done well selling on eBay, and now, in addition to my own ebay store, I'm using the Build A Niche Store program, which I find works well. I've been setting up sites with products and info that interests me AND brings in a nice amount of revenue. More info here. And thank you for having me in your group!
banquetmanager wrote...
I'm new to this "work from home" business and still learning everyday. Thanks for the info. Visit my lens at: http://www.squidoo.com/myworkathomedaddy
by The-Roozak
I have been working as an Internet Marketer (IM) for about 10 years. Working with various people thorughout the years and learning important lessons f...
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