How to Make Money OnLine. Really. I think.

God. Cute, or WHAT?

About the best thing of having a presence on the web is that you can advertise your lack of gifts to the world. The ABSOLUTE best thing about it is that like most advertisements, very few people are likely to read it, and even fewer likely to do whatever it is you want them to do. For most people serious about getting other people to do something serious, that means getting them to buy something.

In a recent survey I might have conducted if I had had either the time or the inclination (alright…..just the inclination), I discovered that for every business site offering things for sale----real things, things you can hold in your hand without having to download them and print them out---there were over 1000 business sites offering to help you market your things for sale. And out of that 1000, over 950 were offering to help you advertise the things for sale you COULDN’T hold in your hand (without downloading…etc).

“Business Information Stuff” constitutes most of the stuff. For the newcomers, those few folk who have not yet lost money building their down-line empires, here is the truth:

· the chances of winning the Big Game are about 1 in 74 million. The chances of being struck by lightning are about 1 in 600,000. That means for every Big Game lottery winner, about 100 people will be walking around joining cults, starting new ones, or imparting somewhat warped information on paper clips and wall outlets.

· 2% of people trying to make money online not selling anything actually made money; of that 2%, 2% made REAL money. 98% made NO money, and 98% of the 2% made about as much money as they could have by saving money not buying a domain name, website hosting service, and line time, and using that time, instead, to bag groceries, or write stories for Readers Digest on what its like to take a lightning strike.

I guess the only good news here is that just about 100% of the people trying to sell REAL stuff LOST money. And the more stuff, and bigger you are, the more money you lose. See: AOL/AMAZON(B……Z). The most profitable company online is one that sells nothing themselves, but lets YOU sell stuff on THEIR site: eBay. They’ve been around awhile, but give them a chance, and I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to lose money as well. WALMART.COM exists. For some reason. Expect to see the redink beginning to flow real soon.

SO YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE, EH?

It IS possible. Here are the 20 secrets no one wants you to know, or that everyone wants you to know, but at a price.

1. Don’t Buy A Big House. Banks have a hard time reselling these.
2. Be Patient: Rome wasn’t lost in a day.
3. Figure out what other people are doing right. Assuming you can find any.
4. Ask your parents for money. They’re used to it.
5. Make sure your spouse has a real job. A real GOOD job.
6. Make sure your children have part-time jobs. Real GOOD part-time jobs.
7. Read everything on marketing you can find. Buy nothing on marketing. Except maybe this column, which I don’t think counts.
8. Ad the Union Label to your site. Better yet, provide a link to the Teamsters.
9. Act like you know what you are doing.
10. Emphasize that you are customer-friendly…..not “browse” friendly.
11. Keep track of your progress in hardcopy form, and throw it away frequently.
12. Don’t start a newsletter. Please. Give us all a BREAK.
13. Stay out of Chat Rooms. You, sir, are ugly and not funny. Cope.
14. Try to get out of the house on occasion, remembering that intimate scratching is not a parlor game.
15. Cut your lawn. Do the dishes. Empty the garbage.
16. Bathe.
17. Don’t get all cutesy with your website. Tell people what you think they need to know…..or what they want to hear/read……and move on.
18. Provide no links. (Except to those Teamster dudes.)
19. Buy Acme-brand coffee.
20. Don’t miss your AA meetings.

I can’t promise success. Wait, yes I can. If you take the above InsinceriousBiz Principles as your guiding light, and have a couple of lesser gifts like knowing something about business, having a niche, pricing properly, advertising correctly, providing superior service….you can’t fail.

More than 98% of 2% of the time, anyway.

©2002 RWPladek
http://mydeas.com

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