How Not to Make Money on the Internet

There are scams around every corner. Search results along with ads on search results pages are great resources for researching ideas and viability of offerings. As important as it is to make money, it is equally important to avoid losing money, especially to scams.

Spending money on building a website of your own creation is a wise investment of money for an online business venture. Resorting to the use of Content Management Systems such as Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla can save investment money but you will still have plenty to do in configuring and managing the CMS to produce your website.

Spending money upfront on promises of what the purported system can do for you is not a good investment. Perform due diligence before spending. Even spending $20 to get the initial guide is not a prudent expenditure unless you have some evidence on credibility of the claims.

It is true that if a person is not aware of the technology areas, then it is hard to know what is legitimate. If a provider offers to build a series of sites for thousands of dollars in order to get the business venture launched, then by all means investigate for credibility before plunging the money.

Suppose an Internet marketing company offers to give a training course for $1000, after doing a song-and-dance that it is a $2000 value and that they should charge $3000 since they always over deliver. Suppose they further go on with the time-pressure tactic that of the 500 available seats, only 200 remain. Do not jump on the opportunity unless due diligence has been performed. Getting a referral from someone whom you know and/or trust is a good start.

500 seats at $1000 each yields half a million dollars. With $1000, the best hardcopy books on the topic can be purchased with money left over. Books may also be skimmed and previewed at libraries and book stores before purchase.

Another practice to watch out for is the standard marketing offer of a free item typically in exchange for your email address. Some times this is a front to a spamming operation, offering you products and services which are irrelevant to your interest. A related variation is to offer a free service (but so crippled that it is useless) which begs you to upgrade to the paid service (to get rid of the frustration of the useless free service).