Researching home based business opportunities on the internet?

Fasten your safety belt and stock up on the Dramamine—better yet get a helmet and a NASCAR crash suit too, because it’s a wild ride and you’re likely to spin out or hit the wall more than once. In the world of Too Good to be True, online moneymaking opportunities have got to be the big dog on the street these days. “Bigger than television advertising?”, you ask. In a sense, yes, because online you are more pro-actively and interactively engaged in seeking solutions. Yeah, the couch potato with his remote finally dons cape and tights and heads for cyberspace seeking truth, justice and the American Way!!.

I started off opting into a couple multilevel marketing opportunities, you know, vitamins and that sort of stuff. This wasn’t totally foreign to me, having been involved (unsuccessfully) with MLM a number of years ago. Like many people, I’m interested in ways to supplement my diet and maintain good health. The added element of earning extra income is also appealing— and why wouldn’t it be? However, discovering that most of your family and friends, “warm market”, just don’t share your excitement, the business aspect ends up in a carton downstairs, under the Christmas decorations.

The idea of marketing on the internet is what drew (sucked?) me back into another attempt at MLM or “network marketing”, as some now prefer calling it. The industry was ready for me too, with team replicated websites, backoffices, promo materials for order, e-mail autoresponders, online conference rooms, you name it. And all I had to do was “simply send people to my website...” and everything would roll along from there. Sounded good to me. So, after setting up everything, including getting a healthy supply of nutritional supplements AND an autoship account for monthly re-stocks, I once again found myself facing my warm market-- only this time it was, “Hey, check out my cool website!”, followed by, “hmm…who else is gonna check out my website?” Well, my spiffy back office also included a link to a source for pre-qualified sales leads which I could purchase in bulk, at quantity pricing of a mere few bucks per lead. I should expect to get 10 interested prospect “sign-ups” out of every 100 leads—after all, “Remember, it’s a numbers game Sparky”.

My team training also heavily promoted meeting people everyday and having weekly meetings in my home, where everyone would watch a DVD introducing our revolutionary new product and compensation plan. Now, I happen to live in a rural area with a very wired Chihuahua (actually it’s my wife’s). Yeah, I know, that’s my problem, so what? But as you may well imagine, I wasn’t terribly excited about roaming the neighboring towns, dropping cards and inviting people to my humble “out in the boonies” abode for a special DVD presentation, including additional background soundtrack provided by “Pancho Psycho”, barricaded in the bedroom, shredding up the carpet.

AND ANYWAY, WHERE EXACTLY WAS THE INTERNET MARKETING SIDE OF ALL THIS!!??

That’s when I decided to go back online and surf my way to the answers—in cape and tights, of course. The number of “How to” websites, capture pages and sales letters on the web, dealing with making money online is simply mind boggling. It becomes Kryptonite after awhile. I went through such a mind numbing number of sites, it nearly put me in a carton downstairs under the Christmas decorations-- OR to quote Chris Farley as my favorite motivational speaker, Matt Foley, “…IN A VAN, DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!”. But interestingly enough, after awhile, one also realizes there isn’t actually a lot of different information out there; just a lot of different people duplicating similar stuff in very similar formats, often with just enough variation to make it “their stuff”-- and mostly dealing with how to sell an information product which reveals how to sell an information product, etc., ad infinitum. Not exactly a unique new thing here. It gets kinda like Rap music or fast food chains after awhile. I was getting supersized, yet still starved for real nutrition.

Another key that I (Mr. Thick and Naïve) finally figured out, is that it’s all about getting traffic, driving traffic and acquiring a prospect base you can continue to market to. That’s extremely important to know, because I don’t know how many times I read “… all ya gotta do is ‘simply’ send people to the website… and (this or that system) will take it from there”. That “simple” part was always hanging me up. What was so simple about it? That seemed to be the big secret in the world of, “Earn six figures weekly working 20 minutes a day…” or is it “20 minutes a week”? I forget.

But there is good news… and I promise it has nothing to do with saving you a bunch of money on your car insurance. It helped me to finally realize that the basic concepts of both real estate and general marketing, totally apply to internet marketing. There’s the old real estate adage: “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION” and the marketing law of POSITIONING-- that deals with appealing to what is already in the mind of your prospect or niche. In other words, “what do people want and where can they get it?”. Search engine function, i.e. Google in particular, really reflects the mind and interests of the people, and thus reveals positioning extremely well and so indicates where you’ll need to locate your site and/or ads in order for them to be seen. Location and Positioning laws are totally embracive of one another online. In the Information Age, the real estate is WORDS. For proof of this, just go to Ebay and search “domain names”. Many have said that the best investment is real estate. “Virtual Estate” shares the characteristic of land because information requires prime location to be marketable.

Consider that regardless of how well either McDonalds or Starbucks are positioned in the mind of the marketplace, any of these establishments located out in the middle of a swamp, will fail. On the other hand, putting a Bill’s Burger Bonanza at the corner of a major intersection greatly assists the survival of Bill’s establishment, regardless of his lower than McDonalds position in the public mind.

And by the way, that really cool replicated website, your MLM team gave you is way out in the swamp. It’s like an unlisted phone number that Ed McMahon will never call.

Now, I want to take a moment to give due respect to the successful marketers out there, whether they are: 1) MLM’s building relationships and promoting wellness, 2) Affiliate Marketers working to promote the products of others or 3) Information Marketers helping others to improve their standard of living. The internet presents a huge window of opportunity for people who, if they conduct their activities ethically, will create and add value to our society and economy. Most of these folks work very hard.

There are many innovative resources out there to assist those considering internet marketing. They’re available in many different packages, with varying levels of content in a broad cost spectrum.

Ultimately, you will find these resources most beneficial to the degree that they assist your understanding of positioning and methods of locating, generating, driving and preserving traffic. Your products and income depend on developing the above. All the other bells and whistles are icing on the cake. First, you need the cake. Make sure the internet marketing resource you choose will show you how to bake that cake. Don’t ever accept, “…you simply send people to your website…”, because if you don’t already have that part down, you could be flying into the Twilight Zone.

To your super-heroic success!

J. P. Holesworth