Home Business Opportunities - My Observations

A few years ago I investigated numerous 'work from home', ' home business' etc etc etc opportunities.  Needless to say I found that many (not all but a heck of a lot nevertheless) were either dubious, out of date in terms of search engine compliance or just plain uninviting.  

Some Truths About Too Good To Be True Home Business Opportunities

I discovered that invariably most of those 'get it now for only a fraction of the REAL cost' offers were in fact only being offered that cheaply because they pretty much no longer really worked.  The websites you 'purchased' with them were either no longer search engine friendly or they just plain violated updated search engine rules about key word stuffing, excess affiliate links, duplicate sites and so on. 

 Every so often the major search engines like Google, Yahoo etc have a major blitz and change the rules about what they will and will not allow.  If you have a non-conforming site, which a lot of early affiliate based and multi level marketing sites are guilty of being, you get dropped from their databases.

 The other thing I discovered is that unless you're prepared to upgrade to 'premium' versions of most of these systems, usually before you've even paid for the most basic version, you don't get much bang for your buck.  In some cases I suspect you may be lucky to even get a version that works properly if you don't accept the multitude of 'upgrade' offers that bombard you after you get past the initial sign up page.  Fortunately the law requires that they must offer you a full refund if you find it a) doesn't work as intended or b) doesn't suit the purpose for which it was intended.  I found that the one or two I did investigate were easy enough to get refunded.

You Sell What Type Of Products!

It also didn't take me long to figure out that a lot of the 'programs' which involved selling digital products about topics like online marketing, building affiliate businesses, membership site businesses, work from home schemes and so on, were by and large based on selling what I think of as 'intangible' products rather than a physical product.  For instance, you can purchase the resale rights to e-books on these topics which allows you to resell them, and then those who buy them also purchase the resale rights and can resell them.  

In other words, each link in the chain just keeps re-selling all these 'how to' digital products.  Every now and again someone MIGHT actually read one and action some of the advice given relating to building a real home business either offering by a service of some sort (typing, data entry) or making and selling crafts etc but by and large it reminds me of those human chains endlessly passing the same item from person to person.  Believe it or not but  whole businesses appear to be built around that concept.  Truly amazing....

Enter The Online Behemoths Like Amazon, ClickBank Et Al

I also discovered the joys of super online stores like Amazon and the enormous digital online retailer ClickBank.  I did set up online stores through Amazon but unfortunately a lot of the products I was interested in selling are not shipped outside the country in which the particular Amazon outlet you order through is located.

My top observations about online marketing:

  • always, always make sure there is a full refund policy in place before you part with your hard earned cash and sign up for anything, be it a membership site or the actual purchase of a product or 'system'.
  • always make sure you know how to apply for a refund.
  • always make sure you know how long the 'money back' or 'cooling off' period is.
  • as you generally have to go through the supplier ie ClickBank to get the refund make sure you keep all payment receipts / notifications because you need those to get the refund.

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