 Business Opportunities to Avoid
The internet is full of "Business Opportunities" and although some of them will work for some people, many of them do not work for most people. Very often, the only one to profit is the business you paid to provide the idea. We're going to provide some general guidelines and then make a list, over time, of programs to specifically avoid, based upon user feedback.
It's a great thing to want to get ahead and to want to improve yourself and your income. However, it's not a great thing when your inspiration to grow is viewed upon solely as an opportunity for a business to profit at your expense and without the real possibility that you will profit as well. This section is not about judging who's bad, but about helping you see more clearly what might not be a good path to follow.
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We all want to get ahead. I'm no different and the actual existence of this website is proof of that. This website is designed to help you choose many things that will work well for you and as an afterthought, this section is to help you see what might not work so well. Keep an open mind and never lose your desire to improve, just be more patient about your goals and your judgment will not be so easily clouded.
Never Act Out Of Desperation
The best thing you can do so that you don't end up desperate for sales is to learn to not fall for the lies that just might lead you down a road guaranteed to fail.
Why are you having to set your e-mail anti-spam program to delete or deny dozens of variations of spellings for any single word? Why are businesses and individuals constantly looking to find ways to send you e-mail for products you absolutely don't want?
They're desperate.
Somewhere, they accepted a lie that promoting a certain product would bring them riches...and they invested much time and money to promote this thing...being told all along how much money they will make. There must be money in it if so many people are doing it...right? Then...often after just a short time, they realize there are very little profits...not even enough to cover their overhead, not to mention putting some food on the table.
 Having been lied to by a company that has spent nothing of their own and has enticed you to spend your money to promote their products, can very easily lead you to becoming desperate to finally succeed. It's hard for the person to fathom that nobody wants the product they are selling. The mother company makes it appear as though all the other sales people are doing great. There must be something wrong with you.
At this point, the focus changes from doing the practical to doing the desperate. It now appears normal and fine to attempt to trick people into buying your product or at least visiting your website. The focus has changed from actively performing a business to just driving cattle. You have lost the full picture in that the most important thing is to make the sale, not just to attract people...especially if they don't even want your product. You may succeed at driving traffic with false e-mails and misleading ads, but that has nothing to do with making a good return on your investment.
The reality is that if you spend $1000 to buy a mailing list of 1,000,000 random people (who really are not targeted for your product...so you misspell it to get it past their SPAM guards) and you hit enough interested people to sell $1000 of merchandise, the company you are selling for made a clear profit with no overhead at all and you actually paid $800 (after your 20% commission) to do it for them. In addition, your ISP has shut your e-mail and website down due to the 100,000 spam reports and may be filing charges against you...still, the company you sold for is not liable in any way for your desperate acts.
I had a recent encounter where an EBook Wholesaler made a enticing offer that you can have all the rights to sell all the e-books you want. No matter how much you make, you just pay a $47 set up fee and then only pay $29 a month. It sounded good, but upon joining and visiting their forum, I immediately realized there was something not right.
The members and managers in the forum were obsessed with finding and flushing out other members who were selling these e-books at below suggested retail prices...even though their rules of use clearly stated that these were just suggested prices and you were allowed to charge what you want. My first thought was "If these people were making money selling these e-books, why would they be wasting their time and focus worrying about what other people were charging." It was immediately obvious that most people were not making any money selling these e-books.
As it turns out, the whole forum thing was a farce to make the members believe upper management was helping them by showing them that the reason they weren't making sales was because of people underselling them. Eventually, I became one of the under-sellers because when the books weren't selling, I dropped the prices and was eventually asked to leave the program. When I explained that the books were not selling and that I was totally unsatisfied, I was promised a full refund since I had not sold a single book...even at the low prices. I never got my refund and was immediately locked out of the forum so that I could not "Spill the beans to other members". Meanwhile, they got my $47 and three monthly payments of $29, for a total of $134.00 . That's not a bad profit for them, considering they didn't sell a single book.
I knew I was taking a risk going in when I looked past the one Tell-Tale sign that I know I shouldn't have let get past me... Never Join A Program That Requires A Monthly Fee For The Privilege To Sell Their Product Or Service. Whenever a place promises their program will make you money, but they want a monthly fee for your privilege to use their program, walk away. It doesn't matter how good it looks...it doesn't matter how many other people appear to be involved...none of this matters. Walk Away.
If a sales program is really good enough to make consistent money, a legitimate company would work from a commission. This guarantees fairness in both directions. Businesses that charge monthly fees for you to sell their products, don't think very highly of the possibility that you will sell their products. Walk away.
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