By Frederick Mann
4/17/2000; updated 11/10/2000
Is it possible to start with zero money and make a fortune working on the Internet? In this article I aim to provide some guidelines on how anyone with a computer and access to the Internet can in fact make money without having to invest or risk any of his or her own money.
To make money on the Internet you will have to invest some time. Much of that time will probably have to be spent on learning some of the "tricks of the trade." Initially, you may earn relatively little for the time you spend. However, as you acquire some Internet skills and expand and improve your operation, your earnings per hour will increase. If you focus on the continuous upgrading of your own skills and actions and your presentation on the Internet, your earnings per hour will increase. After six months to a year, you could be earning enough to pay all your bills and make a decent living. After a few years, you could be earning hundreds or even thousands of dollars per hour worked...
A few days ago, someone wrote to me:
I stumbled across your website only last night. I think that if I had not done so, my discouragement about Stockgeneration would have reached depressing levels. Seeing all those other opportunities gives me hope.Hope for what? Let my give you my story in brief: 5 years ago I got economically sodomized by the Canada Student Loan program. The debt load and level of aggressiveness shown by the collection agency has made me unemployable (administrative burden). Even the military (my last resort) rejected me on the basis of my credit situation. I was on my last frayed hope when I ran across Stockgen. A friend of mine had been working in a chicken factory. Then he got into Stockgen and soon bought two houses with his earnings and is now on a six-month vacation in South America.
I knew it sounded "too good to be true." They give you money to start and almost promise to make a fortune with it. Then they wouldn't answer my emails. Then I found your site and tried hard to ignore the big red letters next to Stockgen: "Not currently recommended." On the other hand yours is the most professionally sound website and offers many interesting alternatives to Stockgen.
Now I have more questions:
1. What would you recommend that is as easy and cheap to get started with as Stockgen?
2. Can you recommend a plan of action to go from ZERO to something spendable, through programs like Stockgen?
Some of the early Stockgeneration players did make fortunes. You could start by filling out their survey and receiving a free account with $50 in it. You could use the $50 to buy shares in a "virtual company" that doubled in price every month. You could refer others to Stockgen and earn referral fees of up to 30% of the money your referrals put into Stockgen. You could use this money to buy more virtual shares that doubled in price every month. So Stockgen was a means for someone to make a fortune on the Internet without risking any of his or her own money. It was an example of zero-risk money-making.
I don't know if the above correspondent's friend risked any of his own money or not. But he certainly could have earned the money to buy two houses and go on a six-month vacation in South America without having risked one cent of his own money!
(In December, 1998 I personally joined Stockgen. I spent several hours studying the game and decided it was a "good bet." I risked $6,000. My first objective was to recover my initial capital as soon as possible so I could get into the wonderful "can't-lose" position. I did this in about three months. By the end of 1999, I had taken about $100,000 out of the game. By September 1999 the game had deteriorated considerably and got steadily worse during the ensuing months with ever-increasing payment delays and other problems. During March/April 2000 Stockgen effectively "raided" all or most player accounts, reducing them to zero or amounts like $3.17. Now, in my opinion, it's unlikely that Stockgen is still a viable game.)
One of the wonders and great blessings of the Internet is that lots of things are free. This is because many companies are willing to provide you with services and even products in return for your attention and the attention of other visitors you may direct to them.
This is why Stockgen, through its survey, was willing to pay people $50 to open an account. So what they provided was even better than free!
As other examples, there are many companies that host your website on their server (computer) for free. They do this in return for placing some advertisements on your website. Any time you, or any visitors you attract, access your website, the advertisements are likely to attract attention. Similarly, you can get as many free email addresses as you like.
See Website Hosting & Free Hosting and Free E-mail Services.
There are many companies that are willing to spend money in order to expand their market share of whatever products or services they offer. Some of these companies are willing to pay you for your time and/or attention. For example, MintMail will pay you to read emails. They also pay you on two further levels for emails read by people you refer and read by those they refer -- it's a three-tier compensation plan.
Many of these companies will also pay you for recruiting others who watch their advertisements or listen to their music. (Such companies make their money from selling advertising.)
By "no-cost marketing" I refer to marketing that doesn't cost you money. It will, however, cost you time.
One of the great advantages of the Internet is that you can do a great deal of marketing without having to spend any money. You can also market to people you don't know in places where it's appropriate to do so. For many things, the worst people to try to market to are your family, friends, and coworkers. (Personally, I've had very little success marketing anything to family, friends, and coworkers. I've been much more successful marketing to strangers via direct-mail and direct-response advertising and marketing on the Internet.)
Most people who attempt to market money-making programs to family, friends, and coworkers, are usually met with ridicule, condemnation, and/or rejection. They quickly become discouraged and give up. This is probably the main reason why about 90%+ of people in MLM-type programs fail.
So you may want to focus your marketing efforts on "new" people you meet on the Internet. How do you meet these people? Realize that most people want to make more money. There are millions of potential prospects on the Internet. You can create your own "community" of people who want to make more money and market to them. You have a multitude of free tools and resources available to you for this purpose:
1. Free programs to join and promote, such as:
2. Forums such as:
Where certain free programs can be discussed and promoted. You could even start your own forum on Delphi for people who want to learn more about and assist each other with no-cost marketing.
3. Forums such as:
where pretty much any program can be promoted.
4. Email lists provided free by hosts such as:
So you can use Delphi and/or one (or more) of eGroups, etc. to create your own "community." For more details on "my financial community" click here.
5. Safe Lists. A "safe list" is essentially a list you can promote anything to. Go4Gold and DaleSafe are examples of paid-subscription safe lists. There are hundreds (possibly more than a thousand) free safe lists. One way to find safe lists is from the directories of eGroups, etc. For example, check out Globelists under "Business & Finance." Also check out EMail Advertising.
To find safe lists on eGroups, click on "Business & Finance" and check out categories: "Entrepreneurs," "Financial Services," "Marketing," "Opportunities," "Small Busines," etc. For Globelists click on "Business & Finance" and scroll down the page; also check out sub-categories such as "Offers & Opportunities." Unfortunately Listbot doesn't have a directory yet. For Topica click on "Finance" and "Personal Finance."
You can also use the "Search" features of eGroups, etc. to find safe lists by searching for "opportunity," "opportunities," "money," "safe list," etc. Once you've subscribed to a few safe lists, you may find that some people post messages with "ccs" to other safe lists. You can use these "ccs" to identify more safe lists. (You can even use Aureate Group Mail to post to many lists at the same time.)
For effective marketing, you need to create your own website. There are many hosts who provide free hosting services -- see Website Hosting & Free Hosting and Free E-mail Services. How do you learn how to design and create your website? See Website Design & Maintenance.
And once you have a website, how do you let people know about it? How do you attract visitors who will join the programs you promote so you can earn commissions? Well, you promote to forums, safe lists, classified add sites, etc. See also Website Promotion.
There are many other things you can do to promote your website and/or programs. You can also study the Freedom Business Opportunities page and learn from what we do.
See also How to Make Websites Profitable and Website Promotion & Success.
A few general marketing guidelines may be useful:
It's very important that you achieve at least some success within a reasonable period. If you don't have immediate success, learn from what you've been doing and make improvements. Above all, you need to persist until you succeed. Becoming a successful marketer is a never-ending learning process. And don't give up when you may be "one yard from the goal line!"
"If you haven't already done so, I invite you to subscribe to the Financial Independence List. A good place to ask questions, get the latest information, and share views with others."
The biggest obstacle for some may be inertia. You may need to push yourself to take the next step, then the next, and the next.
Some people who join money-making programs behave like a baseball player who steps up to the plate, doesn't raise his bat, and never makes any attempt to hit the ball. I hope you will follow through to the point that you not only hit the ball, but also score some home runs!
Some people may allow themselves to be stopped by early discouragement. In many multi-level marketing (MLM) companies many distributors give up before they've sponsored even one other person. Typically, they contact their family and friends and are mostly or completely rejected and even accused of trying to peddle "MLM scams" and "questionable schemes that just can't work." (Sometimes your family and friends don't want you to succeed because if you do it would make them look bad.)
"Economic correctness" is a huge obstacle for many. See How to Overcome "Economic Correctness".
Many people live their lives at the effect of unconscious "scripts" consisting of all kinds of "do's" and "don't's." About 15 years ago, I read Scripts People Live: Transactional Analysis of Life Scripts by Claude M. Steiner. This helped me considerably to overcome some personal scripts.
Many people (maybe 90% or more) will make relatively little progress with Internet marketing (and their lives generally) unless they learn to overcome the limitations of certain basic unconscious scripts most people suffer from. When you purchase Success Arsenal!(sm), as a bonus you receive the e-book Real 'Secrets' of Success! which addresses these basic unconscious scripts. Over the years, we've often been asked, "Where do I start?"; "How do I learn to market on the Internet?" Finally I have the answer: Real 'Secrets' of Success!
A major reason why many people don't sign up for programs (or don't buy what's being offered) is that they don't believe the offer. They fear that they won't get what they pay for; they fear being scammed. So you need to create and improve credibility.
The first skill you may need to acquire and/or improve is how you think about money. For some important pointers I recommend The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom by Suze Orman.
You may want to study The Millionaire Reports.
You'll benefit a great deal by becoming skilled at selecting the best programs to promote and avoiding bad ones.
You'll obviously need some website design skills -- see links above.
You'll need some Internet marketing skills -- see links above. The single most powerful book on selling I know of is NewSell by Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson, available from Wrightbooks.
One of the beauties of the Internet is that your website can become an "automatic salesman." People come to your site, find a program they find appealing, read what you have to say, visit the program's own website (often a self-replicating page with your ID#), and sign up and pay, earning you a commission. You often earn such commissions without any direct contact with your "benefactor." The websites do the selling.
Nevertheless, you may need to improve your communication skills. Together with your website, you ideally want to create a community of "fellow-travelers" -- others who want to make money on the Internet. You want to set up an email list and/or a forum where the members of your community can discuss programs and issues. You also need a way to communicate efficiently to everyone in your community. For example, when you add a new program to your website, or make important changes, you want to inform your community. You can set up a free email list with services like Topica, Onelist, and Listbot. You can set up a free forum at Delphi. For examples of email lists and forums, see our lists.
BigBooster is related to BuildFreedom. Visitors to BuildFreedom are invited to also visit BigBooster. All the information on BuildFreedom is available free. The money made through the programs promoted on BigBooster helps to finance BuildFreedom.
So you could create a website promoting some cause. The visitors to this website could be invited to also visit your money-making website. This is one way to attract visitors to your money-making site.
If you are sexually liberated (not a slave of "sexual correctness!"), you could create an adult site that also invites its visitors to visit your money-making site. Of course, the adult site would also be a money-making site! This could become hugely profitable!
Best of all, you can launch your adult site without having to spend any money! To find out how, check out:
In addition to all the above, there are thousands of affiliate and associate programs you can join for free and promote on your website(s). A basic principle is involved: Visitors to websites can be "converted" into money.
According to Corey Rudl: "An average person working smart on the Internet earns far more money than a gifted person working hard in the real world!"
You don't have to be a genius to make a fortune working on the Internet. You simply need to start with something relatively simple. As you go along, you need to improve your own knowledge and skills. You can also continuously expand and improve your operation and website(s). The money will follow!
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