Home Business
(featured
column)
The Lure of Easy Money
by Elena Fawkner
You might be forgiven for thinking that competition is fierce if
you run an online business. After all, every day - day in, day out - you, me and
everyone else is constantly bombarded by offers from every man and his dog for
various programs that promise us the means to earn an income from home.
After a while, of course, you begin to recognize that these
programs are not worth the paper they're written on and the people pushing them
are little more than con artists (or worse).
A common theme in all of these offers is the lack of effort required to begin
making a significant income. Witness all the "Make money while you
sleep!", "We do all the work!", "$3,000 per week for two
hours work!", "Big money, no experience required!" subject lines
in your inbox this morning.
The reason these types of offers are so prevalent, of course, is that the notion
of something for nothing is seductive. Who on earth in their right mind would
actually choose to spend 40 hours per week working for $80,000 per year when
they can earn the same amount working only 2 hours each week? No one. The only
problem is, working 2 hours a week and making $80K isn't going to happen unless
that two hours is spent managing your multi-million dollar portfolio. And even
then you'd most likely be spending more than a lousy couple of hours a week.
Common sense tells us that this must be so. But common sense is a rare commodity
in the real world and even rarer when it comes to anything to do with the
Internet, an unreal world if ever there was one.
There are a LOT of people running so-called "Internet businesses". A
goodly proportion of these people are the ones touting the aforementioned "bizopp"
pipedreams. This is good news for you, believe it or not. Why? Because, despite
how it may sometimes seem, your REAL competition is relatively small in number.
After all, if 98% of those doing business online are unsuccessful (and promoting
get rich quick schemes is the best way I know to make it into that elite group
of 98 percenters), that leaves the field wide open for the 2% who are actually
prepared to do some real work.
So don't for a minute think that the Internet playing field is all sown up. It
isn't. All that buzzing in the background is the little kids down the other end
of the field playing make-believe. There's still plenty of room to run on the
field with the real players.
So, accept the fact that there's no such thing as something for nothing and you
really are going to have to work for a living after all. Then create something
original which meets the needs of one or more target markets and get to work.
There's plenty of room for you on the field and plenty of trophies to go around.
You just have to keep your eye on the ball.
* * *
Want more money-saving tips? Get a FREE
subscription to our monthly Ezine!
Copyright 2002 by Elena Fawkner
