How Not To Make Money On The Internet..

Over the past few years, I've tried just about everything to make money on the internet. One thing I can tell you without hesitation - virtually all, if not all, of the "money making opportunities" are worthless scams, suitable only for cleaning toilets and filling landfills. Let's briefly go through some of these "opportunities".

Multi Level Marketing
The theory of MLM is very simple. Instead of spending a lot of time selling a product, you sell a program to sell products. You sign up as many people under you as possible (and under them as well) and you collect a commission for each sale that they make. Virtually all, if not all, of these programs are scams. Their design virtually ensures that the only people who will make any money are those at the top of the pyramid.

Paid-Referrals
Now here is yet another interesting idea. Companies will pay to get referrals. These organizations find those companies and advertise their services. You sign up for a whole lot of programs at once and supposedly get a cut of the fees. Simple, huh? I signed up for quite a few, and I never saw a dime from any of them.

Pay-To-Chat
Yet another interesting idea. As with all programs of this type, the amount of money that you can make is so small as to make it meaningless.

Pay-To-Click
It costs between $2 and $10 to get targeted leads to a website. Why not pay people to click into sites? Well, there are lots of reasons.

Pay-To-Listen
An interesting idea which seems to have never really paid off. These companies would pay you a small amount to display a bar which plays music. As with the pay-to-surf, it appears that the death of the banner ad has destroyed any chance these will survive.

Pay-To-Read-Email
The concept here is simple. Agree to receive some email advertisements, and make some money by reading them. Sounds good? The theory is sound, but the practice turns out to be a waste of time. You can make more money at the local burger joint.

Pay-To-Shop
Collect a few dollars to shop around all over the web. These schemes tend to make a lot of money for the pay-to-shop companies while being stingy with the payouts to people like you and me.

Pay-To-Surf
This type of program was created by a company called AllAdvantage, way back when banner ads actually worked. As a rule, these types of programs are worthless, completely and utterly worthless. These programs were suitable for use in toilet training puppies and lining birdcages even before the banner ad became useless and dot coms became dot bombs.

Pay-To-Take-Surveys
Some companies will pay you to take surveys. Are these worth the time? Hardly.

Sweepstakes
Want to play some games and perhaps win some money? I thought I might like to play. After over 25 hours of internet play (and banner watching) I have still to win a single penny.


Note: There's no such thing in this world as "Easy Money". Remember.. to make an omelette, you need to break a few eggs.