Month: June 2012

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Making Money Online – MLM


 

This is the third article in our discussion of the different approaches to making online money. Please read the first article before reading any other article in the series. It sets the right stage for what comes next.

  • 2. MLM

Multilevel Marketing (MLM) is based on an existing business model, which has been around for quite some time, even before the proliferation of the web and e-commerce. The basic idea is to build a matrix. There are different types of matrices, but they all share a common concept: When you refer a new member to an online program (business), that new member is placed “under” you (not physically, of course :-). When that member refers another member, that second member is placed under the first member, which you had hired.

Since you’re on top of the matrix, you receive a percentage of any commission earned by either one of the two members. That is the simplest matrix. It’s called a linear matrix. It could grow whenever new members join, to a certain number of layers. For example, if it was a 10-layer deep matrix, you would share the commissions of nine people under yourself, in addition to your  own commissions.

Another type is called the binary matrix. As the name implies, this matrix has two branches: Right and left. The first member you sponsor (or bring in to the business as an affiliate), sits on the right of left branch. The second sits on the other branch. Each one of the two would have his/her own two branches under him/her, and so on. This MLM tree type resembles binary trees data structures, used by several programming languages. Again, there has to be a limit to the number of branches, or the depth of the matrix.

MLM requires marketing/sales skills. No matter how much the sales pages tell you that everything would be “done for you”, when the rubber hits the road, you’ve got to promote or sell something, in order to build your own matrix, your own commission structure.

For people who don’t like marketing, or lack the necessary skills, this money-making approach is not exactly for them.

I’ve mentioned this in the first article, and I’m going to repeat it again here: Making money online is not much different from making money off-line. The reach could be farther, the information could be easier to gather, but the basic skills are the same. If you’re a good marketer off-line, once you learn how to find your way around the web, you would be a good online marketer. As simple as that.

Before delving into any MLM scheme, any type of matrix, ask yourself: Is MLM for me? If the answer was yes, then you would ask: Do I know how to market and sell products, services, memberships, fish in the ocean, etc… Based on your answer, you may decide what your next step would be.

So how does it work? The first step is to join an online “program”. Depending on the age of the program, you would be put in the next empty spot on the matrix, or a matrix. Your first task is to build your own matrix, regardless of where you had started. You need to bring people in, and place them under you, so that you maximize your income, by having those people work partially for you. But you still need to market and sell the products and/or services of the program. Your marketing skills, your negotiation and convincing skills, are called for to sell the  program to new members, as well as selling the products and services of that program (in order to gain your own commissions).

How would you market/sell? That’s what we covered in the second article on “online advertisement”. It takes using banners, referral links, email campaigns, etc. The banners have to be placed strategically, so they would attract online traffic, and hence visitors. Once the visitors convert, you’ve got yourself a sale (or a new member, if you were still hunting for new affiliates to fill up your matrix). Please refer to that article for full details.

The main advantage here is the potential of recruiting an army of sellers, who share with you the fruits of their own sweat, just because you’d brought them into the program (not very fair, in my opinion).

The downside is the complexity of the model: The matrix, the pay structure, the selling of ideas and products, the management and motivation of remote team members, and the necessity to do all of that online, and sometimes, via conference calls.

The above covers key concepts of this huge subject. To get the full scoop, you  must research. And please, don’t  join “any” MLM program. Find something that can show and prove a track record of stability, fairness and success. Another key aspect you need to make sure of is whether the program pays its members on time or not. Or whether it pays at all!

Any comment, addition, or question are very welcome. You may use the form below. Your information, as always, is kept strictly confidential.

Till the next post, stay safe, do your homework, and only join the best programs (if you’re convinced that MLM is for you).

The field is full of programs. You have the chance to shop for the right program for you. Take your time. Email or call the program’s administrator. Ask questions. Use search engines to find as much information as possible about the program you intend to join. If you sent an email, and no one replied within 48 hours, move to the next program on your list. Responsiveness is the first indicator of a good or bad program.

All the Best!

The Wealth Maker

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Making Money Online – part 2


 

In this post, I’ll start presenting few online, money-making methods, focusing on how they work, how they would generate money (or became monetized), and some of their pros and cons.

  1. Advertisement

Every year, businesses spend billions of dollars on advertisement. The online portion of that expenditure is getting larger and larger. The most common online advertisement instrument is the banner. A banner gives a flashy, brief sales message, that highlights the two or three biggest and most attractive attributes of the business.

Technically, the banner is but the nice face of few lines of HTML code. If you have an idea about programming, the banner is the execution of the HTML code behind it.

Once the banner is created and tested, it has to be promoted. Online promotion boils down to a single word: Traffic. For  the banner to reach as many potential buyers or subscribers as possible, it has to attract online traffic. So what does that mean? It means that the banner needs to be spread around, so that online surfers would see it, and be interested enough to click on it. Every click is called a visit, a hit, or a view. The more the hits, the better.

Since the banner  is “click-able”, once clicked, a webpage gets launched, and the surfer who has clicked the banner, would be shown a whole lot more details about the business. The hope is that the surfer would get more interested and “convert”. Conversion takes place when a surfer, who has initiated the “hit”, becomes a buyer of the business’s products or services. If the business needs subscribers only, conversion takes place when that surfer signs up, providing enough details, especially name and email address. That allows marketing/sales people to follow-up, in order to offer that subscriber a service, a product, or more information, for the time being. Another term that describes this process is “opt-in”. The surfer is said to be “opted in”, when he or she provides his/her name, email address, and sometimes, phone number, by filling out a special form on the sales webpage.

How would you make money out of all of that? The easiest way would be to sign up as an affiliate of an online business of your choice, and promote that business banner(s). The banners you promote, have in their HTML code your unique ID. So if they got clicked, the business (usually the admin) would know that it was you who had made that hit possible. The majority of businesses won’t pay you anything for hits only. But they do pay once the person who has clicked, converts. In other words, generates money for the business now, or in  the near future. As an affiliate, you would receive a percentage of that money, or an “Affiliate Commission”

To summarize: First you need to find a business you’re interested in promoting. Then you sign up as an affiliate. You get your special banner code and promote it, aiming at driving as much traffic as possible to that banner. The higher the traffic, the greater the probability that someone would click on your banner. The more the “clickers”, or the hits, the higher the probability of conversion, i.e. commissions.

Now you may ask: How would I promote that banner? The ideal approach would be to have your own website, where you paste the HTML code, so that the banner appears on your website, preferably the front page. But that’s not enough. You still need to make your site visible. You ought to drive traffic to that site. One way to do that is to list your site’s URL on as many traffic exchanges as  possible.

What is a traffic exchange (TE)? It’s a website that offers a service. When you sign up for that service, the site allows you to post a certain number of URL’s. Once you finish entering the URL’s (one of them is of the site, which contains the banner you wanted to promote), you can start “surfing”. This is a rather boring activity. You have to watch other people’s webpages, who are trying to promote, exactly as you are. Each “view” takes a number of seconds. Usually  between 10 and 30. For every site you watch, or view, you earn one credit. That credit serves as the cost of one view of your own site (sometimes the ratio is not exactly 1:1). You view other people’s sites so they view yours.

You could escape the boring part, to some extent, by joining an auto TE. The upside of that is you don’t have to click every 30 seconds or so to view the next page (and earn another credit). The TE does that for you automatically. The downside, however, is that other promoters would do the same. Which means they won’t actually see your site. Because while the auto TE is cranking, viewing one site after the other, people would minimize it, sending it to the background, and go off doing something else.

One way to know how your site is doing in terms of visibility and popularity would be to perform a Google search on it. The best result you should aim for is to see your site on the first page of the search results. Another technique would be to go to http://www.alexa.com. This free service tells you the rank of your site, globally, and locally, where the site was registered.

As you can see, the process is somewhat complex, and the reward is not that much, unless you became really good at it; something that takes a high overhead of time and energy.

This should be enough about advertisement as a source of online income. Please let me know if you have anything to add to the above, if you’d like to comment, or ask a question. All you have to do is use the form below. And don’t worry, you’re not “opting in” for anything 🙂

Till the next post: Read, think, consult your heart, decide and act…

The Wealth Maker

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Making Money Online


Before you start reading this article, why don’t you perform a simple Google search on the title of the post. I just did: 54,600,000 results! And counting.

Why all this interest in making an online income, whether a supplementary income, or a main one? I don’t think there’s one definite answer, but among the reasons could be the following:

1- The economy is still soft. Finding a traditional job is not that easy anymore

2- The hype: So many people have the false impression that making money online is easy, and requires minimum, or no work at all. That’s why the failure rate is more than 95%!

3- Unlike making money off-line, scam is the mainstream of most advertised opportunities

4- A lot of workers have become fed up with corporate cultures. They want to have their own thing. Unfortunately, while the frustration is understandable, securing a viable alternative online is difficult, to say the least

Does the above mean you can’t build your own online empire? Not at all. It just sheds the light on some of the facts that most of us ignore, as we become hyped up by the attraction of easy, fast money.

Millions are being promised within a month or less. When you get in, you realize that those millions were made under very special circumstances, which you can’t imitate, unless you “upgrade” to the premium “package”, spending more money on an illusion!

So what should you do?

The first step would be to ask yourself: Why do I want to make money online? Even if the answer was clear in your head, write it down, in as much details as possible. This would be your vision.

The next question is: Do I have what it takes to create some sort of an income on the Cyberspace? To answer this one, you first need to know “What it takes”, right?

I can tell you few of the factors, but you must do your own research as well.

It takes time, dedication, the ability to work alone, or in other words, discipline. It takes time management skills, and it may take some money; a starting capital. Finally, it takes finding the right, legitimate online opportunity, that fits your needs, your resources and your skills. A business that has the potential to fulfill your vision.

The third question is: How would I find such an opportunity? And how would I know it’s legitimate, not scam? You’ve got to search for it my friend! Exactly like searching for a business opportunity off-line. It could be joining an exsiting online business as an “affiliate”, making money through commissions. Or it could be starting your own online business.

I’m going to leave you now to think about this topic. Please share your thoughts and/or questions.

In the next post, I’ll talk about different categories of online opportunities. Stay tuned!

Wish you happy and safe online “work”…

The Wealth Maker

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Investment Partnership™


The world of investing is full of variables, risks, challenges, surprises, and of course, rewards.

Most people delve into that ocean, preoccupied by the lure of quick riches, overnight fortunes. They turn a blind eye to the other side of the coin; the risks, the great potential of losing one’s money, or part of it.

That’s why, the first rule in mindful investing is: Never Lose Money (Ben Graham). In other words: Preserve your capital, take reasonable, calculated risks.

One way to tackle this paradox is to work with an expert. That won’t be a money or fund manager. It’s a partner, who would go with you into that ocean, and help you reach the island of safety, and prosperity.

An “Investment Partnership™” is not a very common phenomenon. Actually, it’s rather rare, if not unique in the investment world. That’s why I consider it a new and innovative concept. The way it’s presented here is covered by the copyright provisions of this blog.

You and the expert set some terms and conditions. But the key idea is this: The client provides the investing money (principal), and the expert provides the time, the work, and the expertise. They are partners in both profit and loss on a 50/50 basis.

If they made profits, it got divided between them. On the other hand, if they lost, the client would lose his/her money (or part of it), and the expert would lose his time and effort. Most often, they would make profits, since the investment activity is based on careful strategies that take into account the potential risks, and provide safeguards to minimize them as much as possible. Preserving the client’s capital is the highest priority of the partnership.

The big and clear advantage to the client would be peace of mind, and freedom from the complexity and details of the investing process. Additionally, he or she would enjoy high profits without spending any time or effort.

The expert, on the other hand, who brings his expertise, time, and energy into the activity, doesn’t work as an employee. Rather, he is a partner. He only gets paid if he makes a profit. This gives him the right motivation and inspiration to choose the best possible investments. That’s how he generates his income, and at the same time, maintains and improves his credibility as a trustworthy and reliable investment professional.

Happy Investing to All…

The Wealth Maker