a couple of questions for you 'smart' entrepreneurs
 

DONT GET A JOB

but.... entrepreneurship, especially on the net is so competitive it's hard to make enough

i have done cpa and cpc ads for a year now and have only made a little less than 1k$ ..

granted i only invested 100$ or so, it still doesn't seem believably easy to live of the salery of an internet entrepreneur competing with corporations that already have it down to a science. So is it a bunch of bull? how do YOU make big profit??

You got a 900% profit and you think that sucks?

Interesting topic. It does seem everyone is trying to go down this internet business route- and as with what happened in the UK property market, when everyone runs one way- run the other!

The internet market is highly competitive and SBI has only muddied the water here- it's hard to get an accurate picture of how many internet businesses are making serious money. If you own a shop, or operate a plumbing business, people who come to you are wanting to buy, whereas on the internet your visitors are largely information seekers. What's so wrong in operating a real world business anyway?

This forum seems devoted at times to the pack up work and run a blog mindset- why? Is it because with an internet business you can try to hide a lack of skills that would otherwise be required in the real world? I know some have made money and big money with internet businesses- but like I say, when a substantial mass all run one way...

As for the comment about a 900% profit- that's daft. If the average employee's costs are a few dollars in travel expenses getting to work, you could argue they make thousands of percent profit per day! Crazy argument!

The people on this website are a miniscule slice of the entire population of the world. Not everyone on this website is even interested in online entrepreneurship. We're interested in personal development and some of us see online entrepreneurship as an avenue for financial wealth because of Steve's success. The people pursuing internet entrepeneurship are a miniscule slice of the entire population of the world. I'd be surprised if they composed even 1% of world population. You're suffering from cognitive bias.

Also, while I applaud the ambition required to see a 900% profit margin as insubstantial, you must acknowledge that such a margin goes above and beyond the average profit.

Internet marketing
 

Have a look at the challange.co

To clarify, I think a lot of people are trying web based businesses, not least things like e-bay etc to varying degrees.

You actually hit on a really valid point about people on this site being interested in PD. PD covers a whole range of issues but I think making money is to many people an important aspect of that- if for no other reason it frees them up in terms of their time and mental workload to focus on more important things rather than how to pay the bills.

That's why I've always been concerned about the promotion of sbi and blogging on this site and the vague advice to follow your passion. From a PD point of view it's really not great. But since this is a small slice of the population, and since I was responding to the op, it makes sense to point out the pitfalls of following the crowd in the interests of pd.

I so agree with all of this.

Another problem I see with Internet business is that of intellectual property and piracy. If you run a blog, people can steal your articles and post them as their own. If you run a YouTube channel, people can steal your videos. If you sell ebooks, a few people will buy them, put them on torrent sites and everyone else will just download your ebooks for free.

The industry itself also doesn't have a very good reputation. Probably most of the money made on the internet is from porn, after that I guess selling crappy info "products" or just plainly scamming people. You might have the best ebook in the world, but most people won't trust you, since it's the Internet.

Lol, you got it RomanHD and escapeplan. I totally agree.

Roman mentioned that the #1 money maker on the net is porn and he's probably 100% correct. Do porn sites EVER fail? Is that even possible?

I don't know man, maybe we should try to make the worst porn site in history and see if it fails :D

Porn is like pizza. Even bad pizza is still good.

about the 900% profit remark...

my point isn't that i made a good profit:investment ratio...

I invested more than 100$, MY TIME AND EFFORT. lots of it. And you would never expect someone to be able to live off of 1k a year right?Your responses are suprisingly more thoughtful than the average forum though.

My main purpose is to tell everyone that there is all this hype for making money on the internet and how easy it is and how fast it is. Through my own experiences I have found out it is not easy or fast. I must have put in a couple hundred hours of learning the backroads to making some money on the internet. It has been a year now since I started and I have 2 websites with small amounts of traffic and 1k. Once again that is no amount of money you could live off of, and especially not get rich from.

Ray, I agree 100% with what you are saying. One of the key words you have used is "entrepreneurship". You see, online businesses are still subject to the same laws of capitalism as their real world counterparts.

The attraction of setting up online is easy to see and seems especially appealing in these forums and on this site. Now I'm setting myself up for a kicking here but just read through some of the threads we have in this "business and financial" section. Are these really the entries of budding businessmen and woman?

Most of them want a business online. I don't know for sure but I expect the thinking goes something like this: "If I start an online business while I work full/ part time in paid employment, then eventually my web business will grow so big that I can quit my awful job and be free... Then I can go an work and live wherever I want because my laptop (which is all I will need) is portable. More to the point if I follow my passion I can (write/ paint/ take photos/ blog) and earn income from things like advertising which don't require any real skills which is just as well as I don't have any. When I make a few dollars online I can pretend I am growing the seed of something big. Hooray!"

Now I accept I have exaggerated a little but you and I both know that it doesn't work like that and it seems many people (aided by SBI etc) believe they must build traffic and that somehow then they can sell "stuff". How many people do you see on this website trying to set up a retail shop, a cafe, a book store, an insurance company, a taxi firm, a factory? None. No body. Much better to hide behind fuzzy thinking of following a passion and making easy money online and ignore the fact you need to be business minded.

Now don't get me wrong- the fault is not in having an internet business or using it alongside your real world business. No, the problem is in the different mental frequencies that many of the types of people I have stereotyped above are on, compared to successful businesspeople (think Branson autobiography verses average forum comment on SEO and meditating on ones passion).

So what's my point? My point is that for a PD site, to avoid people wasting time they should focus on what's required to be a businessperson above living in a dreamworld. Erin wrote a good article on it- something about having what it takes to run a business. :eek:

While I do agree that most Internet "businesses" are ridiculous, I'm not so sure about the passion part. I mean, sure, you probably can't get rich by taking pictures, but you have to at least LIKE what you are doing in order to do it long enough to get good enough to make money.

I hope that makes sense :D

Have you ever asked if this is the case..? :)

A quick ramble:

Money = an IOU from society for added value.
You get it after you add value.
Value is that which "other" people think is value (so the creator can't decide something has value).

The problems with a business on the internet are:

- That there is much low to non value being created. You might think you create high value, but you can't decide that. If you create no to low value, you don't have a lot of chance, because
- There is much competition, almost infinite these days. And different kinds. Sites like the one you are thinking about creating, scams, other sites, whatever.
- It's difficult to find an audience. Because of the previous two problems, it's not easy to get people interested in your site. They've seen many no to low value sites so if you don't wow 'em fast, they're gone, enough competition, remember?

- Also: banner ads and all that old school interruption marketing is dying, fast. Rates are going down, people click less, it's all and all not a very good way to go.

And so:

- You have to be really remarkable to stand out. You can be remarkable in many ways, btw, skill, effort, network, persistence.
- It will take lots of work. People aren't interested in the new site, they are interested in the best site.
- You have to add value value value value value value value... and lots of it. Not just a little more than others, loads more.
- To earn money, don't depend on non-value, like clicking ads or stuff like that, it's getting old, fast.
Create something people will pay for.
Not sure what, ebooks are everywhere and usually no to low value (especially those that will tell you how to make money on the internet... I mean really).

Or get so good, targeted traffic (niche) you can talk directly to a sponsor. If you get a couple % of a niche market to your site, sponsors will pay a monthly fixed fee, for example.

But all of this isn't new, or my own, check out the Archives, Steve has some really excellent posts on this subject.

No, but I have checked, and ironically at the time of my latest check, he topic in prime place is "should I start blogging?"

This in the business section. Ho hum.

And is the answer yes? :)

I think you can guess what I voted for in the poll on that thread!:)

how can we help you get your factory going? ;)

I've never liked factories- but I have a real world business that does something useful. Very useful and much needed. But I mean you never hear converations on here about business plans or obtaining finance. The reason it bothers me so much is that it's like people are trying to find a shortcut here to business success. Seeing as being independently wealthy (and that's a loose term- all self employed people are dependent on deals/ customers) is as crucial- at least significant PD area, we should try to get it right. The cynic in me would say that letting people go down daft avenues is a sure way of keeping them coming back here for more "help":(

people always say "a shortcut to success" but i am saying there limited to no success EVEN IF you work hard at it for a long time, this is the most frustrating thing about it, if I saw a little progress like an increasing profit margin or getting some connections or website views i wouldn't be complaining. You basically start at 0 and work your way up to low and stay there...

Most things in life if you work really hard for a long time you see progress, not so much in internet business. They revolve around one thing: investments, and the reason i am trying to make internet businesses is because i don't have much money, i don't have money to invest.

But, for example, if i had 10k and i ran some tests and realized chances were i could make a 30% profit return from running cpc-cpa conversions. I launch the campaign and in a week it turns out my predictions are right, and i made like a 28% return... THAT'S 2.8k a week! Not bad, even though stats aren't always consistent (it could have fluctuated to losing 10% or only making like 15% for example). BUT with the marketing tools and how specific you can make your audience with cpc with some tests you can pretty much tell your payout. But my point is if i had like 30k-100k to invest i could probably easily make a net profit of about 50k a year, even with the ups and downs.

I don't have investment money though... So i thought, why not invest like 200$ or so and try to do it small scale (the smaller scale you get the less accurate predictions you can make in my opinion) but the idea was to start small take some profit and spend it, reinvest some, I ended up not making enough to come close to the 30k-100k range that i think is capable of making actual income. This goes with my point you start at 0, work your way up to low, and stay there.

If i had the money to invest in something like a factory, i would do that instead of something like an internet business (after investing in a business degree in college lol). Because the thing about real world business like a factory is how are they not going to make money? You take raw ingredients, make something more complex, this thing you made you sell for more that the cost of raw ingredients, even with competition you should always be able to make decent profit if you choose your product well. But once again i don't have that kind of money (or education), so i looked into making an internet business, and it was a long path but ultimately a dead end.

Ray I'm sorry for what must have seemed like a thread hijack. I was generalising and didn't get the impression at all that you were in it for a quick buck- I can tell from your posts you take it seriously.

With limited investment capital I have always prefered business to business dealings, rather than business to private customer. In other words setting up deals, agencies that sort of thing. Why? Because it takes effort to sell, and if you are going to take the effort to sell, at least focus on selling to those with money or businesses that need your service.

From that point raising further capital to expand into the "realer" world is easier- bank loans, investors, contacts etc. Not easy- but easier if you have an established record.

But the point is this- running a business means you need to get out there and make deals- talk to people and be proactive. It means planning, and going to people not waiting for them to find you. Imagine an estate agent who only sold properties on the net- they could wait a long time to get a sale. Use the net to support, not create.

I don't know what your business is but I'd be happy to offer you some ideas- but when was the last time you got on the phone or went face to face with people to create deals, build rapport etc?

What is the value you are delivering?

Jasper, this is a comment I would expect from someone on this forum. It's not wrong- it's just so incomplete!

Firstly, it's not as simply as just providing value, and even if it was, the term value is misleading and ambiguous.

I know your comment was designed to be thought provoking, but do you really think "turning up the value" is the answer?

Even if it was- a better question may be "What are you doing to get your value noticed?" Please don't try to make business this simplistic- it isn't!

I think you should blog about it :)

Yeah escapeplan. I would TOTALLY read your blog, I'm serious. Although you yourself seem to not have such a good relationship with blogs.

If you read the news lately, the porn industry is struggling at the moment because they also have huge problems with piracy.

As there are so much free picture online they have to do stuff like fake live video chats to make money. The users normally don't notice that they are watching canned material ;)

Actually it's pretty hard to make money with porn, or so I hear. Google HATES porn sites, so you'll have problems ranking well, and any site that links to you is in danger of being removed from Google. Also, there's a TON of competition. Still, might be worth a try. ;)

The value? I'm not exactly sure. I run cost per click ads that if get a sale (or a lead), i get a certain amount of money. I also have 2 websites NetGames - Free Web Games and Project Fox Delta but i don't know much html so they are mediocore, especially compared to big companys like twitter or google people are used to. A valuable thing for me is getting the experience I guess, that is a benefit other than making money, i know a LOT more about how advertising on the internet works and could probably work somewhere doing it. But wanted more a progressive business that keeps moving up

In a way, business isn't that simplistic, but in another way, it is.

If you can't see, crystal clear, what it is you are providing, how can someone who is in need of it, ever see?

If you say, I'm going to make a website that gives people this and that, you have an idea about what you want to give, now you try to find out if the market can appreciate that which you are giving.

And yes, part of that is reaching the market, which, in our current society, isn't that easy, since you are fighting for attention.

But it starts with you. What do you want, what can you do and where do you think the value is. If you can't answer that, or just say, I want to make money, I doubt you'll get very far.

You start with simple, than you complicate. But if you can't clearly see where you are wanting to go, you'll not get there.

Of course this is just my point of view ;)