Internet business ideas and opinions about starting an internet home business are probably some of the most common on the internet.  Internet business opportunities and web sites dealing with them are ranked in the top 5 of web site searches on the internet.  Everybody wants to make some money and the internet seems to be the place to do it, the operative word here is seems. The reality, as I see it, is this: the internet is a scary place to venture out in and even scarier if you intend to make money on it.

People do things on the internet because they can get away with it and that makes the internet a place to be wary of.   Internet business ideas and opportunities abound and the main thrust of these are around Affiliate Marketing, (Aff.M.).  Aff.M. is basically selling some one else’s products or services and getting a percentage of the sales as a commission.  On the surface, this doesn’t sound like a bad idea.  With a closer look; the people who come out on top are the owners.  The people who think they are going to make money often come out on the short end of the stick.

Aff.M. is the rage on the internet right now; it’s the flavor of the month, and maybe the flavor of the year.  In the end, unless you own your own service or product, you are at risk of ending up with no business at all.  I personally do not consider Aff.M. a real internet business opportunity, not in the same sense that someone else has a product or service they own and they build and develop that into an internet home business opportunity.

The risk you take when you set up a web site that is entirely devoted to Aff.M. programs is that you are at the mercy of the owners of the programs.  If something out of your control happens to the programs you are featuring; you are instantly out of business with no plan B.  With this in mind, my internet business ideas about Aff.M. tend to be this: at the very least, for your survival and protection, you need to have Aff.M. programs on your web site as an addition to your site, not the sole source of income.

What I hate to see are these, “web sites in a box” , or PIPS, plug in profit sites, that advertise themselves as an instant internet business opportunity much like a cake mix in a box; just open, pour in water and you have yourself a cake.  Unfortunately, real internet home businesses are not that simple to start and make successful, despite how convincing the Aff.M. people are at their pitches.  You need to stay as far away as possible from these kind of instant businesses in a box offers, they simply do not work, at least not for the people on the working end of the offers.

Aff.M. is set out as a shortcut to a real business.  The only role that I would ever see being feasible dealing with Aff.M. is to add it onto an existing web site as a side line to your existing internet business opportunities.  If you have an existing web site, already have some traffic, and are already sustainable, then adding some Aff.M. programs makes some sense, not a lot, but some.

I find myself torn between advising people to either build a business that they have some control over or going to the dark side and become one of the millions of Aff.M. out there.  The problem lies in the percentage of people who do nothing but offer Aff.M. on their sites.  The percentage of those people who are successful is very low, too low for this type of scheme to be considered seriously by any one who wants to make a go of it in an internet home business opportunity.

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