From the 1960s through the 1980s, the popularity of home-based businesses reached the stratosphere, with network marketing (aka multi-level marketing) emerging as the fad of choice for millions of would-be entrepreneurs. Since the 1990s, something known as "internet marketing" has quickly emerged as the home-based business of choice. In fact, many brick-and-mortar businesses are turning toward the model. Can an average consumer really make money online?
Legitimate Online Money Making?
Are these online money making opportunities nothing but scams? Can someone really make a living with their computer? Is Internet marketing for real or is it just another over-hyped, semi-fraudulent pipe dream?
"Making money on the Internet is not much different from making money anywhere else," says marketing consultant and bestselling author Janet Switzer. "It's just that delivering your marketing message - and sometimes even delivering your product via the Internet is faster, cheaper, and more effortless" (Switzer, Janet. Instant Income: Strategies That Bring in Cash for Small Businesses, Innovative Employees, and Occasional Entrepreneurs. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007).
What is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing isn't so much a business as it is a way to do business -- specifically a way to do marketing. Newspaper marketing, magazine marketing, direct mail marketing, and Internet marketing all have one thing in common - they are all about marketing!
One of the biggest mistakes people make when getting into Internet marketing is approaching it the way many Americans viewed the "gold rush" in the 1800s. A person can't just slap up a website and start making money. Making money on the Internet is all about the distribution of products, information, and services -- the same as making money offline.
Can an Average Person Make a Living on the Internet?
There are many online entrepreneurs making a healthy living through Internet marketing. Their numbers, however, pale in comparison to the many whose online endeavors have been disappointing.
"Making money from the internet may not be the easiest thing to do for a beginner," writes Daniel Molano, author of The Newbie Blueprint, a guide for those new to online marketing. "You must determine your risk-bearing ability prior to taking the plunge in this kind of business. If you fail to consider your risk appetite, it will surely turn out to be a suicidal move on your part, and your dreams of making money through the internet will fall like a pack of cards."
Those unwilling or unable to study and grasp the essentials of Internet marketing are advised to explore other money-making ideas to bolster their income. Internet marketing isn't for everyone.
The potential remains strong, though, for those who know what they are doing. According to comScore, a company that measures what it calls "digital marketing intelligence," the world's Internet population passed one billion in December 2008. Internet World Stats reports that number already stretching toward 1.5 billion.
Given the rise in technology, the increase in the world's population, and the growing dominance of the Internet, it's a safe bet that an entrepreneur with the right skill set, knowledge, and tools will succeed and thrive in the field of internet marketing.
