The Parlour: Selling Nothing & Making Money over the Internet

1. Selling Nothing & Making Money on the Internet ...
by Decklin

As this wierd little website of ours has grown over the past two years, the email address listed on every one of these pages has probably been duplicated in every spammers' cd that was ever published. Leastwise it seems that way from the inundation of spam that is received daily

We must have received a desperate communication from every ex-employee, office holder or parliamentary member of the Nigerian Government. Makes us wish we'd kept a collection ~ it would have been very entertaining reading! Of course, speaking of members, if we'd applied every patent medicine that has been earnestly recommended we'd be in the Guinness Book of World Records by now.

Every virus in the planet has also come our way, every triple-x site has attempted to glean our monthly $29.99 and, up there in the mass-mailing categories, are the endless circular get-rich-quick schemes. Ah, how the chain-letter has evolved since it was invented by the post-office to boost the sales of postage stamps (just kidding!).

Despite all this, you'll see that, elsewhere on the site, we have links to free classified ads, several pages of quick link tables to search engines and a plethera of affiliate links and banner advertisements. Most of these provide a very modest income if anyone actually buys something, but the hard cold facts are that the vast majority of sites such as this one would have to spend $100.00 in advertising for every $2.00 earned. It doesn't take a PhD in math to notice the ratio is not very conducive to building your fortune, let alone paying for the web-hosting and other monthly costs!!

Why spend money on advertising you ask? Sadly, these days, it is extremely rare for any site to gain a significant number of visitors without having some kind of advertising budget.

3. Knowledge is valuable ...

Let's not re-invent the wheel. Build on what's gone before. Stay away from the wild schemes and look hard at what does work. Get hold of an old copy of The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard so you become a bit more aware of what is 'really' going on and take some time away from the flood of junk mail and the habit-forming intoxication of following endless chains of web-links. Switch the computer off - go to the mountains for a few days vacation (or visit a city if you normally live in the Sierras). Woah! Not now, wait till you've finished reading this article !!

OK Let's just assume you've taken a week off and your carpal tunnel syndrome is somewhat relieved. You've woken up, smelled the coffee and realized that what you need to do if you want to make money from the internet is to actually offer 'something'. It is usually very hard to sell 'nothing'. Those few hours away from it all blew the cobwebs away and you have also realized that you need some place to sell from, some way that people to whom you are selling can find you and some means of getting paid.
In days gone by you would load your wares into a cart and trudge from door to door. The old travelling salesman has morphed into a web page nowadays but the buying and selling psychology is just the same. There is only one important difference: today it is the customer that travels. The problem is, most of that travelling is quite aimless and extremely fickle.

At this point you realize that you need the equivalent of the market stall with a sign ( your own website and its unique name) and that if its just parked on a side-walk by the information highway only an insignificantly small number of random visitors will actually pause at your stall. How do you make an impact on a system that has over 200,000,000 surfers on-line at any given time? How do they find stuff on the web? Well, mostly by using search engines. These days, if you set up a web page, uploaded it to a web hosting service and just sat back - maybe six months later you might be listed somewhere in the engines, on page 160 out of 160 pages - if you're lucky! To be seen, the sad fact is, you have to pay. To make sales, you have to be seen consistently.

By taking the time to think about the situation then, we have already gathered some useful knowledge. We started with nothing and now we have something! It follows that knowledge about the internet and web-based marketing is an extremely valuable commodity in itself and there are literally hundreds of people making a living doing exactly that ~ selling knowledge..
Many provide 'free websites' and offer affiliate programs where you can earn commissions on sales, and build your own network of sub-affiliates but - make no mistake - you still have to work hard to get that traffic and make that sale.

Many programs are poorly disguised multi-level pyramid schemes, others - more mainstream, such as the ones we recommend below - only offer two levels. The choice is bewildering, even to those who may be considered 'net-savvy'. If you intend to use the internet to supplement your income then, in our opinion, working alongside the experts in the field becomes a necessity.

As not every system suits everybody however, we are presenting two 'experts' for you. We recommend you look into both Ken Evoy's SiteSell and Corey Rudl's Marketing Tips ....

The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet - Learn from the best. The author of this site, Corey Rudl gets over 1.8 million visitors to his websites monthly, does 6.6 million dollars in sales online each year (yes, that is $6,600,000), and personally makes hundreds of thousands of dollars from his online businesses... all from his one small office. So listen to what he has to say as he knows what he is talking about when it comes to starting and promoting a business on the Internet.

Click here to learn the most efficient and fastest way to make money on the Internet now. He reveals all his unconventional tips, trick and techniques with examples.
I highly recommend it.

2. Internet Math ~ 1 + 1 = 0.08%

Here's the background ... on average it takes 12,000 page-views of a banner ad to have 100 visitors actually get curious enough to click on the ad and be taken to the sales page of the merchant. Of course not everyone is actually doing that because they want to buy something, they may just be curious or even if half-interested may be turned away due to price, delivery or any of dozens of reasons unrelated to the product.
As an example, some people hate pop-ups or pop-unders with a passion - they should be used with great care, if at all.
I know, I digressed ... of those 100 visitors only 'at best' 2 might actually buy something within the short duration of the 'cookie' that is typically used by the vendor to track the referalls. Let us suppose that all is well, the purchaser doesn't use the cache and cookie washer provided by AOL, the purchase is paid for, the goods are delivered and the 5% commission is registered. Do we get the money? No - we have to wait until the amount owed creeps up above the 'monthly threshold' of $25.00 or $100.00. A large majority of affiliates probably never get paid ~ they probably abandon the program!. Meanwhile, the advertisers have had hundreds of thousands of 'views' for their banner, logo and advertising message.

How, you ask, did we get those 12,000 page views anyway? Well, we probably listed with a number of the biggest pay-per-click search engines and bid for keywords describing our site. The more we bid, the higher we appear when Joe Public logs on to his favourite search engine and looks for #your keyword# . You don't think that people find your site by accident, do you?
Finally, you can see where this is leading. Apart from a tiny minority of successful sites, the real winners are the advertisers. So, to make money on the internet from nothing we need to think a little more creatively.

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