Is it Possible for the Average Person to Make Money on the Internet?

With the cost of everything increasing due to rising gasoline and energy costs, many people are looking for ways to make extra income from home. Anxious to cut out the cost of commuting, more people are looking online from their computers to see if they can generate more money to try to make ends meet or even get ahead. For the most part, we're just going to have a little fun picking apart the ones that don't work to try to help others from wasting their time and their money.

For those of us who just got their property tax bill in the mail, or just received yet another increase in their electric or home heating bill, just to list a few of the reasons why the search for more income has become a priority, it is only natural to do a search through Google or Yahoo to try to find out if some interesting part-time or full-time work exists. In the case of people who are accustomed to receiving a regular paycheck from their 9 to 5 job, quite a few are disappointed to find "opportunities" in which they're only paid commissions on products they have to spend time promoting, or are asked to "invest" in an opportunity that promises a lot of income working "only 10 hours a week." This isn't to say that there aren't some legitimate opportunities out there requiring sales efforts or up-front investments. The problem is, that there's no way to verify the potential.

A quick glance at an inquiry placed with the Google search engine at the time of this writing, revealed the following: tips on how to hold garage sales, how to sell clothes on consignment, how to offer your services as a one-man mover to people who can't afford to hire a moving company, and how to sell things on E-bay. While some of these ideas may bring in some cash, the problem with all of these ideas is that you either must "sell" your services to a previously unknown customer, or "sell" your goods to somebody who might just happen to walk in your direction. The idea of selling things on E-bay appears to be about the best idea of the lot, because you can at least reach more of an audience for your goods that way. Moving people's furniture for pay, involves finding someone in the mood to move to begin with, negotiating with that person as to what they are willing to pay, and then collecting when the job is done. The customer whose goods you just helped move, may not have the cash on him just then, so you may have to wait until payday or some other opportune time to rake in your windfall. Most people would probably agree that a garage sale is just a temporary way to raise money, and not a way to make a steady income.

The next "winner" we had on Google, involved doing paid surveys from home. At least more and more of the promoters of this method of extra income from home aren't requiring an advance payment of $39 or $49, or even $79 before allowing you to get started. The problem with doing paid surveys is that in many cases, the person wanting to do the survey won't fit the profile the company is looking for, the company doesn't pay for four to six weeks due to their "pay cycle,' the company wants to "pay" by entering you in a drawing in which you have a "chance" to win money, or they want to pay you by shipping you the product they're selling. A number of web sites that have people participating in discussions about doing surveys online for pay report a lot of frustration with doing them, because of the resulting amount of spam they get in their e-mail inboxes. When you agree to do a survey for pay, and finally find one that agrees to do just that, you usually end up agreeing to giving out your e-mail address "for marketing purposes." The next thing you know, you have over 100 e-mails a day from companies that usually just want to sell you something. Completing online surveys for pay may work for some people, but it is impossible to verify the income potential, and a lot of the participants in this field seem to just be gathering e-mail addresses and selling them to lead generation companies for a quick buck.

Our next contestant on Google gets us all excited about affiliate marketing. This idea has some great potential. The problem is, the individual marketing the idea of affiliate marketing wants $167 of your money up front. The ideas may work with this particular vender and they may not. At least there is a phone number and a fax number with this offer. Most of the time, there's no phone number, and if you want more information, you have to send an e-mail. The testimonials attached to this kind of opportunity don't ever seem to have last names or phone numbers. Income claims with this opportunity are in the $10,000 a month range. Still, you have to ask yourself if it's worth spending $167 with someone you've never met, and whether you'd get your money back if this deal doesn't work out for you, and all the while you just wanted to make some extra money from home instead of spending it.

The next entry talks about using your expertise to answer questions from people who want medical advice, if you're a doctor, or legal advice, if you're a lawyer. The big question, of course, is how to find people willing to pay for that advice. Other advice from the same entry talks about selling your crafts, literary skills, and other such personal items online. Again, where do you find the customers?

A sponsored link, giving you advance warning that the information you are seeking will cost you something, promised riches using Google Adwords, not Adsense. These ideas may be good, but when you click on the link, you are asked to give out your name and e-mail address in order to receive further information. A lot of business opportunity venders like to get you on their e-mail address opt-in list, offer their opportunity to you at least seven or eight times by e-mail, then offer related opportunities the same number of times, and if that fails, sell your e-mail address to another vender as part of some lead generation list.

So, what's a person to do who just wants to find ways to make extra money from home? Keep searching. Eventually, you may find something that you can actually verify in terms of its potential and not something that just wants to sell you on the potential to earn money. A number of spammers like to send e-mails about how to get government grants or how to make money on E-bay or Google by offering free software that only costs $1.95 for shipping. The fine print says that when you pull out the credit card to pay the $1.95 for shipping, that you're agreeing to pay an ongoing $39.95 or $49.95 every month, plus sometimes a one-time $199.00 fee, all charged to your credit card. YOU have to take action to cancel the credit card authorization within a very limited period of time after authorizing the $1.95 original charge, or the spammer will keep taking your money. The reason for bringing this up is that too many business opportunities seem to just want to take your money and leave no way to get any recourse if their deal doesn't work out other than for you to dispute the charge on your credit card. And all the time, you just wanted a chance to make some money from home using your computer.

As gas prices continue to rise, more companies may offer the kind of work-at-home telecommuting that most extra incomers from home are probably looking for. These type of opportunities for a regular paycheck and a chance to earn some real money may exist, but they're tough to find and even tougher to verify. Generally speaking, an opportunity to make money online probably won't live up to expectations if they want money up front, that won't allow you to talk to others doing the same kind of work you expect to be doing, or require all your "training" to be done either through recorded conference calls or even live conference calls. It still seems like the best possibility to earn money online on a regular basis, is to find some way to directly market your services or products to a niche market where you remain in control, then to rely on someone else to claim there's a market out there for some product or service while expecting you to find the customers. To make money, it's obvious that you'll have to do some type of selling of a product or a service. It is likely to be more useful to identify who your buyers are first, and who is spending the money on that product or service you have to offer, instead of buying into someone else's hype that you'll earn a lot of money doing what they do, AFTER you've given them your hard-earned money from your day job.