Today we are going to discuss real ways to make money online. This is a question posted by our member. Here’s his question:

“I have been working on the internet for 4 years now, seriously, trying to find something that really makes money and as of yet I haven’t made but $1. I’ve read books and more books about internet marketing and MLM and Google and on and on but no matter how many ads I place on over 20 sites, either I get no response or I get someone wanting to sell me something. What should I do?” - Ken Drake

Ken, you said that you are seriously trying to find something that really makes money online. But based on what I read from what you’ve written, you are seriously trying to find ‘quick’ ways to make money, not real ways to make money online.

Sorry for being blatant. I arrive at this conclusion because your experience tells me that all you know is about placing ads trying to make money. That sounds like the common ‘get rich quick’ idea - “Just Signup And Advertise, And Your Will Be Rich”.

It’s not your fault. Most people are like you. They want to make fast money online.

Can you make money with this method? Yes you can. Many of my clients make money that way. But you need to spend money to test which salescopy works, which product works, etc.

Many people don’t do enough testing and they quit too soon. Moreover, if you are on low budget, you may run out of money before you find a gold mine.

I can’t say it’s not a real way to make money online. This method of making money online simply require more skills than simply posting an ad.

Personally, I feel that your #1 mistake is that you are not building an online business.

Take my advice, stop thinking of making money and start thinking of building a business.

I spend money to develop the “Mind Your Own Business” list builder script and give it free to our members because I want our members to start building a real online business. Have you seriously given it a look?

I’m not saying the list builder script is the only real way to make money online. But it’s the way I recommend. Build your own list, run your own affiliate program and sell your own product. You can use your initial sales to fund your future advertising campaign. With your own list, you can also sell other people’s products.

Making money through this method is not without challenge. The main challenge is that you have to think of a good business idea. A poor idea will give you mediocre results, but an good idea can make you very rich in a short time.

If you are someone who aren’t too creative and not interested to think too much, a simpler way to make money online is Google Adsense. You don’t have to know how to write effective sales letter. You don’t have to do any form of customer support. It’s by far the simplest and truly autopilot way to make money online.

Click here to see how I started making money with Google Adsense. No creativity needed. Just keep working and result is almost guaranteed.

When I feel uncreative, bored and tired, I usually simply ‘waste’ my time away building Adsense sites. I don’t have to think too much. Just work - like a robot.

Last but not least, you mentioned that you’ve read many books on internet marketing. If you do, trust me, you already know the real ways to make money online. The real ways to make money online are the ways that you are most reluctant to follow. If you don’t believe, make a list of all the ways to make money online and arrange them in order of preference. Take your least preferred method and start working hard on it. You’ll be surprised that is when you start making real money online!

Learning how to make money with Google Adsense is probably the easiest way to make money online.

In this article, I will show you what it takes to make money with Google Adsense and more importantly, how I got started making money with Google Adsense.

Get ready for some interesting screenshots……

How Much Money Can You Make With Google Adsense?

The sky is the limit, frankly.

But one thing about Google Adsense is that you are not likely to earn a lot of money right from the beginning.

Seriously ask yourself this question:

Would you like to be paid $4k a month? Or being paid $0 in the first month but getting a pay rise of $100 every month thereafter?

If your answer is the former, Google Adsense may not be for you.

But if your answer is the latter, that’s the kind of money Google Adsense can give you - at the minimum!

What It Takes To Make Money With Google Adsense

I’ll keep my answer short. You need to:

Step 1) Conduct keyword research
Step 2) Churn out good articles based on the right keywords
Step 3) Build SEO friendly websites
Step 4) Build links (to boost your search engine rankings)

If you are new to internet marketing, every one of these 4 steps can be a challenge to you. But trust me, each of these 4 steps are simple skills that you can learn and master. Once you’ve mastered these 4 steps, you simply have to repeat the 4 steps again and again.

How I Started Making Money With Google Adsense

To tell you the truth, I had been making pennies from Google Adsense since 2004. But I started making ’significant’ income from Google Adsense after I made a major decision in September 2006.

The major decision was to subscribe to PLRPRO, a premium membership site that gives you 440 unique articles a month in 11 different niches.

One thing I like about PLRPRO is that the founder has done all the keyword research. That saves my work in doing Step 1.

Churning out good articles in Step 2 is also easy, since I already have 440 articles to choose from.

Back in 2006, the only things I needed to focus on was Step 3 and 4. (Today, PLRPRO has grown so much that even Step 3 and Step 4 are semi-automated. With the latest PLRPRO that is launched today, the whole process has been simplified tremendously.)

Before you jump into building your Adsense empire, let me give you a preview of what you can expect.

As I mentioned, I subscribed to PLRPRO in September 2006. In that month, I only built two websites out of the 11 niches given to me. Apparently I wasn’t one of the hardworking members in PLRPRO.

Here’s my Adsense earning from the two websites in October 2006 - $17.57. Nothing impressive. (I purposely blur part of the website url so that you can look at the change in income for each website.)

In November 2006, I made $64.45 with Google Adsense from just two websites. No new website was added in that month.

In December 2006, I added 3 more websites. My monthly Adsense earning was $76.23.

The 3 new websites got established fast and in January 2007, I achieved my first three figure a month Adsense income. In January, I also added 2 new websites.

Things were starting to look promising, weren’t they?

In February 2007, my total websites increased to 9 and my Adsense income for that month was $349.19.

It’s worth noting that out of the 9 websites, 2 of them made me more than $100 a month!

Sidetrack: Take a look at my February stats again and look at my new website that start with www.rom….. I’m very fortunate to have built a website on this niche.

Why?

Because…… Look at what this website is making me now!

$626.54 a month from Google Adsense from just one website! I may be lucky on this niche. So far, it’s my best performing Adsense site.

Ok, let’s go back to my progress……

After 1 year, in September 2007, my Adsense income was $1099.62.

After 2 years, in September 2008, I made $2725.28 from Google Adsense.

Can you see how the income grow exponentially?

All the earnings I’ve shown above are from websites built using articles from PLRPRO, excluding my Adsense income from other sources. This gives you a better assessment of the potential of PLRPRO.

Final Remarks

In my opinion, Adsense is the easiest way to make money online. As long as you are willing to work, you will surely make money. There is no need to know how to write good sales letters or presell affiliate products.

Moreover, in the process of making money from Google Adsense, you will master the skill of generating traffic from the Search Engines. With this skill, you can easily diversify into other ways of making money online, such as affiliate marketing.

Finding free MLM leads or business opportunity leads remains one of the challenges among internet marketers. And LeadsLeap is set out to help you on that.

For those who don’t know, LeadsLeap is a free leads generation system that allows you to build leads and advertise for free in our network.

If you are a LeadsLeap member, have you ever wondered, who is clicking your ad?

In our blog discussion today, I’m going to bring you to our back-office and show you some statistic of the leads that we send to you.

We did a similar study back in July but over the past 5 months, we’ve grown and it’s time to revisit the stats again.

What you are seeing above is a screenshot of one of the tables in our database. This table records the number of clicks received from a particular userid and IP address.

Of course, this screenshot doesn’t show all the records. I just want to give you an idea of how I gather my stats.

For rows with a userid, it means the click is either by a LeadsLeap member or someone referred by the member. For rows without a userid, it means the click is from a non-member.

When I sum up the results over 24 hours, this is what I get:

Members Referred Clicks = 3074
Non-members Clicks = 7368

Total number of clicks received = 10442

From this study, we can make the following conclusion:

1) LeadsLeap generates about 10,000 leads for our members everyday.
2) 70% of the leads are non-members from different IP addresses.

Compared to our statistic in July, the number of non-member clicks have jumped by 300%!!

If you are a LeadsLeap member, this is a good news to you because you get to share the leads that we bring to you.

If you are not a LeadsLeap member yet, and are looking for free MLM leads or business opportunity leads, join us now and start posting your ad in our network today!

Working with freelancers is one of the best form of leverage you can get in internet marketing. You leverage on two resources: time and skill.

The disadvantage is you are now in a position to manage people, and people management can be problematic, sometimes.

This is what one of our members, Gerald Lum, is facing.

Read his full question to me:

———————————————
Hi Kenneth,

I’m facing some problem with my online business. Its not as easy as it seems to be. Being an affiliate is easier than become the creator of the site. One of the problem that I faced is finding the right freelancer for my website development. I also have problem with designer. I usually outsource my website programming and design separately as my own experience tells me that most programmers have no good design senses.

My lst project I got ripped off $1k without getting my website till now. My currently new website designer cannot be contacted for a month. I have not gotten my design for my new website project and hence its delay. My programmer does give me a cheap prices. This could be the reason of the bad services. But I have budget and I really have to try my luck.

There is so many freelancer websites like elancer.com, getafreelancer.com. But how can we really find a good freelancer with budget prices? I have wasted a lot of time waiting for them to deliver my project. How do you find a reliable and with cheap services??

Thank you so much!

Gerald Lum
———————————————

Let me reorganize his challenge into 4 separate questions and answer them one by one:

1) How to stop yourself from being ripped off?

The golden rule is: Never pay your freelancers in advance, regardless of how good your freelancer “sweet talk”!

I had an experience where a freelancer, who had worked with me on several projects, requested that I pay him some money in advance because he had some financial problems. Considering our past working experience, I agreed. He then went missing for a couple of months.

If your freelancer insists that you pay him first before he can start work, the best you can do is to transfer the money to an escrow account. It is a third party account where your money is held by the freelancing website and will only be released to the freelancer when the project is completed to your satisfaction. Escrow protects both you and the freelancer.

You should never be ripped off if you insists on paying after project completion or using an escrow service.

2) How to prevent your freelancer from going missing in action?

You can’t stop this problem from happening, but you can prevent it.

And you prevent it right at the beginning……

Before you award a freelancer with the job, you should always PM (private message) the freelancer. You can PM a few preferred freelancers and see who can respond fast and well. Those who don’t even bother to reply a PM will never get a job from me.

Through PM, you can tell whether they are serious and competent in the project. Sometimes, you can also tell if they are professional or simply a student trying to make some quick bucks.

Also check if they use Skype, Yahoo or MSN Messenger. I will not engage a freelancer who is not ready to chat online.

When the project begins, always make it a habit to ask the freelancer for a dateline in everything he does. Be friendly and not being pushy. You can ask something like “When do you think this part can be done?”. Let him suggest a date to you.

Frankly, I don’t expect freelancers to meet the datelines. Having a dateline is just a way to make them commit, to give them a clear target to aim for and an excuse for me to press them for results.

In the event if you feel that the freelancer is not progressing, you can always use the dateline as the REAL dateline for the project. If the freelancer failed to deliver by the dateline, you can cancel the project and get another freelancer. In my entire online career, I’ve only done it once. In my case, the freelancer went the extreme of not answering all my emails after committing to the project. Thus I cancel the project after the first dateline.

Lastly, make it an effort to email your freelancer every few days and ask them if there is any update for you. This will further reduce the chance of them going missing in action.

3) How to ensure that your job can be completed on time?

If you need something to be done in a hurry, you must let the freelancer know the urgency before you award him with the job. Or else, you should understand that “most freelancers cannot complete their project on time!”

Sounds like a joke but this is the truth.

Once you understand this fact, all you have to do is to give enough buffer for your real dateline.

Let’s say a freelancer says he can get the project done in 7 days, you can expect the project to be completed in 3 to 5 weeks!

I’m not exaggerating.

This is especially true for programming type of job, where there are testing and debugging to be done.

If you expect the completion date to be 3 to 5 times longer than the suggested dateline, you will be happy that most of your projects are done “on time”.

4) How to find good freelancer at budget prices?

The key is this: The more you know, the less you pay and the better freelancer you can get.

For a $1000 project, I can have freelancers bidding from $250 to $1000. The question is, do you dare to choose the low-bidder.

You can try your luck, but ‘luck’ is not always reliable.

Alternatively, you can ask.

During the bidding phase, you can PM a few low-bidders, check if they understand your requirement fully and understand how they intend to deliver the project.

Some low-bidders will not reply your PM. Ignore them. Some may tell you that they’ve under priced. Ask them to re-quote. But there are some who really understand your requirement well and are willing to provide you with their solutions for the price that they offer.

If the proposed solution sounds, you can go ahead award the project to that freelancer.

However, this is only possible if you know exactly what you want. That’s why I said “The more you know, the less you pay and the better freelancer you can get.”

In some cases, you may not know exactly what you want. In such cases, you may have to add a bit of premium to the project and get a freelancer with good reviews, which usually will mean a higher price.

“I am an internet marketing newbie. All I am asking you to do for me is to introduce me to the internet marketing from scratch, that is leading me step by step to the internet marketing system. Presently, I have no website, no list and no business yet.” - Akinbiyi Yinka Akinrinola

Many internet marketing newbies have been asking me similar questions and I usually do not bother reply.

Why?

Because the question is too general. Also, I got a feeling that anyone asking such a question is usually not serious in internet marketing.

But today, for the first time (and also the last time), I’m going to answer this question and post it up on our blog, so that I can direct whoever asking such a question back to our blog.

For all the internet marketing newbies out there, there are only 4 steps to making money from internet marketing from scratch.

Step 1 - Make a decision

Step 1 is to make a firm decision that you are going to make it in internet marketing, no but, no however, no unless, no excuse!

If step 1 is not accomplished, there is no need to proceed to the other steps. Quit now and go back to your comfort zone. Internet marketing is not for you. Nothing is, until you make a decision.

Let me tell you something I’ve never told anyone.

I started to explore internet marketing back in 1999, made my first $100 some time in 2004, made my first $1000 in 2006 and made my first $10k in the same year.

What happened in 2006? Did I stumbled upon a secret formula? Not at all.

What happened was that my offline business failed in 2005. I was $50k in debt and I desperately NEED to find an alternative to make money, so as to pay back my loan and keep my company alive.

For the years before 2006, I had been exploring internet marketing, but I was doubtful whether internet marketing was for me. Moreover, I had many other opportunities available and frankly, internet marketing was the last option in my list.

By 2006, I’d tried 3 different offline businesses, failed at each one of them, and owed $50k to the bank. With little cash on hand, I ran out of all my offline options.

I was in a situation where I either make it in internet marketing or quit my entrepreneur dream and look for a job.

Not to give up my last option, I turned to internet marketing, with no other backup plan!

Here’s a little secret about the universe:

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Opportunities will be open to you. Ideas will come to you. Your saviour will appear.

So, before everything else, make your decision first.

Step 2 - Stop looking for shortcuts

Forget about shortcuts or quick cash. There is no shortcut. What does exist is leverage.

To make money fast, you need to leverage. You leverage on advertising to bring you more traffic in a shorter time. You leverage on freelancers to save your time and provide skills that will otherwise take you time to learn.

Other than leverage, there is no shortcut. You have to take the down-to-earth ‘boring’ steps of building websites, promoting them and doing all the maintenance work.

I’m not saying internet marketing is tough. It is tough initially because you’re still learning. Just like the first time you ride a bicycle. It was tough isn’t it? But once you get used to it, it’s as easy as ABC.

Step 3 - Decide on a business model

There are too many ways to make money online. You can make money from Adsense, PPC ads, Affiliate Marketing, Ebay, MLM etc.

So your 3rd crucial step is to decide on the business model that you want to adopt.

If you want to make money fast, one way is to become an instant guru!

I’ve seen many newbies who position themselves as a guru and start teaching people how to make money online. It works! Many of them who ‘dare’ to pretend to be a guru eventually becomes a real guru.

As a guru, you need to have your own website, your own product and your own affiliate program. That’s why I invested money to create the free M.Y.O.B List Builder Script for our members. Make this script work for you and you’ll become an instant guru overnight.

Read these two articles if you haven’t done so. They will shed some light for you.

What Are The Steps In Creating An Online Business

How To Drive Traffic To Your Website

Step 4 - Keep learning and keep working

Remember, there is no shortcut. You got to work hard and you got to learn fast while you work.

In offline businesses, you can hardly learn because very few people are willing to teach you.

The good thing about online business or internet marketing is that many people are willing to teach you, for free or for a very small fee. As long as you have your own business set up and are willing to learn the ropes, you will eventually grow and become another guru.

Lastly, after today, don’t ever call yourself an internet marketing newbie again. The faster you believe you are the guru, the faster you can succeed online.

I’m quite sure that you have constantly been bombarded with offers from different internet marketing gurus asking you to buy their products or other guru’s products.

The problem is, every product looks good. Even if you have money to buy all of them, you wouldn’t have the time to study them!

The secret, my friend, is to be selective in which guru you listen to.

Let me share with you a little experience of mine:

Some time ago, someone called me on my mobile phone asking if I was interested in making an extra $50,000 in the next three months.

Well, I bothered to answer that call because she was calling from an internet marketing guru’s office. I know that guru and I’ve purchased some high ticket items from him. That’s probably the reason why they have my number in the first place.

So I told her, “Yes, I’m interested.”

She went on to sell me a coaching program from another guru, whom I have not heard before, in a tactful and professional way and frankly, I was impressed.

Before deciding on whether to buy the coaching program, the first thing I did was to Google for the name of this guru and find out how he makes money.

Based on my research, this guru is a national speaker in the self-help industry. He has written many books and been featured in the national TVs. (I don’t know him because I live in Singapore, not US.)

If you remove all the bells and whistles, this guru basically makes money conducting seminars and coaching programs teaching people how to be successful.

I have no intention to become a speaker, nor am I interested to start any coaching program. So whatever experience that this guru is irrelevant to me.

What I’m try to tell you is don’t blindly listen to a guru simply because he is famous. Look behind the scene and find out what he does for living.

If what the guru does is what you envision to do, by all means, listen to everything he says. Or else, that guru is NOT your guru.

Get what I mean?

Let me give you another example.

A few years ago, I got into a membership coaching program by another internet marketing guru, Mark Ling. I invested in his program because he makes millions from Adsense and Clickbank by building little content websites in all kinds of niches that he knows nothing about.

That was what I envisioned myself to be doing and therefore, I got into his program and learnt everything he taught.

Speaking of him, the same membership that I was subscribed to is now free. I highly recommend you to get into the membership because there are tons of videos and tutorials that I used to pay to view.

Click here to get instant access to the free videos and tutorials that I paid to view.

That’s all for today. Remember, the next time you see an offer from another internet marketing guru, ask yourself, is the way that guy makes money the way you want to make money? If the answer is ‘no’, don’t waste your time on that offer.

Today we are going to continue our discussion on how to create an online business using the free LeadsLeap M.Y.O.B List Builder Script.

Let’s recap what we’ve discussed so far…

In our previous discussion on What Are The Steps In Creating An Online Business, I told you that there are only 3 steps in creating an online business. They are:

1. Choose an online business model
2. Create a website to deliver the model
3. Promote the website.

Out of these 3 steps, the most important step is Step Number One, choosing an online business model.

Your online business model can make or break your entire business. It determines whether you’re struggling to make ends meet or prospering everyday.

I’ve also showed you a powerful business model that can help you to build a list and make immediate cash at the same time.

I need to emphasize the importance of making immediate cash. The cash is not for you to keep. It’s for you to fund your expansion plan and advertising costs.

Recently someone come out with a new term called “Funded Proposal”. The idea is to build a list and entice your new prospect to purchases a low cost product. The profit from this initial sale is used to cover your marketing cost, which means the prospect has essentially paid for itself to be on your list.

The idea of a funded proposal can easily be achieved with the M.Y.O.B List Builder Script.

In another previous discussion on How to Create Profitable Business Ideas, I have shown you how to create an irresistible one-time-offer. If you combine the idea into the script and putting everything together, you will build yourself a powerful “fully funded” online business.

Ok, enough recap.

Today, I want to show to how to structure your online business. It can be a little technical, but it’s important.

When you create an online business, you have to make sure that your business model is created for different traffic sources. The reason is obvious - you want to get traffic from as many sources as possible.

First, you must understand that different traffic sources are good for different business models. Say if you have a blog, you can’t really use traffic exchange or PPC advertising to drive traffic there. Well, technically you can, but you are not keeping the traffic. The traffic will simply ‘flow through’ your blog.

Or if you have a squeeze page, you can’t really get much traffic from the search engine because there are very few keywords you can optimize with just 1 squeeze page.

So when you create an online business, you have to take a multiple prong approach. Here’s my “Best Of Trio” proposal:

1) Install the M.Y.O.B. script as the home page.

This is your main offer page where you give away a “too-good-to-reject” offer.

You can promote this page with almost any traffic generation methods, from PPC advertising, traffic exchange all the way to article marketing.

2) Install a wordpress blog under a sub-directory, say yourdomain.com/blog.

This blog serves two purposes:

i) It will eventually become a magnet to the search engine traffic.

ii) It’s a great way for you to communicate with your list and build rapport.

3) Start your own affiliate program.

With the M.Y.O.B List Builder Script, you can easily run your own affiliate program. Having your own affiliate program is important because it allows you to leverage on another powerful traffic generation method, i.e. viral marketing.

For example, you can get the Master Rebranding Rights to Affiliate ID Manager and give it to your affiliates. They in turn will give it away to other people in an effort to make some affiliate commissions and promote their other programs at the same time.

I hope you can now see that with the Trio working together, you will be able to get traffic from almost every traffic source available online. This is my proposal of how everyone can create an online business, especially a “built-to-last” and “profitable-from-the-start” online business. Set up your own Trio and start your own online business today!

I think it is “timely” that we talk about how to create profitable business ideas for your online business.

Why is it timely? Here’s why…

On Wednesday, I released our brand new List Builder Script, free for all LeadsLeap members. Shortly after the release, I received many emails from members asking what are the business ideas that can be used with the script.

Now, technically speaking, the script can be used for any niche and any business idea. The only problem is some business ideas may be more profitable than the others.

So in today’s blog, I’ll show you how to create profitable business ideas.

First, you have to decide which niche market to focus on and whether the niche is profitable.

If I were to start another online business tomorrow, I will have to make sure that……

1) The market has an ongoing supply of new products that I can promote.

2) People’s interest in that niche do not change too quickly. For example, I will not use the List Builder Script to build a business around “spyware removal” because once I provide them with the solution, they are not likely to want to hear from me again.

3) People in the niche are always craving for more information.

4) There are many affiliates in the niche that I can contact and JV with.

5) There are established websites where I can find lots of people interested in the niche. This is to ensure that I can easily find targeted traffic for my new business, through advertising or striking deals with the webmasters.

Examples of good niches are internet marketing, stock trading, forex trading, body building, holistic health and personal improvement.

If I found a niche that I see a potential in, I will ask myself 2 questions.

1) Can I find/create a useful product to giveaway?
2) Can I find/create a high value product to sell?

1) Can I find/create a useful product to giveaway?

In some niches, you can find some PLR products that you can give away. This is by far the fastest way to kick start your online business.

Another way is to create your own product, which may not be difficult at all.

The trick is to create something that is useful to the people in the niche.

Here is one idea that I just think off my head.

For example, You can create an ebook called “Online Scam Report - A complete list of scam (or near scam) programs you should avoid before you become the next victim”. Just go to Google.com and search for “scam”. You will be able to find websites discussing about different scam programs. Your job is to compile those programs into a book or if you are lazy, get a freelancer to do it.

2) Can I find/create a high value product to sell?

This is an important part in making sure that your business idea is profitable.

A profitable business idea should be able to help you generate immediate profit so as to fund your future expansion and cover your advertising costs.

This can easily be done with the One-Time-Offer feature in the free LeadsLeap List Builder Script and a powerful strategy that I’m going to share with you now.

The idea is to create a high value product worth thousands of dollars, write a sales letter that looks as if you are going to sell it for $197, and offer it for $9. This idea has never failed to work!

If you are in the internet marketing niche, the easiest way is to compile a huge package of PLR and MRR products that worth thousands of dollars.

Alternatively, you can create a high value product on your own.

For example, I’ve seen people giving away 1 website template and offer 10 website templates for $5 as a one time offer. This is a good and profitable business idea because website templates have high perceived values. At a great offer of $5, you bet a lot of people will bite.

Creating profitable business ideas is not rocket science. Once you can identify a profitable niche, all you have to do is to think of something useful to giveaway for list building purpose and something of high value to sell it cheap for immediate profit. Together with other backend sales, it is almost guaranteed that you’ll have a profitable business in both the short run and long run.

Many people ask me what are the steps in creating an online business. The answer is amazingly simple. But today, I’m going to make it even simpler for you.

There are only 3 steps in creating an online business.

Step 1: Select an online business model
Step 2: Create a website that executes the business model
Step 3: Promote the hell out of it!

Step 1: Select an online business model

There is one powerful online business model that I particularly prefer.

This business model was popularised by Mike Filsaime, who named this model as Butterfly Marketing.

Here is how the model works:

- You giveaway something that people want, in exchange for their email addresses.

- When these people opt-in to your list, you present them with a one-time-offer, usually a high value product at rock-bottom price. The conversion rate for a one-time-offer is usually 10%.

- You run your own affiliate program and encourage your subscribers to refer more people to your site.

- You can follow up with your list, recommend more products to them and make more sales in the future.

I like this business model because of 3 reasons:

1) You are building a list.
2) You make instant cash!
3) It’s a viral model, where your subscribers become your affiliates, who in turn refer more people to you.

So now you have it, a powerful business model that you can use to create an online business.

Let’s move on to step 2……

Step 2: Create a website that executes the business model

So, how do you create a website that can do everything that I mention above?

In short, you need a script.

Please don’t ask me what is a script. All you need to know is if you install a script to a server, you can have a website that can do all kinds of stunts that the script wants it to do. For example, if you can find an Ebay script and install it, you’ll get a website similar to Ebay. Get the idea?

So where can you find such a script?

You can either buy a ready-made one or get a freelancer to write one for you. A simple script will cost you about a hundred dollars. A multifunctional one can cost you a thousand dollars.

And here comes the good news……

I’ve created one for you, for free!

The script I’ve prepared for you comes with the following features
- everything discussed in Step 1
- a banner rotation system
- an exit popup system
- a complete autoresponder and list management system

We’re still working hard to wrap up everything and should be ready to deliver to you next week. But today, I would like to take this opportunity to give you a preview.

Take a look at the demo site here > User Demo

Take a peep into the demo Admin back office here > Admin Demo

Like it? It will be yours soon if you are a LeadsLeap member. (If you are not a LeadsLeap member yet, it’s not too late to join us.)

Ok, now that you know how to create a website that executes the business model, let’s move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Promote the hell out of it!

Well, just promote the hell out of it using all the traffic generation methods you have read, heard and seen. There is no short cut to this step.

There you have it - the 3 simple steps in creating an online business. I hope next time, you are the one who answer this question “What are the steps in creating an online business?”.

The story began when one of our LeadsLeap members complain that someone is advertising a scam program called Bux.to in our network. The scam ‘proof’ is given in this website:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/17/surprise-the-buxto-pyramid-scheme-is-a-fraud/

Because of this, I began my own assessment of this program to find out if Bux.to is really a scam.

For those of you who have not heard of Bux.to, it is a Paid To Click (PTC) program, where you are paid $0.01 for each website you personally view and $0.01 for each website your referrals view.

There is nothing wrong with PTC programs. From business point of view, each click costs the website owner $0.02, $0.01 goes to the member viewing the ad and the other $0.01 goes to the member’s sponsor. If the website owner charges $0.05 per click, which is a good bargain to most advertisers, he will make 60% profit. Good deal.

Before I continue, I probably need to tell you that I’m not a newbie in the PTC industry. To tell you the truth, I run Asia’s largest paid-to-read-email program, with more than 130,000 members. In other words, I know what I’m talking about!

When I study Bux.to’s business model, I found 2 things that make me feel uncomfortable.

1) Low advertising fee

Bux.to charges $19.10 per 1,000 member visits. This means an advertiser only pays $0.019 for each ad click.

Remember that Bux.to pays out $0.02 for each click? This means they are losing money for each ad click they sell.

To me, it is quite obvious that this pricing plan is not sustainable.

2) Selling referrals to members

Bux.to sells referrals to its members. The price is about $1 per referral.

I believe Paypal bans Bux.to because of this. (Bux.to is now using Alertpay as their payment gateway.)

To me, it simply doesn’t make business sense to sell referrals, unless my aim is to get rich quick instead of building a long-lasting business.

The reason is obvious.

If my members can make money from the referrals they’ve bought, it simply means that I am losing a lot of potential income in the long run.

If you don’t understand what I mean, ask yourself this question, “if you know that you can make $0.01 from Member-A whenever he reads an ad, and he can potentially read 10 ads a day (or earn you $0.10 a day), will you sell Member-A away for just $1?”

If your answer is no, why do you think the website wants to sell referrals for just $1 per referral?

I can only think of two reasons: 1) to get rich quick, 2) the website owner fails his maths.

Is Bux.to Paying?

If you google for Bux.to scam or Bux.to review, you will come across many people who are paid and many people who are not paid.

The general feedback is the payment is slow. The website says that members will be paid in 60 business days, but some people have waited for than 4 months and still not being paid.

It seems that they are now having a problem paying its members on time.

From my above assessment of the program, you can see that the program doesn’t have a long-term profitable business model. It may be very successful in the short run because many people can make lots of money in a short time. But in the long run, I do believe that the website will run into financial problem.

So is Bux.to a scam? You decide. You may be the lucky one who is paid.

For me, I’m not comfortable with its business model. I don’t believe that such a model is sustainable.

If you are advertising for Bux.to, I strongly encourage you to change your ad.