Saturday, August 23, 2008

Do You Really Need Money to Make Money?

The advent of the Internet has changed the economics significantly for starting your own business. Before the 1990’s, to start your own business you needed to spend $1000’s ot more each month on a location, products and marketing. But now, you can put up a thriving business with nothing more than $50/month, a computer, and the same amount of work.

If you could make $50 instead of sitting on the couch watching TV shows before and after your favorite show, would you do it? Would it be worth it to give up a couple hours of re-run television each week to make thousands of dollars?

What can you possibly hope to sell with only $50/month to spend on a product?

Information: Chances are you know more about a particular topic than anyone else you know. That makes you an expert. If you can put your knowledge on a topic into an e-Book, there are possibilities where people will buy it and be very happy with it. If you aren’t currently an expert in anything, you can become one. Learn all about a particular topic, then write an e-Book to teach other people. You’re selling both your newly acquired knowledge and the work you did putting information from different sources into a single location in an easy to digest format.

Note that you don’t need to spend a dime to get to this point. Even if you don’t own a computer, you can do all of this at a library, cybercafé or on a friend’s computer.
Once you have your information product ready, all you need is a website to sell it. It doesn’t need to be a fancy website, and you don’t need to worry about how you’ll collect money. There are a number of companies whose single purpose in life is to make it easy for us to sell things on the Internet. They handle the credit cards for you. All you need to do is write up a web page that makes people want to buy your product, then hook it to one of these payment vendors. Your website hosting will cost you no more than $30/month, and your payment vendor will simply take a small cut of every sale you make.

Now you’re spending $30/month, and you need to advertise your product so people know it’s available. You can take the other $20 and use it to buy Google, Yahoo, or some other kind of Internet-based ad. You can spend dollars on advertising in a suitable off-line publication. And, best of all, you can spend $0 and use various cost-free methods to advertise.

Visit article sites and give away valuable tidbits on the topic of your product. Not only will you show people that you know what you’re talking about, you’ll be creating links back to your website for people and search-engines to find.

Let’s say you’ve done all this, and you’re selling your e-Book for $20. Assume that of that, you end up with $15 after your payment vendor takes their cut. Two sales per month cover your website hosting costs completely. Of course, you can see you’re putting in real work and real hours of time on this.

At $15 per sale, you only need to sell 67 copies above your monthly minimums to make $1000. That’s an average of fewer than 6/month. Much of the work is done up front. Once you set things in motion and gotten the ball rolling, it takes a minimal effort to make sure that the money keeps rolling in. Once you reach the maintenance phase on one project, you can begin a new one. Maybe the next e-book will be worth $100? You’ve already paid for web-hosting, too. Do you see where this can lead? Your incremental costs are minimal.

If it doesn’t seem worth it to spent 10-50 hours setting up a business that will only earn $1000-$5000/year, stop and think about this: If you can push the profits from one info-product to $5000/year, then stop and start working on new product while the first one continues to make $5000/year, you’ll quickly be making $10,000/year. Keep doing it and you could quickly be making $50,000/year.

You really need some dough to set up your own internet business.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Is Graphcard Becoming a Let-Down as Africa's dependable Internet Payment Solution?



Graphcard acts as an online payment solution which allows members to convert their Graphcard funds into an online Visa card. This is accomplished by simply purchasing a virtual card using the funds from one’s Graphcard account.

Graphcard then allows the account holder to view card details such as the card number, expiry date and CVV2 code via their secure 128 bit SSL encrypted website. The virtual card does not have personal information such as names and enables Graphcard account holders to shop online as they would with a traditional credit card but with the added benefit of anonymity.

Graphcard members can convert their fund to online Non personalized Visa prepaid debit cards to pay for services online. Graphcard’s claim that it acts as a means of payment for 1/3 (250 million) internet users in over 260 countries who don't have access to traditional credit cards is being marred in recent times by series of criticisms by its subscribers.


Subscriber’s criticisms range from:



  • Referral commissions not being paid


  • Lack of communication whenever major changes are made to their operations e.g. the removal of e-gold from its services


  • Delays in getting credit Cards


  • Login Problems e.g. Firefox users cannot login to Graphcard


  • Funding is a bit of a challenge; especially if you are located in Nigeria. The easiest way is to have someone else with funds in his/her Graphcard account transfer funds to your account


  • Delays in Shipping i.e. late arrival of ordered items, an example was a DVD ordered by one of my referrals for the past 3 months now, this item has not been shipped by Graphcard. I believe if an estimated arrival date is included on their site for goods bulkshiped, it would go a long way to help.


  • The recent removal of e-gold services from their operations is somewhat fool hardy in my own estimation; although e-gold inc. is trying to put its house in order after its indictment (See current News on e-gold Indictment story here). We loyal citizens intending to do businessonline are now left with the option funding our accounts with Wire transfers, Money gram and Western Union, while Cheques are meant for US subscribers only.

The advent of credit cards in Nigeria would have been a welcome development but that is not the case. There are many setbacks associated with credit cards issued by Nigerian Banks.


I do believe Graphcard will take steps to look into all the points mentioned above and make amends if they do not want to lose their loyal subscribers in droves.



Thursday, August 7, 2008

Do You Want to Build your own online business and Make Money?

Building an online business can be a daunting task for a beginner to embark on.

Today most of us who are novice look at the internet as an easy opportunity to make money. A majority of curiosity seekers constantly look for options and opportunities available online to add some additional income to there existing income. Why not, it can be done if you are determined to do it. Many people have already succeeded here with their hard work and determination and now it can be your turn.

I’m sure many would have gone through the rigours of researching, testing which online businesses are genuine or otherwise; but the fact is that there millions of internet opportunities out there with very few regulations in place, leaving many sincere individuals susceptible to fraudsters and swindlers.

Every day that goes by, thousands of people are being recruited as would-be entrepreneurs into businesses that do not hold water. Examples are MLM, Pyramid schemes, Hyips, ponzi, marketing schemes and a host of others.

It is always advisable to establish whether the opportunity is legitimate or a scam before parting with any money. The lure and offers of well built scam sites are so attractive that it is hard to believe that it is not legitimate.

Make it a point of duty to be wary of those sites that make huge income claims, like earn $5,000 in two weeks; they probably don’t live up to their promises. Such claims simply outrageous and if that amount is perhaps fives times your current salary, do you really think it is possible to earn such a huge pay packet in such a short period of time with no experience. This is ridiculous. The only way you can earn such staggering amount of money is to have multiple streams of income, passive income on autopilot and a lot of ways which would be explained as time goes on.

Legitimate online businesses create an avenue for you to earn decent money, and there are several types you can choose from. There are jobs that are ideal for students, retired people, moms and those who are unable to leave there homes for some reason. They also keep you away from the stress you often get in office. You can enjoy the freedom of working at home and at the same time you can earn money that is similar to normal office job.

An online home business is like any normal business, you will need to work hard at building it over a period of time to produce five figure incomes. You can select any of them according to your capability and schedule. However it is best to spend lot of time and effort in searching for a job that will be appropriate for you.

You also need to seek the help of websites, who can help you sort out the grain from the chaf. When you seek the help of such websites, you will need to ensure that they are reliable and have been in this field for number of years. It is also a good idea for you to talk with other people on forums. This would help you get a home based job that is 100% risk free.

Before you start an online business, working at home, try to clarify any of the doubts you may have. Also try to get a better picture of this type of work and the requirements it needs. Take time to look on the Web site to see if there is any contact information, a phone number you can reach, an email address or a Contact icon like an envelope; send a short message expressing your interest in the opportunity and see if you receive a response. Check also to see if there is a physical address on the Web site as this adds credibility to the site.

Look for logos on the Web site of the respectable bodies on the internet like i-Cop.org, Truste.org, the Better Business Bureau (BBB), Alexa Ranking, click on these logos and you should see information about the site. You could also look up the domain on the DomainTools.com (previously called Who is) Web site and you will see the registration details, spend time to see if they look legitimate.

For instance you do not want to see a phone number listed as 1234567890. Taking these precautions will help you avoid any chances of failure and being scammed. Though it can take some time to find the right business opportunity, but when you do so, you will reap the proceeds from all your efforts.

Don't be discouraged though. You really can learn how to make money online.