It’s all one big scam!

My friend, Dave, had an article on his blog about making money online, and he featured one of my websites, WowPhilippines.  The first comment on his article came from another friend of mine, Bob in New York.  Bob was talking about Internet opportunities and wondering if such opportunities are all scams.

We see and read so many articles these days about how to make money online.  How to use the Internet to make an income.  People tell us this way and that way to earn a living on the Internet.

It’s all a big scam.

Right?

Or is it?

Sure, there are scams out there.  There are scams in every part of life, not just the Internet.  There are scams in real “brick and mortar” situations too.

There are many ways to make money online, many legitimate ways.  Pretty much every method of making money online is just an extension of how to make money in the brick and mortar world.  Let’s look at some ways to make money online.

Internet Stores

My site that Dave featured in his article, WowPhilippines, is a store on the Internet.  I sell gift items like flowers, teddy bears, food, jewelry and such.  For example, if a person lives abroad and has a loved one in the Philippines, where I live, he can send gifts which we will deliver to that loved one.  These kinds of services existed long before the Internet existed.  For example, let’s look at a service that is similar – FTD.  FTD is a flower and gift delivery business, just like WowPhilippines.  They have a website now, but they have existed for decades.  Before the Internet existed, if you wanted to send flowers to a loved one in a far away city, you would call FTD on the telephone, or you could visit an affiliated flower shop and make your order.  No different than our WowPhilippines service, except that in order to place an order for goods, you just go to our website and order the items you want, pay online, and we deliver.  There are thousands of such stores on the Internet (in every niche you can imagine), and these are just an extension of brick and mortar stores that have existed as long as man has been on the earth.  The only real difference is that the means of communication is different.  Instead of face to face, or telephone communications, it is done via the Internet.  No scam here.

Advertising

Another method of making money online is through having advertising on your website.  Let’s say you publish a website that provides information and/or entertainment, and you have many readers who come to visit your site and read your articles.  You can sell advertising on the site.  There are many different types of ads to choose from, or you can mix and match.  For example, there are ads where the advertiser will pay you a flat fee for a certain amount of time on the site.  There are ads where the advertiser will pay you whenever somebody clicks on the advertisement.  There are ads where the advertiser pays you a commission on any products (or services) sold resulting from clicks on the ad they placed on your site.  The number of ad arrangements is almost endless.  But, this is nothing new.  Such advertising has existed for centuries.  Think about it.  Newspapers have ads.  Magazines have ads.  Television has ads.  Radio has ads.  Any kind of service where massive numbers of people will go for entertainment or information are targets for advertising.  It is nothing new or surprising.  So, a website is just a newer method of entertaining people or providing them with information, and thus a natural place for people to advertise their products or services.  Nothing new, no scams here either.

Directly selling products or services

As a publisher of many websites, I also have products and services that I offer, and I advertise those products and services on my websites.  For example, a magazine or newspaper might come out with a special book or guide that they publish, and they will naturally place an ad in their newspaper so that the newspaper readers, who are likely buyers for the product, will also know about the availability of the book.  For example, here on Virtual Earner, I write about methods for making money through business, mostly online business, but not exclusively.  I also have a series of eBooks that I offer here called the Virtual Earner series of books.  Those books delve deeper into exactly how you can make money through various methods.  Naturally, anybody who would read this website would also be interested in the books, because they are of a similar topic, and offer more in-depth information.  So, selling such books is just a natural extension of this site, and because of that, they are advertised here.  No scams, just an offer for those who wish to get more detailed information on the topics we discuss here on the site.

So, you see, making money online is really not much different than making money offline.  It’s just a different communication medium that is used to make that money.  Just like there are scams in traditional media, there are scams on the Internet too.  But, it’s important to remember that just because something is on the Internet, that does not mean it is a scam.

Or, that’s my 2 cents anyway.