Dumbbells and Internet Money Machines

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Dumbbells and Internet Money Machines

As I write this blog, a friend is across from me, writing website articles for a living. He makes good money off it, he tells me. He writes articles on various topics from science, to travel, music, and what-have-yous.

Today, he is writing about... dumbbells?!?

I like to write, but I can't imagine writing about dumbbells. How many witticisms and profound thoughts can you cram into a 600-word article about dumbbells?

Can't even stretch that topic into a long conversation so we wander off to other ways in which people make money off the internet. I mention, as always, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. And there's this supposedly Pinoy internet marketing guru who I think makes money doing black hat techniques. There are others who make modest but respectable sums doing honest online-related work - from blogging, to selling, to internet marketing, etc. And there's this someone else I know who actually makes tons of money from the internet - to the tune of... a LOT of money.

Can you believe that?

But it's true. There is real money to be made from the internet. It requires work, too, of course. You should find plenty of opportunities if you really look, and several business models to emulate. One just needs to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, the black hats from the white hats, the bogus from the legitimate, the scams from the real deals.

Read any credible internet marketer and they will tell you that in the internet, as in any brick-and-mortar business, you must truly be able to provide real value to customers. That could be actual products, or information, or service that truly improves, enriches and serves the life of man. There is no going around it. Figure that one out, and you've got your internet money machine. (or brick-and-mortar business, if that's what you prefer.)