Web Businesses

If you visit the 'Internet Businesses, Websites' section of Ebay, you'll find thousands of web sites for sale. Almost all of them are trash sites: adult or e-commerce affiliate sites that are extremely unlikely to be worth even the few hundred dollars they might sell for.

Once in a while a legitimate and valuable site is offered. Almost invariably, those sites are listed with a reserve that is not met. You might say that the owners have over estimated the value of their property, and that may sometimes be the case, but I suspect it is more that the high number of low value sites depresses the value of other sites. Few of the people shopping Ebay for such "opportunities" have any real understanding of the Internet and what it takes to make money from a web site, so the perceived value of all sites falls toward the lowest of the low.

It is, of course, possible to make money with adult sites, affiliate marketing, ponzi schemes and link farms. None of that is anything I'd want to be involved with, but if you don't have any concerns about the kind of company you keep, this is a direction to take. However, it's no more a pass to easy wealth and riches than anything else is: under belly marketing still takes hard work and plenty of it. It may even take more work: you are competing with millions of hopeful fools who think they are going to make money from yet another junk web site.

A legitimate site probably has far less competition, and in some specialty areas there may be almost no competition at all. The web is still young enough to have unfilled niches that can be exploited. That doesn't mean easy riches either: you need to fill that niche with quality and market it well. That takes effort and time.

It is possible to make money with an on-line business, but it's no more easy than any other kind of business. You'll need to work to get rewards, just as you would with anything else.

Macworld Digital Music & Video Superguide $12.95

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.