Welcome back... Michael Kay Research Director HBB Research  Have you read the latest HBB Review HBB Review's second article is on SUCCESS ON THE WEB.. and is called Of Scams and Passion Assessing Business Opportunities There are thousands of pre-packaged opportunities out there. To rank as a true opportunity your selection must be a "designed" business that deals with most of the list in the do-it-yourself letter. An affiliate opportunity is not a pre-packaged opportunity merely a product to sell. Pre-packed opportunities fall into a few different types of which the biggest are Product resale opportunities: here you buy the products and resell them but you do it through a pre-created web site. In e-books there are sellers of book resell rights who create these opportunities, but they exist in golf, in pornography, in casinos – everything you can conceive of. The supplier supplies the product you supply the traffic. For an example look at eBookWholesaler Storefronts or thematic malls: here the supplier creates a partly customizable web site that can carry large numbers of affiliate products. Typically they come with a pre-determined base set. Your role is to create a theme and generate traffic.  Two worth looking at and comparing are CB Mall and 1st Pro. Both are based on Clickbank and so are directly comparable. The other totally famous one is Plug-in Profits Network sales opportunities: the supplier provides the product. Your role is to sell the product to your friends and relatives and unless you have a REALLY big family, lots of other unknown folk. Typically these opportunities come with MLM structures attached so you can build residual income through a downline. These opportunities are often embedded in thematic malls.  There are thousands of these kinds of opportunities of which the #1 player is SFI Pyramids: are investment schemes where the initial entrants receive a return from the cash derived from the investments of the later entrants. They usually collapse. However they can be managed for some degree of stability and are sometimes embedded inside other opportunities. There are many types of investment scheme on the web, but if you strip away the veneer the underlying engine is, typically, an investment pyramid.  A couple of examples: look at Mazu and Empowerism (the investment component). Aggregators: these are firms like Amazon, iTunes, Rhapsody, Salesforce.com and others that provide the means of creating a product (a CD or a book) and then feed it into their own distribution system. By far the biggest sellers are the thematic malls and the network opportunities with MLM. All share the huge advantage for the beginner: most of the set up work is done for you. All share the same disadvantage in that they don’t solve the traffic problem.  Your biggest problem is deciding which one to go with. All will claim to make huge amounts of money, so that’s no answer. So you need some rules of thumb, here are the top four: Is the supplier reputable? Is it a scam? In the offline world, there are all kinds of ways of assessing if a business is a scam. Dunn & Bradstreet, for example, will give you the scoop on their finances. Looking up whether they've been sued will help.  On the web, it is not as easy. The vast majority of opportunities are created by companies with little or no information about them. If they've been sued, chances are they settled without trace. If they offer a money-back guarantee you know 70% of people will not bother and the majority of the rest write it off to experience if they are scammed. There are sites that look for scam information: but many of these sites are close to scams themselves. Scammers by the way don't necessarily go for large amounts of money. Multiple small amounts are much less likely to be pursued. Does it fit your personality? Can you generate a passion for it? If you’re in business strictly to make money, you may succeed but the chances that you won’t are very high.  Businesses that are in it for the money tend to chase the latest ‘big idea’, they get unfocused, confused and become unprofitable.  Select something you care about and can develop a ‘passion’ for. Can the organizer make money out of it?  Is it stable over the long haul? There are few things worse than investing time and energy in an opportunity that is going to die.  To get a feeling for the inherent strength of your business opportunity, do an offline search if the business is big enough (though big businesses do not necessarily stay with a business idea, or pursue it effectively.) Ask yourself if the opportunity generates money for the seller: this seems silly. You are often paying to get into something. But a one-time payment for a business opportunity is rarely a recipe for long term stability. The seller should be driving long-term income from it: classics are hosting fees, affiliate fees and royalties from compulsory products, upgrade fees and so on. Ask yourself how they are going to stay in business. If the answer is not obvious: don’t touch it.  By the way, some people get resentful if the supplier makes money out of the product. This is patently ridiculous – they created it, they need the money to stay in business to support it, and anyway ‘why not’? But ridiculous or not it is true. These are the same people who cut off the ends of your affiliate links, robbing you of your commission, even when it is not costing them anything!   Folks are funny. How does it make money? How do you make money out of it? How much? What are the projected returns? How certain are they? How much can you make?  A high yielding investment program may ‘guarantee’ 12% per month –until it collapses. An affiliate mall may make nothing unless you are very active in promoting it. What experience do you have in doing something like this; can you be sure of earning anything? Or is this a learning exercise? Does it align with other things you want to do – for example, complement a current business? Selecting a pre-packaged opportunity seems like playing the children's game 'pin the tail on the donkey', yet it needn't be so. Remember, this is a business transaction not a marriage. Yes, you should be able to raise some passion for it, but divorce is easy and very few opportunities have exit costs - you simply stop playing!  Going pre-packaged may cost you money and time, but if that yields you learning it could be the difference between getting into the web and sitting for ever on the sidelines Michael Kay Thoughts to Chew on...   Pre-packed opportunities are by far the easiest way to get started on the web and many successful people started this way. However, the ones that went on to riches seemed to go for customizable opportunities then on to own products and finally to creating opportunities for others.  Here are some other thoughts you might consider: Scams are the bane of the web. There will always be scams and although they remain illegal in most jurisdictions they can hurt a lot of people before they are closed down. The reasons scams work is our own internal pressure to make good. We scam ourselves most of the time. Repeat after me: if it looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true! Pre-packaged opportunities are often sold as 'passive'. You put this little engine on the web and it puffs out cash. Well, if you find one tell the rest of us.  Sure you can create passive engines, but they remain passive unless you fuel them - traffic! The big risk isn't money - though sometimes you can get stung in the network businesses - it's time and the erosion of your dreams. Pick with care! HBB Research's latest report picks up the issue of selecting business opportunities and explores it in depth.   If you want to find out more, you should get hold of The Gold Rush: Realizing your Dreams in the Coming Web Home-based Business Bonanza.  This 260+page book will give you a deep understanding of what it takes to be successful. If you want to find out more about The Gold Rush: Realizing your Dreams in the Coming Web Home-based Business Bonanza click on the text below. .  Take me to The Gold Rush.  Warning! If you arrived at this site through a search engine, you need to know where you are. You have landed on a subscriber page for HBB Research's Insights Letter or of the HBB Review. HBB Research is one of the first research programs into web home business linked to a business school. The Insights Letter and the HBB Review are FREE newsletters that provide ideas and insights to mostly new web entrepreneurs Subscribe to "The Insights Letter" Now!! Sign up for HBB Research's FREE "Insights Letter" and receive a long series of FREE insights into the coming boom on web home-based business plus your FREE subscription to HBB Review.  No obligation Enter Your Name: Enter your Email: Copyright Michael Kay HBB Research 2006

The Gold Rush...To Invest in Your Future Click Here Now! The GoldRush is HBB Research's first Report on its research to date. It is possibly the first overview of web home-business on the web and will form the first generation of HBB Research's research program. At 260 pages of single space it contains the equivalent contentof 5 ebooks. A Unique Approach that Delivers Value on a Continuing Basis... The Gold Rush is a LIVING BOOK. As HBB Research's research is on-going, we decided to offer a year of updates with the book. This means a stream of new materials that will arrive as created - FOR FREE. This is an amazing offer -- it is like getting a regular shot of insight for nothing and no effort. This is just the start of the exciting developments at HBB Research.  News Flash HBB Research Selects "Internet Marketing" Program HBB Research has finished its evaluation of internet marketing offerings already on the market to recommend as the primary textbook in its offline/online programs. Go to the News Flash Our Next Research Invitation... What do you know about business? Web home business is simply a unique branch of general business. It has developed its own jargon, largely derived from direct selling. But many concepts in general business apply as well. Click on the link below and try our FUN Questionnaire that exposes you to some of the core concepts of business. Get the answers and see how well you did! Go to the Business Questionnaire Latest Headline Articles On Web Business From SubmitYourArticle. These automated feeds are valuable tools for building web site content automatically For more information go to SubmitYourArticle See the SubmitYourArticle "Editor's Pick" of the best article submitted this week.  Editor's Pick Read the articles captured in our continually updated articles section. These Guest Articles are from some of the best minds writing on the web today Guest Articles Marketplace Note:  Sources on Continuing Education... Continuing to learn is a vital function of web home based business.  One of the best sources is to sign up with top product suppliers for their newsletters. Typically they provide a number of good learning points and you are under no obligation to buy. Every issue of The Insights Letter, we will recommend a site where such free learning is available. One of the core skills required by anyone trying to sell something on the web is writing copy. Salesletter writing is an art. You may think them repetitive and boring but they are actually quite tricky to write. Now sales letters only convert in the few - say 1 to 5 - percent range, which is hardly a recommendation. New approaches are being developed, but as of today the sales letter is the leader in the field. Of cpurse, you can get someone to create your letters for you - and pay up to $5,000 for the privilege. Building the skills is much cheaper. There are a number of very famous copy writers on the web - such as Yanik Silver - but the one we have picked is a good solid craftsman with deep experience. Stuart Elliot has written an ebook on how to write copy thatis easy to understand and quite low cost. To sell it he provides an email series that is well worth reading in its own right. To sign up for the series go to Stuart Elliot Summary of the Sources of Knowledge mentioned so far: Storefronts: we recommended you go and look at the materials provided by the two leading Clickbank offerings CBMall and 1st Pro Storefront. Both have excellent materials. SEO search engine optimization by Brad Callen. Perhaps the leading thinker and practioner on the web XSite Pro a report on how to find products that sell. This report is credited to Paul Smithson. Note SiteBuildIt also has tons of information on driving your business Revenge of the Mininets a brilliant concept for driving search engine position by tying mini-sites together. The author is Michael Campbell eBay Profit Pill Newsletter a solid newsletter stuffed with interesting facts about making money on eBay Stuart Elliot a seriously good introduction to the issues involved in writing sales copy Search Clickbank: HBB Review... The second article is available at HBB Review, the subject is SUCCESS AND YOUR PASSION. This long article links personality issues and web success in each of the seven web domains. It will be available for the next few Insights Letters. Click Here to go to the Article Of Scams and Passion Enjoy! Under Construction HBB Research's Web Home-business eBook Store is currently under construction. It will focus on books, tools and Specal Reports for the web home entrepreneur. And Finally... At HBB Research we believe in the value of feedback. Each Letter we will ask you for your thoughts on what you are looking for..Here's the question for this issue "What would you like HBB Research to investigate and write about?" Send your thoughts to insights@hbbresearch.com Thanks in advance for your ideas, they are much appreciated. Prior Letters Letter#1: The Web Business Boom includes Personality Questionnaire and FREE Report. Learn about yourself and your chances of success Letter#2: The Long Tail Economics includes Personality Questionnaire and FREE Report. Learn about yourself and your chances of success Letter#3: Seven Sources of Web Wealth includes Personality Questionnaire and FREE Report. Learn about yourself and your chances of success Letter#4:  Seven Keys to Web Business Success includes Personality Questionnaire and FREE Report. Learn about yourself and your chances of success Letter#5: Setting up Your Own Web Business includes Personality Questionnaire and FREE Report. Learn about yourself and your chances of succes