So what was the result of these two months research? I’ll summarize it in one sentence:

You will fail in your Online Business.

It’s sad to read about it but surveys and research have showed that 95-98% of all those who try to earn online through an internet-based business will fail in the first year. From the remaining 2-5% that actually succeed in the first year, only 1% will last the first 5 years.
Everyday, more and more people are getting interested in having an online business. More and more people are become part of the statistics of failure. Why do people fail to earn online income and fail to succeeed in their internet business? I’ve researched on those questions and read so many ebooks, articles and discussions and I’ve narrowed it down to these four: Information Overload, Wrong Approach, Lack of Determination and Discipline. There are other reasons people will fail but these four are the most prevalent and disastrous.
Let’s discuss each one.

Information Overload
There is just too much information on the internet especially on how to earn online. You’ve probably received offers on your email, ads on websites, posts on your favorite blogs. There seems to be a lot of people that earn online income. Many of these so called internet business “gurus” would encourage you to buy their products. Just when you thought you already bought the best formula for online success, you’ll receive another email saying that this system is better than the rest.
You’ll also read tons and tons of webpages claiming to be legitimate sources and giving unbiased reviews but in the end they are just promoting products. The more “informed” you are, the more confused you get. In the end you’ll just give up because of the confusion and frustration.

Wrong Approach
Opportunistic approach vs Entrepreneural Approach.
Opportunistic approach is what most online business seekers use. To describe it best, I’ll quote Rich Schefren from his highly rated free ebook,”The Internet Business Manifesto”:

An opportunity seeker is always looking for their big opportunity to make lots of money from the hot opportunity of the moment. Their only criteria is, “Can I make money from this?” So today it’s Adsense, tomorrow it something else, and yesterday it was some other hot concept already forgotten. Opportunity seekers buy lots of products, and they use only a few of them, and the ones they do use get abandoned when the next so-called “easy” way to make money comes by. The question they ask themselves is, “What?s the easiest way for me to make money right now?”

On the hand, the entrepreneur (those who use an entrepreneural approach, has a clear vision of their goals for their online business. Quoting, Rich Schefren again:

A true entrepreneur, on the other hand, is a completely different animal altogether. An entrepreneur has a clear vision of what they want the business to become. Because they have a vision they can analyze their own strengths, their competitor strengths, the marketplace preferences and devise different strategies for achieving their vision. After reviewing the pros and cons of each strategic alternative they pick the one strategy most certain to successfully achieve their vision. The entrepreneur knows that their biggest opportunity is always inside their business, following their ideal strategy and not the hot product that everyone is mailing for this week.

Lack of Direction
Having no sense of direction in your business is a good sign that it will fail. Without a proper system, or business process, you’re efforts will be wasted and scattered. Lack of direction also means you don’t have a clear goal or target and concrete methods on getting those goals.

Lack of Determination and Discipline
The last, but definitely not the least of all reasons why people fail to earn online income is they lack determination and discipline. If you’re an opportunity seeker, you’ll be frantically moving from one system to another, not giving enough time for each system to be fully implemented and succeed. Like all businesses, an online business needs effort and attention. If you don’t allot time and energy for your business, it will not succeed. If you have the get-rich quick mentality you’ll fail, big time. You need to be determined to succeed, and disciplined to focus on the system you have carefully selected to reach your business goals.

If you are experiencing the four reasons why you will fail to earn online income through your online business, don’t worry. Here’s four ways to ensure that you overcome them.

To avoid information overload, stick to one approach.
This doesn’t mean you stick to only one system forever. You just focus on one approach first, and focus on learning all about it. For example, if you selected to base your online business on Pay Per Click schemes, make sure you know everything about doing PPC. Don’t try to mix and match methods simultaneously. This way, you filter out the information you receive. Another good practice is having a separate email address for your online business and for your personal use. This way, you can focus on reading personal email and not be distracted with all the email offers and tempting bonuses you get in your inbox. Once you mastered one method you can move on to another.

To avoid having the wrong approach, adopt an entrepreneural approach.
I highly suggest you read Rich Schefren’s Internet Business Manifesto, The Missing Chapter, and The Final Chapter. These are FREE business PDFs that have been download by millions because of their empowering content. You’ll also discover the biggest reason internet business owners struggle and fail and why it’s not too late for you to start and grow a successful business online. To download the said PDFs, just click on the download link at the end of this post.

To have the proper direction in you business, select a good system or process.
Without a proper system or process, you can waste your efforts to earn online income. But how do you know it’s the right system? The answer lies in you. If you know your strengths and weakness, you can easily find a system that fits you, thus making it easy for you to follow it.

To have determination and discipline, ask yourself why you want to have an online business.
It’s easy to start something and if you’re not totally committed to it, it’s even easier to give up. Knowing why you are in this business will drive you to succeed. Perhaps you are in this to give your family a better future, perhaps to give yourself an early retirement. For whatever reasons, just focus on those and you are sure to drive yourself to succeed.
You should also have a good support system. This can be in the form of a business coaching program, friends in the same business that you can communicate with, or through memberships to established online business communities or forums. These can help you when things gets you down or when you’re getting a little lost.

In conclusion, You will definitely fail in your online business if you meet the four reasons above. But with proper guidance, focus, discipline, and determination, you can overcome failure and succeed in your busines to earn online income you deserve.

To download Rich Schefren’s FREE PDFs, Click Here.

Passive income is income from trade or business activities in which you do not materially or actively participate in generating that income. For example, your day job generates your active income since you actively participate or work for that income. If you have investments on stocks or shares or bonds that actually earn profit, then that’s your passive income since you didn’t actually work for the profit. It was your money doing the work for you.

Why is passive income good?

The most obvious reason why passive income is good: you’re not working actively to earn it.  You do some work (e.g., invest in stocks) and that earns you income while you’re sleeping. It’s supplemental income to your main income source. Who wouldn’t want to earn extra income?

Why earn online income?

In my example above, I mentioned investing in stocks as a passive income generator.  But one thing to consider about investing in stocks is: you need money to earn money.  To earn more money, you need to invest more money. Why? An investment of 100 dollars earning at 50% would earn 50 dollars.  If you want to earn 500USD you need to invest 1000USD. The higher the target the earning, the higher the investment. But the risk of losing money in stocks investment is also high, your initial investment of can be lost overnight when the value of the stocks go down. Imagine, you invested 100 dollars then the value of the stocks you invested in goes down by 10%: you end up losing 10 dollars.  Stock prices volatility (instability) is a hard reality of investing on stocks.

Now let’s  look at earning online income, specifically from affiliate marketing. To go into affiliate marketing can cost you money, but the beauty of it is, you can also do it for free. The basic strategies of affiliate marketing actually doesn’t cost you anything, and you can use the free services in the internet, like blogging and article writing, to promote and market.

How can something free earn you something? What’s the catch? Well the catch is, you have to invest a lot of efforts initially. Your initial effort will then produce income for you, while you sleep, or while you do your primary work or active income. Another benefit of earning online income is that it can be exponential. You may earn small change in the beginning but this will grow and accumulate over time as your marketing strategy propagate across the Internet.

In Short

Having an active income is a good way to sustain a regular and consistent income. But if you find yourself looking for additional income, consider learning passive income sources like how to earn online income. You can try affiliate marketing for free, removing the need to invest a lot of money just to earn passive income.  All you need is do is dedicate some time and focus regular effort, and soon you’ll see the income trickle in.

If you want to learn how to do affiliate marketing, check out this free training program from Ewen Chia, one of the most successful internet affiliates marketers. The link is:

http://earnonlinenow.net/recommends/affiliate/

You can also try his Autopilot Internet Profit System where he shows you the basics of affiliate marketing and how to automate it.  The link is:

http://earnonlinenow.net/autopilot/

Work from Home Internet Success System screenshot

So here’s how my review went:

Why I got interested in this product

When I saw the sales page for this product, I was impressed by the amount of claims that seller, Ewen Chia, posted. To his credit, he was able to provide some realistic proofs, even confidently showing personal photos. For me, that’s a good sign. Some sellers would never include their personal info, let alone their personal photos.

Some of the claims that this product have that appeal to newbie internet marketers are:

• There’s no signing up friends and family.
• There’s no face to face sales pitches.
• There’s no selling over the phone.
• There’s no spam emails.
• There’s no pitch “parties” to host.

Since I was looking for a totally internet, hence, online, based system, I got more interested.

Here are some additional claims:

• …is NOT stuffing envelopes.
• …is NOT selling personalized books.
• …is NOT posting classified ads.
• …is NOT a chain letter.
• …is NOT collecting email addresses.
• …is NOT filling out surveys.
• …is NOT surfing websites.
• …is NOT data entry or “home typing.”
• …is NOT shopping for cashback.
• …is NOT a pyramid scheme.
• …is NOT poker or gambling related.
• …is NOT spamming email addresses.
• …is NOT in the adult industry.
• …is NOT MLM or network marketing.

Ok, those claims were enough for me to give it a try and test it. I clicked on the Click Here to Work From Home Now button and paid for it, confident that if I don’t like it, I can get my money back (it has a 60 day money-back guarantee).

So what’s evaluation of the Work from Home Internet Success System?

Advantages of Work from Home Internet Success System

1. It gives a very good introduction to Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.
2. The videos are short so you can stop and absorb the lessons properly
3. It covers all the basics from
   - choosing the right niche
   - evaluating products to sell
   - giving tips on how to avoid being scammed by vendors
   - to setting up your system, following his process
4. The presenter is honest enough to tell you the truths “sad” about affiliate marketing.
5. The points taught are more on the practical side
6. The bonuses included in the product are worth more than what I paid for the product.
7. The bonuses are very helpful to get you started, especially the audio files.

Advantages of Work from Home Internet Success System

1. Some of the example websites are not the latest, I mean, one of the pages has a 2008 ad on it. But even though it’s outdated, the lessons are still applicable.
2. It’s just a personal preference but I wish all the videos have audio only versions. (But I found out how a workaround to this. Contact me to know how I did it).

My Verdict

Ewen Chia’s Work From Home Internet Success System is a very good product for those who have zero or little knowledge about Internet Marketing. The tutorial course is very easy to follow and cut into “bite size” chunks. It also offers a lot of advanced tips and techniques to help those who already have some ideas  about affiliate marketing succeed.

With a lot of products out there that promises you instant success and profits, this product didn’t just claim it, but also explained how to do it. It’s now up to you to apply the lessons and start WORKING FROM HOME.

Click here to get Ewen Chia’s Work From Home Internet Success System.

Here’s an excerpt from his official website:

More Information About Ewen Chia
Striving to earn extra income, Ewen started learning the internet business in 1997. For 5 full years, he worked on his internet business part-time, every single day from 11pm – 3am while still holding a full-time day job.
He was extremely motivated to build a better life for his family and to clear credit card debts. After years of perseverance, learning and very little sleep, he started to make real money online and it hasn’t stopped since.
From his experience as a self-taught internet entrepreneur, Ewen decided to teach other people and companies how to use the internet to create wealth.
He has created tons of proven materials, both online and offline, to teach Internet entrepreneurship around the world in order to help people.
Ewen is so passionate about teaching the internet business because it can truly help you live a better life and achieve your dreams. Anyone who is willing to learn, put in effort and take positive action can change their life with the internet!

Here’s a list some of his recognitions:

• “The World’s #1 Super Affiliate”
• #1 International Best-Selling Author, Trainer & Speaker
• In November 2006 (Singapore), Ewen received the first ever World Internet Summit “World Internet Challenge” award for starting a brand new Internet business from scratch and generating US$80,000.00 in 3 days from that very business – right in front of an amazed audience of 1,000+ participants!
• Best Speaker: World Internet Summit 2007 (Australia)
• Best Speaker: World Internet Mega Summit (Singapore)
• Ewen launched his first print book, “How I Made My First Million On The Internet and How You Can Too!” in February 2009. Within 24 hours of launch, the book made internet marketing history by hitting the #1 BESTSELLER LISTS on both Amazon and Barnes & Nobles at the same time!

Now, if I am to emulate anyone in this business, it’s definitely going to be Ewen Chia. His life story is something I can relate to, and he has made a business of helping people, he earns when people earn: sounds fair enough.

After reading his profile, I bought a couple of his products, the Autopilot Profit System and the Work from Home Internet Success System. I’ll be trying them out and will update you guys with a review.

Stay tuned!

1. Work from Home is literally WORK at home.

Let’s get something straight: when you say work from home, it means you work or do something to earn a certain amount of money and you do it at home, your refuge, your shelter. Since there are thousands of work from home opportunities, there are a thousand possible ways you will be working.

In most cases, the ratio of effort to income is 1 to 1, or your income is proportional to the effort you put in. For example, doing surveys. For you to earn a lot of money it in, you have to do a lot of surveys. I’ve never read or heard of someone who earns a thousand dollars just by answering 1 or 5 surveys.

So what if you need to work hard? Some may even say, “There’s nothing wrong with working hard, it’s honorable.” Ok I agree with that 100%. But when you do work hard and focus on whatever you’re working on, you run the risk of taking up the time that should be spent with your family (unless you’re single).

In one survey done on work from home moms that I came across, one of the comments of the respondents, was “what I miss most from my day job was going back home.” Think about that.

2. Work from Home is not equal to Internet Marketing.

Internet marketing is just one of the work from home opportunities you can try. A lot have tried this online income opportunity, a lot more have failed. But those that did succeed, they are now bragging of 5-figure monthly incomes.  What does this mean? It means that the result of work from home endeavors are varied, and you should invest a good amount of time researching about it.

3. There are no guaranteed results.

If you encounter people saying that you’ll earn xxx amount of money in xxx amount of time, GUARANTEED, stay away from those people. Unless you’re a full-time employee of a company who’s willing to let you work from home, there are no guaranteed income in work from home opportunities.  You may have contracts for projects that run for months, but, as with all contract jobs, there is a risk that those contracts fold. I’ve come a good article about work from home scams here:

http://tinyurl.com/nj2ro

4. Work from Home opportunities are not free.

They will cost you something, one way or the other. Like the old saying, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”, work from home activities will incur costs. This can come as utilities expense  (i.e. electricity), equipment costs (your computer), and consumables (ink for your printers, stationery, etc.).

You should treat it like a business: separate your personal money from the money that is for the business. It’s one of the most common mistakes that people do, causing them to burn holes into their pockets, instead of stuffing them with money.

5. There are a LOT of work from home scams.
Invest a lot of time in researching the Work from Home opportunity you are planning to take up. Like all popular opportunities, there will always be malicious people who will try to scam you. Try searching Google with  ”Work from home scams” and you’ll get more than 20 million hits.  Don’t let those fancy, catchy ads lure you. “Look before you leap”, as they say. Again, try reading this article:

http://tinyurl.com/nj2ro

I know there are more things you should know but those 5 items above can be a good start.

As for my ongoing research on earning a good online income, I’ve invested 3 days worth of lunch money to buy an information product about working from home and earning through online means.  I’ll be posting a review of the product in the next couple of days; I’m still trying to absorb the massive amount of information it offers.

Thanks for reading, and see at the next post.

By the way, below is the ad that got me skipping 3 meals.