Who Loves Money Anyway?

You may have noticed already, especially if you've run a search for "Who Loves Money" recently, that there are a lot of adverts, articles and sites out there for this product. Look familiar…?

Who Loves Money – Do you?

Who Loves Money – Is it a Scam?

Who Loves Money – Review

(the last one makes me chuckle. They haven't even released Who Loves Money yet, and already there are people reviewing it!)

You might have even found this article by searching for the more popular terms of "Internet Marketing" or "Make Money Online". What exactly is this, and can the NEXT BIG THING in INTERNET MARKETING be trusted?

First, I want to tell you a story…

There's one thing that we all have in common, regardless of age, race or academic stature, and that one thing is "hope". YOU IMAGINE yourself one day being able to stroll right into the bosses office and tell him exactly where he can stick his low-paid, mind numbingly boring office job. You know, the one that takes you over an hour each day to get to, before being submitted to hours of dull meetings, office politics and the only thing to look forward to is the gruelling commute back home (probably around 7 o'clock at night).

This, my friend, is where "hope" springs eternal. A cursory search on the internet will make it apparently clear that the easiest way to make money online is by DRINKING AT THE FOUNTAIN OF INTERNET MARKETING, or to EMBRACE THE RICH JERK WITH AFFILIATE ABANDON! WoooHooo! I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT! Order me that new Dodge Viper RIGHT NOW! Yes, siiiirrreeeeee!!

There seem to be so many people making money online through internet marketing & affiliate schemes that by now, your common sense has taken over (or should have done! WAKE UP!) and you think "surely the only people making money in this, are the people selling the make money online schemes!?"

Well, you are half right. A year or so ago, I obtained a copy of Perry Marshall's Adwords Guide. A great read, and I would seriously recommend it to anyone interested in getting into internet marketing, specifically pay per click marketing. The problem was that the examples all made it seem very easy (don't they always!), and I was left wondering why everyone on the planet wasn't making their money this way. So over the next few weeks, I poured a whole lot of money into the Google coffers (I kind of figured they could do with a little help on their stock value) and in return I got…. Wait for it…. Drumroll please…. $18.34 in commissions from ClickBank. Not bad for a $80 investment. When it came to losing money, I OWNED the system! The other main problem with the guides I had was they seemed very out of date. Bidding on "Ebay" as a keyword is something which you can no longer do, and the volume of adverts these days just makes it so much harder to follow the examples.

Numerous reports and ebooks followed – including Rich Jerk, Adwords: Chump to Champ, and others I can't even remember the name of.

In the end, I gave up. I couldn't convince my wife that this was going to actually work, so I just plain gave up.

I didn't really give Internet Marketing a second thought until earlier this year when, being increasingly tired of my office job, I started searching around again for new info on IM. I found Day Job Killer – an excellent book, but very sneaky and underhand tactics which I'm not convinced are a sustainable business model, although likely to bring some immediate success.

I finally stumbled upon Wealthy Affiliate. I was incredibly apprehensive about entering into a subscription (they charge $29.99 / month for membership), but hey – the Pound is strong at the moment, and I'd already spent a King's Ransom.

The site forum is worth the investment alone, for getting advice (and I mean 'real' advice from 'real' experts, unlike anything I've seen elsewhere for free), but there are also a wealth of tools to help you such as keyword tools, niche research tools, ClickBank monitoring and much more. However, probably the most useful thing for me is that they offer a very well structured 6 week course, so for anyone new to the game (or that has been failing miserably in the past) you get to start from the basics and work your way up into launching full blown landing sites and ad campaigns and, the newest addition, bum marketing. (Now, this phrase raises a snigger over here in the UK, but basically it means launching into IM with little or no investment).

I've only been a member for a little over 6 weeks now, and already made back my initial investment. Due to other commitments, I am still only on about week 3 of the course. This is the other extremely reassuring thing about Kyle & Carson (the site owners) – they are quite clear in stating that Internet Marketing is hard work! Yes, hard work and lots of it! Don't expect to set up a campaign in 5 minutes and sit back and just watch the profits roll in. You could get lucky of course, but if you do this properly, there is a lot of research to do. This was something that other IM guides had skimmed over, and I found this very refreshing to hear.

So, give it a shot. Visit my blog for the links you need.