"It's not the size of the dog in a fight but the size of the fight in the dog."

Turnkey Online Businesses - The Sad Reality

By Pearl Deloria

Millions of people are looking for that dream business, one where you just have to buy a package, switch it on and the money rolls in, without you doing a thing. It is a dream.

Even businesses that are sold on this turnkey model, require you to spend time and money promoting your business.

Turnkey Businesses you will find include online pharmacies, porn sites and gambling sites. You will be snowed under with the number of website template sites, hosting promotion companies and logo design opportunities. These markets are all very competitive and you will need to spend a lot on site promotion to get your site to the first few pages of the search engines.

You will also find affiliate schemes and people who claim to have made a fortune just as affiliates. Most of these people are lying.

An affiliate scheme pays you a percentage of every sale that is made from your site. The company provides the site, but your site will only be found if you spend money on promoting it.

Affiliate products can be solid ones like books, CDs or clothes. The method also lends itself to the sale of downloadable software, newsletters and affiliate marketing plans.

Internet marketing is still most often used to sell the dream of Internet Marketing to naive individuals who expect to make thousands of dollars in a few weeks. Indeed the marketing copy often promises just that, with a few legalistic disclaimers for the vendor's protection.

The idea of a book salesman earning all of his money from recruiting other book salesmen is called Multi-Level Marketing (MLM). MLM is illegal in most countries. Yet that is what most Internet Marketers are selling.

Forget it - it does not work. Too many people have gone before you. The gold is all gone.

99% of those who venture onto the Internet to make money fail. They spend money indiscriminately, buying unrelated products in their search for the Holy Grail.

They fall victim to Information Overload, switching tracks every three or four days and getting distracted from an idea that would work, given time, to another idea.

There are a few simple rules that will help reduce your chances of failure;

· Lock your credit cards away
· Read, read, read
· Research online, research in books, research by talking to people
· Analyze your own talents, likes and dislikes
· Build a business around an interest that you already have
· Stick with it

Many people dream of running their own business and of giving up the day job. Most of these only have the most basic of skills needed and recognize that their business would not stand a great chance of success.

A franchise is the answer for many of these would-be entrepreneurs.

A franchise works by the franchiser selling a business plan to the franchisee. The fee paid may include marketing, a site, vehicles in company livery and training. Franchise businesses have a much greater chance of success because the franchisee has training, guidance and supervision in the early stages. This support is expensive and the franchisee may have to pay a percentage of turnover or profits to the franchiser.

You may find franchises from unscrupulous business owners who have decided to offer franchises in an unproven business to make a quick buck. You need to research any potential franchise in great detail and to make sure the franchiser is part of a Franchise Member Group. If possible you should talk to others with the same franchise and try to benefit from their experience.

Franchise operations do offer a supported and easier route into running your own business than just going alone, but there can be heavy upfront costs.

Home businesses come in many varieties; from Internet based, to office cleaning, from car bodywork repairs to dental drill repair franchises. The scope is enormous.

There are many franchise operations that sell themselves as home-based businesses. The ones above will give you some idea of the range available. What most people mean when they are talking about home businesses are Internet opportunities. These really are home-based businesses that can be run by someone at home, in between looking after the children and shopping.

Many people have spent money buying Internet businesses and never got a penny back. The so-called gurus make money by telling people about their own success methods and marketing techniques. This market is overcrowded and very, very few people make any money in it at all.

About the Author: Pearl Deloria has a background in management, including SMEs. For more Internet business related information check out Turnkey online business or Internet Marketing

Source: www.isnare.com

IMPORTANT….KEEPING YOUR PERSONAL INFO SAFE

By Bill Wallmuller

Technology today has made our world much smaller, and has given us amazing tools such as the Internet, high speed Personal Computers [ PC’s ] and medical technology that we could only dream about no so very long ago.

With the good comes the bad. Many today have their privacy invaded by unscrupulous groups and individuals in our society intent on obtaining personal information by whatever means. These thieves have the tenacity to use the very technology that has been truly beneficial to everyone and use it against the unsuspecting public. The identity thieves trick the unsuspecting public and gain this personal information via such methods as hacking personal files on the Internet and using rouses like spam and other tricky techniques such as phishing to steal your identity.

Understanding how the unscrupulous obtain this private information help us to look at ways to make it harder for these low-lives to play their game.

Thieves can use even the most mundane of personal details to help them “verify” that they are someone they aren’t. One of the most common ways of obtaining personal details is “trash bin raiding”. This tactic is surprisingly common in affluent areas and is spreading out of towns to the countryside; with 75% of local authorities now admitting it happens regularly in their jurisdiction.

An exercise carried out with the support of the English Nottingham City Council and Nottingham Shire Police analyzed the contents of hundreds of household bins to see what people were throwing away. It found that a whopping 86% of domestic rubbish contained information helpful to fraudsters.

Three quarters of the bins that were checked contained the full name and address of at least one person from the household, while 20% of trash bins contained a bank account number and other data that could be linked to the name and address of a person from the house.

So don’t keep all of your bills, receipts and other personal documents in an obvious place and if you can lock it away, do so... If you don’t have anywhere to lock it, try and keep it somewhere out of the way, or separate it out.

Consider investing in a good paper shredder! Shred any documents that you do not need any longer instead of just tossing the paperwork into the trash.

Identity thieves will also try to dupe you into giving personal information either in person, over the phone or by using fraudulent official sounding e-mails. And of course, today’s personal computers can hold plenty of information useful to fraudsters. It is very important that we use proper firewalls, use reliable and up to date anti-virus software and programs that can identify and weed out spam, trojans or other mal-ware.

It is in your best interest to be wary. Be suspicious of anyone seeking too much personal information, and don’t be afraid to challenge them by asking “why do you need those details?” – a legitimate enquirer won’t mind you asking. Make sure you store all important documents and details, such as your birth certificate, national insurance number, receipts and bank statements, in a safe place.

As mentioned earlier, anything containing personal information that you intend to throw out should be destroyed before it is put in the trash bin. Using a household paper shredder is not taking things too far. If you think you have become the victim of an identity thief, report it to the police, local authority and relevant government departments or companies immediately.

We should also keep personal information stored on computers in “encrypted” folders. Encryption scrambles the contents of your chosen folder so it cannot be read by anyone else. You can “unscramble” the contents using a password. Many well-known software companies offer free downloads to help you with encryption, or encryption can be an option under your standard operating system.

Making sure that all our private information is kept from roaming eyes may not sound too hard to do. But there are many people who are aware of this problem, know how to protect their data, but either through neglect, laziness or just not taking the time to do what is suggested, are sitting ducks for the personal data thieves. Please….don‘t let you or anyone in your family be that person.

About The Author: Mr. Bill Wallmuller aka Mr. Merokee is the founder of Merokee Enterprises and Webmaster for Merokee Dot Com. You can find out more about personal security and defense technology by visiting: http://www.personal-defense-technology.com/ and surveillance equipment by stopping by: http://www.surveillance-equipment-technology.com/

Title:Watch Out For That Scam
Author: James Junior

Article:

The IFCC (Internet Fraud Complaint Center) received over 200,000 complaint submissions for 2004, an increase of 66.6% from 2003. The total dollar loss from all referred cases exceeded 68 million dollars, an average loss of $894 per complaint. There are many types of internet frauds that exist including auction, email, foreign investment letters and online dating. Here are some ways to identify a possible scam or fraud that you may have encountered while surfing the internet.