I thought I'd let you all know of an experience I had recently that taught me a very important life lesson. I'm hoping if people read this, they will be able to avoid making the same mistakes that I have made. The story revolves around my quest to give up my day job (tedious database programming) and make money from home by setting up a residual income stream that would keep me comfortable and free up my time to reacquaint myself with my family.

I've been intrigued by the Internet since the mid-90's. My interest was what actually led me to database programming in the first place, but now I realise that I should have spent some more time doing resource before I jumped in the deep end and started studying for my diploma. Sure, it's a job, and it can be rewarding at times, but the hours are long and for the most part, the clients are fairly thankless.

Whenever my job starts to get me down, my mind starts wandering to other ways that I could make money from home. As a result, I have done a lot of research on this subject, and realised that it's like trying to find a straw of hay in a pile of needles. I got pricked many many times before I finally found the straw.

Where do I start? I could go on forever and ever about scams, tricks, time wasters and brain suckers that absolutely, positively, don't work.

Let's start with the "Get Paid For Clicking On Ads" variety. There are literally thousands and thousands of these websites that you can sign up for that will pay you money to click on their advertisements. Once you become a member, they will either send you x amount of emails per day with ads for you to click on, or you log into their site each day and get your list of ads. If you enjoy clicking on ads, and can do it 12 hours a day, then with some of these sites, you may just make enough to cover your Internet expenses, but that will be about it. The people who run these sites, in the meantime, are sitting back and watching the dollars roll in. You get 0.0001 cents for every click, and they get about 30 cents. Who do you think has the better deal?

Here's a similar way that doesn't work; doing surveys. Similar to the last model, you complete a survey and you get a certain amount of money for doing so. In the meantime, you are telling these advertisers so much about yourself, that you may as well just open the floodgates of your inbox and let the spam start rolling in. This also is tedious work, the monotony of it will put you to sleep long before you get your first $5.

The next culprit is making money when other people click your links. I have to admit, I had a little bit of success with this method (if you can call $10 a month a success). Basically, you sign up for a program like Linkbucks, you feed their program a link that you want to share with someone, and they give you back a modified link. When you give your friend that link, it will still take them to the original web page, but it will also display a pop up ad. You get a couple of cents every time that ad is displayed. Like I said, I made a little money with this method (about $80 all up), but the ethics of it started to bug me. I realised that all I was really doing was spamming my slowly dwindling list of friends.

And then we come to blogging. Blogging, believe it or not, is the answer. Blogging is a way you can actually start making money from home. However, blogging in the traditional sense is not going to make you a red penny. Most people hear that you can make cash blogging, they set up a blogspot account, and start telling the world what they had for breakfast, and how much they hate their boss, and wonder why they aren't rolling in riches.

One Final Mistake

I have been in a lull for the last couple of years. Work has taken up all of my spare time, and I have pretty much given up on the concept of earning cash from home. Then, a couple of weeks ago, a story came on one of the local "current affairs" (for want of a better term) shows about a program that will allow you to quit your day job and be self sufficient. This peaked my interest again and I decided I would sign up and give it a shot.

I'm not going to give the name of the company, because I really don't want to advertise them in any way. I will however explain to you their model. That way you will recognise it if you come across it and steer well clear of it. You sign up as a member of their program (a subscription fee of $30 a month) and on a monthly basis, they provide you with information on Internet Marketing and ways that you can profit from it. The information that they provide is really substandard, and to a large extent just copied from other people doing the same thing. There is no structure and absolutely no support. If there is something that you don't understand about the training, then you are on your own.

All of this training is really just a thin layer to disguise the fact that what they're doing is promoting their own business. Now, their business is a website that offers punters free stuff online. You sign up for free, go on their website, and earn points for clicking on ads and answering surveys (sound familiar?). Once you get a certain amount of points, you can use them to bid on a free item.

As a marketer, they expect you to offer up the free gift that their punters will fight for. In return, it is your ads that they will be clicking on your ads to earn their points. The end result is, you end up with a heap of traffic to your website. The only problem with this is the demographic that you are targeting is "People Who Want Free Stuff" aka "People Who Aren't Going To Buy Anything From Anyone". This is not a smart way to make easy money online.

Once I had uncovered this thin veil of deceit, I quickly got out of their program. If you come across these guys (and you will recognise them if you see them), I urge you to steer clear. If you want to start creating passive income, there is a much much better way.

After getting out of the program mentioned above, I started to remember, in the dark recesses of my mind, the names of three people who I came across in my travels that seemed to be genuine about what they did, and had some really good advice. Their names are Griz, Courtney and Vic, and if you Google that, you will have thousands and thousand of hours of reading on the subject of Internet Marketing, and all the information you receive will be top quality. 

So I started seeking these guys out again, to see whether they were still in business and whether they were still succeeding. To my surprise, I found that not only were they and their legions of followers still all buzzing around, but they had stepped it up a notch.

Turns out, Courtney (last name Tuttle, and yes, he's a guy), is now offering a service called The Keyword Academy, which, by coincidence, costs exactly the same amount of money that the aforementioned scam cost. I couldn't believe my luck, and it took me all of 5 seconds to make a decision on what I was going to do.

I haven't looked back since. This course is just incredibly rich with knowledge. The first months subscription only costs $1. Yeah. that's right, $1. And you can cancel whenever you want without any penalties. I can absolutely guarantee you that you will get so much good information and support for that $1, that you will want to be a member for life. They have a dedicated forum for members that are helpful and supportive, and constant updates on what is going on in the world of Internet Marketing. But for me, the step by step tutorials are the golden egg. Using the methods they outline, I can finally make money from home. Don't be deceived, it is hard work and long hours to begin with, but it is tried and proven. These guys are teaching you exactly what they do.