Since I have produced 5 informative hubs on making money, I figure out that I might as well produce another one to give some general common sense advice on making money on the net. Generally, there are two sides of the net money equation, publisher and advertiser. Web publisher makes money by selling advertisement or using affiliate programs. Advertiser makes money by selling products (online merchants) and again, affiliate programs. If you are a hubber, you are most probably a web publisher. Just be honest, we don't just marry hubpages, we are married to Google Adsense as well. If there is no such monetary incentive, I doubt there will be any author on hub pages. And that is how hub pages make money...from your ad clicks. I write for fun but to be honest, I am mostly driven by adsense as well. I am sure many of you think of it the same way, writing articles after articles, all the while hoping that someone will read and will actually click for more information. Wishful thinking...

Anyway, in the world of internet business, there are certain programs that you need to be aware of. The first business model to avoid is paid survey programs. Firstly, most of the offers are junk...and if you sign up for any of the offer, be prepared for an avalanche of spam. Tried that last year but fortunately, I opened a separate email account for that one. Total emails to date..about 90000 junk mails, all promotional offers and more annoying calls from telemarketers. My advice, never ever buy into any paid survey programs. It will not make you rich. The only internet freebie website program that legitimately works is Project Payday. But even then, if the market gets saturated or they run out of offer, you are out of luck. Kiss your $39 goodbye...

Another program to avoid would be MLM programs. The money is made when you recruit people into the business. Easy business, eh! Recession time, people are desperate for money and so a new business is created where the business is to con people into going into business. I would not give out names here but there are certain programs on clickbank that provide absolutely no value at all...garbage...the business is to promote the program and get paid when new people join the program. When you are at the top of the pyramid, you are safe. What about those folks at the bottom of the pyramid. The product is promoted over and over again until the market becomes very saturated. Then, those at the bottom of the pyramid could not find new people to join and they lose their money.

I was a member of a "making money online" membership program once but later decided to quit because I got disgusted with the way it works. Again, no names here! It was not very suitable for newbies because you are pointed to several directions, you can do A or B or C or D and the list goes on, whatever suits you. But the main point that was repeated again and again was this: If you want to make money, promote this membership program and they show you the calculation of how much money you can make by promoting the program. Then, a few months into the program, they came up with a new product and we were all told that this is going to be the next hot thing. So, all the affiliates started promoting the product...like an army of zombies! Saw it everywhere, on Squidoo, on Google front page, and tens and hundreds of similar review sites with similar story line popped up on the web, all promoting the same product. I knew where they all came from. I finally got disgusted and quit. I can't believe it! The program founders were actually using us to make money. But luckily, I found a very good making money online membership site which provides quality information to its members and most importantly, the only thing the program founders got from us was the monthly subscription. We were not told to promote the program to make money and they were also not using us to promote any of their products. They gave us the information we need and we are free to explore our own options. True enough, for beginners, it is always better to start as a web publisher...I finally got the direction I need...not choose A, B, C, D or E..like the first one

Alright, I think I have been talking too much about money, I will stop right here and I will continue my next hub with more recipes, fitness and gift ideas...

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