Once you've found the perfect business you want to promote or you start generating a regular income from a collection of Income streams you have to start thinking how you are going to manage your money, your advertising budget, your accounts and taxes, as if you are serious about a business opportunity in REALITY - it has a lot of common elements with a JOB except you are the boss.

Being the boss means you have to figure out how to pay the taxes - or get an accountant to do it. You have to balance your working hours - are you willing to work for half the going rate and twice the hours - as in reality there is no get rich scheme - it is all marketing hype and if you are serious about business you need to know the difference between what you are selling (creating the marketing hype that gives value to items through social conditioning) and the actual effort /time you can put in to get the results you want ( sales and commissions = money in the bank).

The only quick way to make money on-line with limited networking/selling experience is to go to a site like eBay or a classifieds site like Craigslist and put something up for sale. They are the on-line equivalent of the shop window or classified newspaper until you can afford a better store front or you get the knowledge needed to market and make sales through experience and tactics.

Other Instant cash/ high Commission payouts require YOU get the message out either by telling friends or promoting in someway - and/or investing your cash rather than earning it - if you put money into a product that says it can do absolutely everything for you it is not giving you the whole picture - as somebody is making money at your expense and it probably cost them money to find you - they did it with a promotion or an advert - and this is what you need to do.

It might mean working two jobs, to fund / invest in your business if it is running at a LOSS (from your investment of cash in advertising in order to make cash) during start up and/or if you don't have any savings to rely on before you start to see returns on your investment ROI.

Working smarter not harder - YES - but you have to learn to be smart in the first place!

Learning to be smart - means: You have to take a good look at the commission plan and/or product/service and decide - is this a legal scheme i.e not a pyramid, cash gifting (tax avoidance) scheme or some other "ponzi" scheme that a business person is just running to extract cash from your wallet without concern of the laws of your State or Country.

Residual earnings and MLM (multi level marketing) are long term plans - i.e most of them take YEARS to bear fruit (cash in your pocket) and they usually require a monthly investment - so unless you are a super recruiter or VERY clued up, most people will fail using MLM as their primary business, or get fed up and move on to something else, fail at that, move on again etc.

Direct earnings - are usually in reality the earnings that you can make on the first two levels of a program - two tier affiliate programs are a good example - the first level is your direct sales of a product or service that earns you a commission, the second level is what you can earn from referring other people to the program you are using (finders fee) / earn a percentage of their sales.

The positive of two tier programs is they will get money into your hands quicker and more often - as you aren't relying on other people down too many levels deep to keep active in order to earn - the downside is that you can't earn from your referrals recruits

- Reality is though that most people find it really hard to recruit and you are lucky to see/benefit past the second level - the hype makes a cool looking chart with levels and residuals - but the chart doesn't pay the bills no matter how much faith you have in it, you need to learn skill sets and ENGAGE other people in conversation by participating in business forums rather than just posting cut and paste - if you do "cut and paste" atleast try to keep it to topic - you are a human not a spambot!!!

The Skinny

So, It's just you kid (a commission only sales manager of sorts) - and those in your team directly below you (a downline, who I call team mates) of equally minded, commission only people with possibley no experience or motivation to do what you suggest/ask as you aren't paying them.

Part 2:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Smarter-Not-Harder-Money-On-line-Part-2