For a good part of my adult life I’ve made most or at least some of my income from my own home business ventures.

My first and still most busy home business is being a private vocal coach.  

About eight years ago I happened upon the idea of starting an Internet business.  I ran into same sales sites selling the idea of working from home and touting how running an online business and selling information products was great because you have no inventory or overhead and it runs itself. 

Well, that is a big pipe-dream, like most work at home scams.

Since I was already a professional vocal coach, and teach techniques that to this day no one really does, I put together my own online singing course.   I’ve learned a lot about running an online business from my singing course, mainly what are some scams you should watch out for and things you need to know. Namely………………………………..

• If it says, “turn key,”  it is a scam.  No such thing as a turn key Internet business site that you just buy from someone and it generates money.     Basically they are trying to sell you websites and web-hosting and then will probably try to get you to buy traffic. They will also probably try to get you to buy merchandise of theirs up front to then re sell.
• Google adwords is a quick way to get lots of traffic.  It’s also an easy way to rack up huge debt.   Google adwords works for some businesses, but unless you can turn clicks directly into sales at very good conversion rate google adwords will cost you money.  A good conversion rate is 3% for a sales site.  The truth is most people who click your google ads aren’t looking to buy anything, they are looking for free information or to just look around.   So, you can see how google adwords can quickly get you in debt and eat up any profit you get from them.
• Buying banner ads or advertising space is huge waste of money.
• SEO companies are a waste of money.   This is especially true today since the google index ranking is weighed heavily on how many sites link to your site.  So, padding pages with keywords and trying to copy off of high ranking pages simply doesn’t work any more.   If what you want is high rankings for your site, you need to get links from other sites.  You can do this by requesting link, reciprocal linking and by running an affiliate program.  If you sell a good product that sells decently you will have many affiliates and many links and go up in the ranks.
• Make Millions On The Internet Your Computer Automates Everything!   Again this is a pipe dream sold by scam artists to people who are lazy yet want to be rich.   Anyone with any sort of online business will tell you that you have to put in real effort.   There is no magic automation system that you can buy that will just do everything for you.  If there was they sure wouldn’t be selling it.  It’s the same old story, some people make more money selling the shovels then they every could actually digging the gold.   Sure there are ways to make money with an online business, but you have do some research and put in the work needed and probably, GASP, learn some technical skills.

You’ve probably heard this before, but it is very true:  If you want to start a business find something you like to do and find a way to make that into a business.   I think that last sentence is very profound.   If you do something you like you will have a passion for it.  If you start a business just because you heard there was money in it, it’s more likely you won’t last long.   I love singing  and vocal coaching and it shows in what I do, that is why I’ve been able to make a living at it.