The short answer is “yes,” because some people are actually doing it. However, there are more people losing a lot of money trying to earn millions online. A realistic scenario is somewhere in the middle, where one is earning enough money to make it worthwhile.

If you’re a starry-eyed newbie who has just come to realize the income potential of the internet, or if you’re one of those people who coast from opportunity to opportunity trying to find the right one, this article just might be for you.

Let’s start by examining the multitude of opportunities to make “unlimited” income working from home just a few hours a day. Every one of these claims to be “different” and not at all like those other “scams” out there on the internet. In fact, their testimonials often use such language as “I thought it was another one of those scams, but I trusted my instincts on this one, and am I ever glad I did!”

Several of these business opportunities point to the unlimited residual income that grows as you build your “downline.” If you don’t know what a downline is, think of it this way: you recruit five people underneath you, and you get a percentage of their sales. They each recruit five people under them, and you get a percentage of their sales, too. And so on. You can see the exponential possibilities here.

Let’s say that you really do get five people, who get five more, who get five more, and so on. Five layers into your downline equals 3,124 people. Wow, that’s a lot of potential. But of course, everyone in your downline wants their own downline. So if we progress 5 more levels down, that’s 9,765,625 people involved, with you at the top.

Of course, you’re not at the top – you’re embedded in someone else’s downline. Let’s say you’re 10 levels deep from the top. This means that at the bottom of your downline, there are 95,367,431,640,625 people involved. Since the world population is only 6,515,000,000, this is an impossibility.

This means that the promotion that is offered to you, and in turn, the promotion you offer everyone else for “unlimited income” is a lie. Of course, they argue that not everyone gets 5 people in their downline. The number 5 is usually thought to be that magic number where there’s enough critical mass to build up to a residual income. So either way, it’s a lie.

Let’s look at another model. Many people start with a product or idea. They develop a website around this, and they wait for traffic to come in. Then they realize that they need to advertise, but of course, they’ve just spent a lot of money getting their website set up, so they don’t want to buy expensive advertising. So they buy cheap advertising, which usually means popups, popunders, or banner ads.

Let me ask you this. Have you ever made an online purchase because of a popup ad? Maybe you have, but I’ve never met anyone who has. They’re usually too annoyed by the popup to bother reading it. Many people have popup blockers these days. And for those ads that can bypass the popup blocker, web users often close the window before it fully loads.

Of course, some ads are set up so that when you try to close the window, four or five more windows pop up. I guarantee you most people will NOT be in a mood to make a purchase at this point.

As of this writing, it seems that the best way to earn money online is to build an opt-in mailing list. In fact, internet guru Matt Bacak suggests you should start building your opt-in mailing list before you do anything else. (If you do a search on Google, you’ll find that he has published many articles on this topic.) Your contact with your subscribers should be based around building trust and credibility, and offering products that would be of interest to them for which you are an affiliate.

Some suggest that this model is losing its freshness as more and more people are figuring it out and getting on the bandwagon. The people who figured this out first have made millions of dollars, often just by teaching others how to do it.

Is it still possible to make millions of dollars running an online business this way? It’s still possible, but it’s more difficult. The competition is tighter. But it’s still possible. You just have to be better than your competition. How do you do this? You have to invest in the learning opportunities that these internet gurus provide.

First, get on some of their mailing lists. Try some of the tips and suggestions they offer for free. When you start to see which ones offer the advice that best suits your needs, invest in an audioprogram or an ebook. Continue to learn and refine.

And don’t expect to make millions overnight!

Holly Zenith
http://www.hollyzenith.com/sq.html