I hear talk about people being very successful at online businesses and they are not scams. However, when I have looked I can't find any that don't cost anything to start up. Is the only way to make a good income online is start a blog/website or call centers? It just seems like there's this big secret that no one is letting me on.
Please note that I am already a member of enough GPT sites. I keep thinking about making a website but I don't think I'd be any good at it. For one thing I wouldn't know how to generate people to the site. I can't even generate people to the GPT sites (the few times I have got referrals they did not follow through. I don't understand it. They're always asking to make money online yet it seems they don't want to put forth the effort)
I am probably wasting my time because none of you probably know but surely there is something out there that I am just not finding. I looked at Telex Free yesterday and it wouldn't even let me join.
Another thing I was thinking about was dog sitting but then I remembered that I could not do that because the landlord does not allow animal visitation and I don't want to go to someone else's house to make say 20 bucks if it means I can't do the GPT. It would be pretty counterproductive.

I was looking at other side jobs but none are available in my area. TaskRabbit sounds great if it wasn't the fact that it was limited to a few areas.

There is Craigslist but I tried selling some of mom's books on there and nobody replied. I don't think I'll have luck selling my junk anywhere online. I tried Ebay once. I hear you can sell used toilet paper rolls but my luck I won't sell them.
The best Online Business is your own, .... and your own business model!

There are far too many pyramid schemes and sites out there that want your money, but dont guarantee anything. Doing a google search, the first 80 pages in the search are likely these schemes fishing for someone to buy into with false promises.


I have run a few businesses in my lifetime. "Every time" I ran a start up business scheme that was someone elses business model it failed, and almost every time I ran my own, it was a success.

A business not of my own is best summarized by my experience with Amway. Where there were required commitments where you have to buy into the idea and PRODUCT line and then try to find people to buy this junk. If you were able to sell this idea to others and the others found people to buy this junk, then you would receive a percentage of the sales of those below you in this pyramid scheme. The furthest I made it was 8 people under me, and the biggest problem I had was no time to really sell the stuff on my own as for I was trying to help those below me sell through them to retain them and form the building blocks so that I could remain on top and receive the percentage entitled to me based on the pyramid structure. But this scheme just plainly stinks, its originally designed to reward members by building the pyramid and tap into the sales of those below yourself as for the time invested in training the people and supporting them if suppose to be rewarded as a percentage of their sales, but personally I started to feel like I was trying to sell people on a false dream almost as if it was a legal con scheme and retain people to avoid the collapse of the pyramid. I then threw in the towel on Amway. ( Some people are obviously successful with it, or it wouldnt exist, but not me. )

Businesses that I started that were successful ( for 5 years ) Online were buying and selling collectables on ebay. This started out just to make some spare cash, but then turned into making thousands of dollars buying low and selling higher. I was able to find collectables at yard sales, stores that sold collectables that didnt know what they had or had it priced too cheap, as well as was buying collectables privately to sell on ebay. Buying privately I required valid ID and documented everything because my biggest fear in this business was people looking to unload stolen items cheap and have you get cought holding the bag unknowingly selling hot items. I only had one person contact me and then pull out when I required ID and written documentation. They backed out stating that they didnt want a paper trail and it was because they didnt want to have to pay taxes. I told them sorry charlie, I wont do business with you if you wont verify legal ownership with valid ID etc.

I sold on ebay from 1999 to 2004 and made lots of money. Not enough to be considered rich, but my average profit was 50% on my investment, where some investments you would make a killing buying something for 25 cents at a yard sale and selling a Star Trek "First Print" in mint condition of a book from 1971 for $35, or a 1833 Half Cent purchased from a dealer as damaged for $12 which was actually a mint error clipped planchet that I spotted and I sold for $250, or Atari 2600 games that I got in a box all for just $20 and sold the games individually, all 83 of them for $4 to $20 each. I ALSO was buying old 1970s and early 1980s hand held games cheap broken, and fixing them and selling them for good money such as the VFD Mini Arcades for Donkey Kong, Pac Man, MS Pac-Man, Galaxian, and others in which I would take a dead game and fix it using my electronics knowledge, clean it up to as perfect as I can get it, some were dinged up by years of abuse, and then sell them from $40 to $200. One of which was battered but worked and another was dead but like new. I swapped the electronic guts to have a working like new unit and made almost $200 on that one since I also had the original box, so it was an original with original box in mint condition, but with working good guts from a battered arcade that worked but EVERYONE turned their NOSES up at its condition.

The downfall of this online business was not the business really as for it was booming, but my lack of dedication to it. I had a child in 2004 and put a lot of stuff on hold to make my child my #1 priority. Since then though sources of collectables to buy inexpensively to make quick profits have dried up some. A collectable dealer retired and I was able to buy a bunch through him in bulk and mark it up to resell for its full worth on ebay. It was good because both of us were making money by him selling stuff quickly in volume and me taking the time to list it all on ebay and make the profit in the difference between the purchase price and sale price - advertising expenses ( ebays cut etc ).

Today my business is mainly my services. I work for the government as an electronics tech, and on the side in my free time, I will help people with computer problems, but I am not looking for business, the business I already established with clients keep me plenty busy for extra income. At one point in the past I did try to run the computer repair business and live off of just that income and there were lots of periods of Feast and Famine, tons of work and then it dries up because everyone is happy and has no more work for you. *The other issue with keeping peoples computers working well and getting paid for it because I work on them and build them up so well is that I only make money when they need help, and that is because my clients are smart and dont download and infect themselves regularly etc, and computers are extremely reliable if well cared for, so 18 months or longer can go by before I hear word from a client that they want me to work on their system. When I advertised myself it was Feast and Famine, and sometimes you felt like you were being force fead work and working 15+ hrs day to make deadlines or having to call a client to see if its ok to deliver a day later than the agreed completion date is not a good thing, and you cant hire help to take the stress off during the times of thriving with tons of work because you will have to pay their salaries when there is no work to be done. Its not so bad if you jip yourself running your own business and say well I only made $150 this week and need to make 4x that, maybe next week will be a better week, but having to pay help a hourly wage during a time like this is very painful for a business owner and it can put you in the red very quickly since you also have other expenses in addition to their hourly wage that you are legally commited to.

So out of all this ... the best advice I can give is to ignore all the businesses out there that want money to start a business. Start your own, and learn from mistakes and dont give up if its really what you want to do. Read lots of books on starting a home business etc as well and see if there are any local workshops etc on how to start your own business (which is starting "YOUR" own business and not "Their" business. )

I went to a SCORE workshop which was advertised by my local bank. I paid $20 and sat in on a meeting in which successful business owners shared their time to assist others with how to start up their own business. At the time when I went in 2001, I was actually the only one there getting advice on starting and online business, others there were wanting to start a businesses that were physical labor and stores etc, but I got my $20 worth. I learned a lot and I was given contact info in case I needed any further assistance. Here is a link to SCORE to check out. http://www.score.org/

Good Luck with your Online Business. If you have something that people want and can compete and make a profit and can be happy doing it, you will make money and will be successful. You just need to find a nich that works. You cant just say for example, not meaning you, I am going to start up and Online Crayon Business and sell my own colors of crayons and have it be successful. There are lots of factors to look at, and it all starts with writing up a business plan and performing lots of research before investing any money and commiting to a business idea to make sure that the idea you have is one that is viable and your odds of FAILURE are less than your odds of success. Only about 1 in 5 businesses make it as I was told in the Score workshop. Thats only 20% success, and lots of money 80% of the people out there sink into failures. But dont let this keep you from trying, you could be the 1 in 5 that is successful, and the odds are in your favor if you control the outcome by lots of hard work.

For me the ebay business was instant success because I tapped into the advertising and popularity of this online tool. If I tried to sell through my own private website it would have been failure without lots of money invested in trying to get my business name out and getting people to visit and buy my products. Just think of the millions if not billions of websites out there that we haven't seen and may never see in our lifetime that are trying to sell something among the noise of the others out there. Ebay was the perfect tool to connect my items for sale with the world since I sold worldwide.