Ready-To-Go Website

Legitimate Home Based Business Opportunity

Instant Site

Wouldn't it be great if this proved to be everything it promised and you could sell from or promote from these types of sites, any product of your choice?
 

Just imagine ...

• No need to learn any HTML or download or buy any WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors - free or not
  
  
• No need to know the first thing about web site building of any description. A ready-to-go website is all set up and ready to rock!
  
  
• No need to bother your head about products and how to populate your site with them - ready-to-go websites generally come fully stocked. 
  
  
• No need to go looking for hosts - the website product owner has a contract with one, anyway, or the product owner and host may be one and the same!
  
  
• You don't have to know how or where to place your affiliate ID codes (instant affiliate sites) - it's already done for you
  
  
• No need to worry about which payment gateway is needed - you won't need one for ready-to-go affiliate websites
  
  
• You can be an absolute non-techie newbie, a website beginner, and still own a site of this kind
  
  
• No need to make any changes to your "ready-to-go website" - an affiliate site and even turnkey business sites may have limited features for you to attempt many changes, anyway
  

In short, the images of the products are already uploaded, as are the images of physical products on other legitimate home based business opportunity sites in which you might invest.

In the case of instant or ready-to-go affiliates sites, you may be promoting two or more gurus' eBooks or software programs. All that's needed is a domain name which you can choose and then let the host company know. Then, "hey presto!" It's done!

But beware! If these types of so-called "legitimate home based business opportunity" schemes seem too good to be true to a website beginner, then they probably are! Just take a moment or two to consider the following.

Let's say you fall for the sales pitch to purchase an instant affiliate site marketed by a so-called "guru". Whether you're a website beginner or not, you may be drawn to the ads that these business owners display.

The packages may go by extremely enticing and promising titles which may be prefixed with any variation of the following: "legitimate home based business opportunity" or "ready-to-go website" or "new online income opportunity" or "instant websites" or "ultimate" or "wealth" or "cash on demand" to appeal to our need or greed for "easy" or hassle-free earnings. If you get sucked into this "dream," then make sure it does not turn out to be a nightmare!

Before you sign up for either type of home based business opportunity package, ask yourself a few questions. Why are these people setting up ready-to-go websites for a website beginner like you or me? Is it because having made millions, themselves, or so they claim, they want to "give something back?" Give me a break, please!

Who benefits, most, from you running such a site, even when you've chosen a "free" domain name to attach to this site?

Let me spare you the time and headache of finding out for yourself. Whoever benefits, most, from this type of legitimate home based business opportunity, sure as heck it won't be you! There's no disputing the fact that a number of these business opportunities are "legitimate." But will they be profitable for you?

That's debatable! You will be promoting their selected products. So, even if you are able to persuade your website visitors to click on the affiliate link and then actually buy the product from the product owner's website (assuming your visitors manage, somehow, to find your web site among millions in the first place), the product owners will get 50% for each item sold. Why shouldn't they? It's only fair!

But at what cost to you?

• Where are you hosting your "instant affiliate website" or your "turnkey business website?" You got it in one! At their chosen host which may cost you anything from $10 per month upwards, forever, or for as long as you choose to hang on in the hope of making a profit some fine day. And if the host's services suck (you won't know, until it is too late), you'll have no way of transferring the site elsewhere! Walking away from it may be the only option open to you.
  
  
• Guess what? Almost certainly, the people you buy the website from will be getting commission from the fees you pay, each month, to your (sorry, their) chosen host for hosting your latest home based business opportunity with its ready-to-go website. They may even own the hosting company! So whether you make a dime or not, these product owners will still get either a slice or all of the cake for which you will be paying a regular sum, each and every month, to host your website. It's called an "recurring income stream." Nice!
  
  
• How do you get your traffic to your website when you are no where near being ranked by the search engines where prospective customers may find you? Advertise, of course! You may even get Yahoo or Google Adword bonus vouchers up to the value of $50 with your purchase! Away you go!
  
  How long do you think that is going to last you before you have to fork out the same or much, much more each week, in the hope of attracting the volume of traffic you need to break even, if you're lucky, let alone make a profit?
  
  
• If you don't know the first thing about Adwords and PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising and how this works, you will not be aware how easy it can be to clock up hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, each week without getting any sales whatsoever because some idiot decides, for fun or malice, to click your ad repeatedly - just like a prankster who rings your doorbell and then runs out of sight!
  
  
• That's right! Whether or not this bright spark who's developed "click fever" intends to buy the product that you are promoting, when your ad is clicked, you pay Google however many cents or dollars, per click, you may have bid on a given keyword.
  
  
• Even experts have had their fingers burned with this exercise, one to the tune of $12,000+ in one month, without getting the desired results for which the ad had been placed! He circulated an e-mail not only to admit to his error but also to alert the unwary! I happen to know that he could afford to lose that kind of money. But could you?
  
  
• What about "free" or "organic" traffic? What about it, indeed! You will not know, until it is too late, that many of these business opportunity packages do not provide you with the facilities to optimize your site with appropriate keywords.  So your web site will not appear anywhere in Google's ranks except, perhaps, at the very bottom of the heap because due to the nature of your website, you may not be able to add any or sufficient content which is of any use to anyone searching a word or phrase in Google, Yahoo or any other search engine you could care to name!
  
  
• Search engines are not keen, we are told, on cloned or sites that are catalogue types which merely show images of products with a few words that serve as captions unless, of course, you happen to be Amazon.com with a multi-million dollar advertising budget! But even the latter site has hundreds if not thousands of pages of content on its site.  Fancy being ranked #162,000,999 or even #62,999? You may as well not bother!
  
  
• Oh, yes! You could write endless articles and submit them to this eZine or that, in the hope that people flock to your web site. But hang on! Don't these business owners promise you that their "legitimate home based business opportunity" would be a good way of making "easy money" without much or any effort on your part?
  
  
• Given that there is limited facility for making your site look distinctive (you may only be able to change the domain name and, perhaps, the background colour of your website), how many other cloned and almost identical affiliate web sites to yours are there, out on the Internet, promoting the very same products? Well, your guess is as good as mine!  But I can promise you this much.  Google will not consider these to be content-rich or relevant to the searches carried out by its users.
  
  
• And another thing you can be sure of is that every such website purchaser thought it cool to take the "easy" way into launching an online business or thought that it was a "win-win" situation which could not fail to prosper.
  

Let us now consider those "ready-to-go" or "turnkey business" websites that allow you to sell physical goods like CDs, DVDs or cameras, etc. You know the kind. These are all set up and ready to sell from a "stocked" or "product populated" site and which are advertised by either genuine or not so genuine business sellers or drop-shippers. The products for sale can range from small items like those mentioned, above, to washing machines.

On the face of it, it seems perfectly okay and the business may even work, IF (and it's a big if) you have thoroughly researched each opportunity under consideration.  And you are lucky enough to find a true wholesaler-cum-dropshipper.

Look up product review pages on the Internet and visit Forums to find out if anyone has anything positive to say about them.  Do a Google search, typing in the name of the opportunity and adding the word "report" or "review" before clicking the "search" button. 

However, not all companies who claim that they are drop-shippers are, in fact, worthy of that term. Often, they are middlemen (not being sexists but the word has just the meaning I need to get my point across).

These types of "drop-shippers" are middlemen between their new site-owning member (you), and the true wholesaler from whom they purchase the goods that are 'stocked' on your turnkey site. So when you add your mark-up to the product net price (after all, you purchased this business opportunity to make a profit, right?), Value Added Tax (the drop-shipper's not yours), and don't forget the postage/shipping charges you have to pay the drop-shipper, your products may not be competitively priced to sell anything from the existing stock. Or if you do, other unforeseen costs you have not factored into your pricing equation may still render your product a loss-maker. Too bad!

Of course, a few drop-shippers of this type may give you permission to sell their stock on eBay. They may even give you permission to upload images of stock items of your own choosing which you may purchase from another source, altogether, and sell on the same site and alongside the existing stock.

Will you make money owning such a website? Well, it may work, if you are techno-savvy and manage to find a reliable and genuine wholesaler/drop-shipper for those items already stocked on your ready-to-go website and also items you have sourced for yourself.

And, the host company that is meant to support your website actually provides you with the prompt and helpful service promised without charging you an arm and a leg for the privilege!

If not, then it has inherent problems which may cost you more than you bargained for in time, money, energy and the most precious commodity of all, your good health!

• Unlike the ready-to-go Affiliate Site, the physical goods package which may be geared towards for example, selling mainly DVDs, you may get a site that looks really good and it may even have a detailed cPanel (control panel) which allows you some flexibility.
  
  The difficulty is that these types of businesses attract those of us who are website beginners, novices at site-building and have little or no knowledge or skill in making the necessary adjustments without risk of messing up the site, altogether (don't ask what the host would charge to remedy that disaster), or reaching for the Help Desk of the Support Department for every detail.
  
  
• Just like the Affiliate Site, you may have no choice as to which host supports your turnkey business website or your ready-to-go website. And here is where the fun really begins.
  
  Although you may be given what the host considers to be detailed instructions and even a number of video tutorials to demonstrate how you should do this or that, inevitably the day will come (usually within the first few hours, days or weeks) when you discover that the instructions (in text form or video) don't cover everything that you need to know in order to make your site do what you want it to do. This is when you also discover that this seemingly "inexpensive" business opportunity isn't so inexpensive, after all.
  
  
• Every tweak to your web site that you request (because you don't know how or you may be too afraid to attempt it, yourself), you will be charged a fee by the host if the host deems it to be an "extra" or excluded from the terms of the basic contract!
  
  
• Held to ransom, you have little choice but to pay up! This could be anything from approximately $20 to $200+ a tweak. Even so, you will have to wait, oh, so patiently, for the host to find the time to attend to this.
  
  
• If he does so, promptly, great! If not, you risk a sharp rise in blood pressure with each e-mail or 'phone call plea for help that goes unanswered for days on end. All the while, your site remains inactive and your earning potential during this period - zero!
  

Why do you think your host may not respond to your e-mails and telephone calls for help within the four-24 hour period promised? After all, wasn't this supposed to be a "legitimate home based business opportunity," complete with full support?

Surprise, surprise! Your host may be running his own "legitimate home based business opportunity" (for example) alongside his hosting services.

You mustn't be surprised, therefore, to find that his direct customers (you will be an "indirect" customer) will have priority over your needs. So your requests for help and support may be considered as unwelcome distractions from and irritation to his more lucrative enterprises otherwise known as "multiple income streams!"

How do I know all this? Okay, you've guessed it! Despite my careful research (or so I thought), I fell for the hype and had my fingers burned badly on both counts - instant affiliate site and also a ready-to-go website selling DVDs supposedly from a wholesaler-cum-drop-shipper. By the time I discovered that this drop-shipper was no wholesaler and that the host was running a business opportunity or two of his own, and that the quality and manner of service offered by him left a great deal to be desired, it was too late! I'd already bought into the scheme and spent far more than I had been led to believe would be necessary!

The aim was to use these types of businesses to earn and learn a little while I began the process of building my own websites using either HTML or a WYSIWYG editor. Whilst I learned a great deal from these "adventures", I made absolutely no money from one of the "opportunities." Quite the reverse, in fact.
 
Despite the relatively high costs already incurred with the website from which I hoped to sell DVDs, I decided to cut my losses and run, particularly as I did not have a single purchaser/visitor to this site in months!

I also gave up on the affiliate site after just one week when, barely a few hours after the purchase, the site owner seemed to disappear into ether (no response to my e-mails) and the host, too, failed to assist to enable me to gain access to my site! At least, with the latter purchase, I managed to get an immediate and full refund from ClickBank!  To protect yourself from vendors who may not refund your money, see the final section at the end of this page under the heading "PAYMENT METHODS FOR ANY ONLINE PURCHASES".

If you choose to go with one or other of these types of business opportunities, then ask a lot more questions, in advance, than I had information to base my own queries. Visit independent forums where previous purchasers may have left valuable information. Read every review on the product you come across and if you get a positive "feel" about the product, then begin a systematic campaign to get answers from the business opportunity owners before you commit.  Okay, so it may take a few days more before you're ready to make a decision.  But it will be well worth the wait.

Bombard the instant affiliate website/drop shipping business opportunity companies with several e-mails and/or telephone calls and gauge when and how they respond.

• Ask the affiliate or drop shipping company for the name of the host which will be supporting your site.
  
  
• Then visit the host's own website and take a good look at the entire site for tale-tell signs which may suggest that this company is more than just a host company.
  
  
• If you see nothing to suggest that they have another business interest beside hosting, ask them if they also offer business opportunities in which you may be interested in investing? If they are running another business on the side, they'll be only too keen to launch into a sales pitch! Alternatively, subscribe to their newsletter. If they do have other business interests, you'll soon here about them! Oh, I almost forgot! Don't tell them, at this stage, that you might be considering taking up a "turnkey" or drop shipping company's business offer which may be hosted with them.
  
  
• Once you are satisfied that they offer hosting services (domain names, registration, etc included) only, then bombard them with further email queries about what is included and what is not included in the annual hosting fee.
  
  
• Ask them what the cost of "extras" might be. For example, what if you don't care for the standard header designs (where a logo is usually placed) and you wanted, instead, to change any aspect of it to suit your own ideas?
  
  
• What if you wanted to use a particular font style or colour in the header for the name of your website?
  
  
• What if you wanted to use a third-party auto-responder?
  
  
• What if you wanted to change the order in which the products are arranged on the Home/Index page?
  
  
• What if you wanted two panels instead of three on the website?
  

I'm sure you get the picture! Then sit back and wait for their email responses.

• Ask the drop shipping companies concerned where they purchase their stock to load your website. Don't expect them, however, to tell you the name of their wholesaler! That information is gold-dust! 
  
  If they mention anything about a "sister company" being their dropshippers, then watch out because that "sister company" may well be their wholesaler! If you know of a real wholesaler, see what the difference is between the wholesale price offered to a trader (like you intend to be) and the price the drop shipping company will charge you for the same item.
  
  If you find that after adding tax, shipping and other related costs your drop-shipper will charge you, that the net price is appreciably more than the wholesale price (tax inclusive), for example by as much as $1+ for a DVD movie, your drop shipping company may be a "middleman" rather than a true wholesale merchant, also.
  
  
• Ask both the business opportunity seller and the host company what happens if you wish to discontinue the contract for any reason.
  

PAYMENT METHODS FOR ANY ONLINE PURCHASES

• If you choose to purchase anything online but particularly one or more of these types of businesses, pay via either PayPal for physical goods (setting up an account is almost instant, free and very easy - all you need to provide is your e-mail address and details of your bank account) or ClickBank for digital goods, ie downloads (you don't need to have an account with ClickBank - just a credit or debit card).
  
  If neither ClickBank nor PayPal options is offered, use a credit card for your purchases so that you may have some way of getting some or all of your money back should the worst happen.
  
  If your purchase of this type of home based business opportunity proves to be all hype and little or no substance, and your request for a refund is refused by the business opportunity sellers and/or host, you can request a refund from ClickBank or raise a dispute with PayPal (whichever service is used at the time of purchase).
  
  ClickBank will refund your money within minutes of a request made directly to them.  PayPal's rules are slightly different and may take a while.  But in any event, make sure that your request for a refund to these merchants are made within the time specified. Check both payment processing and gateway websites for information relating to disputes and/or refund requests.
  

Am I advising you against such website businesses? Of course not! I am merely alerting you to a number of possible pitfalls that you may or may not encounter with those companies that may not be as reputable and/or profitable for you as you would wish them to be.

More importantly, I'm also giving you useful information which I wish had been available to me when I was researching the ins and outs of these types of business opportunities, knowing little or nothing, at the time, of setting up an online business.

Had I succeeded in finding a similar website to this which gave as much detailed information, I would have saved myself a lot of problems, expense and unnecessary delay.

Based on my experiences, together with your own knowledge, skills and inclinations, you may be in a better position than I was, not so long ago, to judge whether or not you are buying into a legitimate home based business opportunity and/or whether or not a ready-to-go website will, in fact, suit your needs.

The decision is entirely yours.  Good luck and tread carefully!