Has anyone ever actually earned any money on the internet (and I mean legally!) - there seem to be a million and three opportunities but they all look too good to be true - any advice?
There is a well-known phrase - "If it looks too good to be true ... it probably is!" and that applies on the net as much as anywhere else. Think about it, if any scheme was so fabulous, why would you share it with a load of strangers for free! About the only way of making money is using the auction sites, and that requires the same level of outlay and skill in time and money as any business. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.
Making money from the internet is seriously difficult. The good thing is its very cheap to set up but the big problem is advertising and getting people to come to the site. Traditionally this is done by massive amounts of advertising for example Amazon did this but its very expensive and you would'nt expect a return for a while (I think this is the first year Amazon have turned a profit). The second is word of mouth, freindsreunited for example benefited from this.
The only people to make money from websites are those who developed sites that looked like they had huge potential which were then bought by larger companies and then the bubble burst and all the investors found there's little return from websites.
Agree with most of what's said - if it looks too good to be true etc, but if you mean make money from the internet rather than by setting up a website or something there's been quite a lot of stuff in the paper recently about people who have given up their full time shops to sell on ebay and they've had very high turnovers. As for setting up websites unless it's mega original or whatever chances are you won't succeed.
thanks very much for all these answers and advice - and don't worry Becks - I too am blonde! I told someone at work today that I was going on holiday a week on Scotland...
If you have a site which people primarily use for information without any pressure to buy then (if it's good enough) you'll get lots of visitors.
If you get lots of visitors then you can have a big banner ad across the top of your page and make money from advertising rather than asking the punters to give you money.
Wait a minute, this sounds familiar...
Also, once you have lots of visitors to your site (which has tons of info on.. "shoes") you can start to sell these shoes and accessories as your audience will trust you by then.
To earn a lot of money on the internet is a simple, simply click ads and other tasks every day and try to invite as many people as possible to the site, here's a list of the 20 best websites of the genre: