So You Want to Be an Internet Millionaire

So You Want to Be an Internet Millionaire?
Times are tough in today's economy. People are losing their jobs and are grasping at whatever get-rich-quick opportunities abound on today's Internet. There is no doubt that money can be made using your laptop or desktop personal computer, but to think that this is going to bring overnight riches is only going to result in significant disappointment.

In 1996 I found myself out of work and \"over qualified\" for most of the positions I applied for. I decided that I should use my desktop with its 2 meg of RAM and blistering 300 baud modem with its AOL
connection to find my way out of poverty.  Boy, was I in for a surprise.  I thought that my 40 hour work weeks were going to become a thing of the past and that the cash would start rolling in. I will admit,
the 40 hour work week did soon became a thing of the past. It turned into 100 hour work weeks with no paid vacations and those floating paid holidays I had enjoyed with GTE were nothing more than a
fond memory. But I kept at it.

Eventually the work weeks dropped down to only 50 hours a week, but it took time and perseverance. As they say, Rome was not built in a day.

So, what is the point of this article? As the Director of Business Development for a web hosting company,  I have had the opportunity to watch the influx of new customers that have come flocking to us
because of the type of hosting we provide. I have occasion to field telephone calls from some of these new customers and I am frequently hearing, \"I just lost my job so I wanted to start promoting items onthe Internet.\" More often than not these people add that they have never purchased a domain name, much less tried to build a network of websites.

Several companies that promote the aforementioned opportunities will recommend a web host such as ours due to the fact that we offer multiple Class C IP ranges, which will enhance your network. While I cannot argue with the logic I am going to suggest something that one might think is turning away business, but I prefer to look at the big picture and long term results rather than the quick easy dollar.

I have been promoting the idea of owning a network of websites long before I became involved with our hosting company. However, one must walk before they can run. This means I would much rather
have a customer purchase a basic hosting plan with one IP for $10 than to immediately jump in and purchase a plan with 10 to 50 IP's only to discover two months down the road that this is harder than they thought, or that the results were not instantaneous.

It is my personal opinion that one should learn how to build a website, become familiar with the host's control panel, and learn a little about traffic generation prior to diving in head first to a project that is
time consuming and will likely cost you money before you begin to see a return. Our typical customer stays for years, but that is because they are Internet savvy and did not begin by trying to build 50
productive websites. I see the cancel requests and the reasons of \"it is not working for me\" or \"I do not have enough time to manage multiple sites.\" This could have easily been avoided by purchasing a
small basic plan then upgrading as they became more familiar with the process. So while we may have made a quick $100, I would much rather have the client purchase small, learn what they were doing,
then upgrade as necessary.

You can become an Internet millionaire, but first you must become an Internet hundredaire. Think big, but start small.