6 Comments so far

1. seriouskidding on July 30, 2007 9:42 am

   This blog has a fundamentally excellent premise: dispense with the hype and help others to become successful at attaining a revenue river of income. No pretenses, just straight-ahead useful knowledge and the business opportunities to make it happen. I bet there’s a good story behind how you came up with the name “Revenue River.”

2. Jeanie Marshall on August 12, 2007 10:04 am

   Google ads are now so ubiquitous that it is a wonder that many people still click on them and that owners make much money. I have multiple web sites (six to be exact), and have carefully chosen where I think Google ads are appropriate and where not — and I mean just appropriate from my point of view for me.

   I do like having control over the content of what is shown on my web sites, or at least on certain pages. I agree with you that on this site, it is far better not to introduce potential confusion. It models that there are, indeed, multiple streams on Internet income.

   And I do like the name “Revenue River” — it is a clever and succinct name. I look forward to your future posts.

   Jeanie

3. Walter Paul Bebirian on August 12, 2007 11:23 am

   A long time ago -back in the year 2000 when I won my website from American Express and IBM was designing it, I can up with the idea to not place any ads on any of my web pages since ads were a great deal of anti public TV from the word go - of course there were sponsors and endorsements etc. as there still are today but most people that I remember watching TV all of the years that I have been watching as well - have disliked and perhaps still dislike ads - so why would I think that things have changed because we were told as newbies to the net to place banner ads here and there and we would get traffic or if we sponsored ads then that would get people to visit our site or any of the other reasons people have been encourage to spend money on advertising -

   Wel to this day ((aside from banners and buttons that send individuals to additional sites where my work (images both photographic and digital abstracts) are available - there remains no ads whatsoever on my web site!

   thank you!

   Walter

4. Scott Allen on August 12, 2007 12:22 pm

   @Brad - Thanks for stopping by!

   @Jeanie - I just had an issue with someone on my About.com site who felt they had been scammed by an advertiser on my site. They said they assumed it was safe, since it was on my site, and I apologized, but said that it was impossible to do that, given the nature of ad networks. Google doesn’t even do any more than a very basic preliminary check when you first sign up. They do listen to complaints, but even one complaint usually won’t get an advertiser removed — it takes several.

   @Walter - I certainly understand and respect your practice. The thing is… you have a huge body of existing work to draw on… hundreds of photos and artwork. What about the person who doesn’t have a product of their own? Or even who does (as I do), but recognizes the value in monetizing the process of telling other people about good products? That’s what I’m trying to help people with here.

5. Walter Paul Bebirian on August 12, 2007 1:47 pm

   Great question Scott -

   First - let’s look at the definition of an entrepreneur:

   a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so

   Now from what I understand about oganizing and operating a business - there are quite a number of ways of doing that - the simplest being to purchase the products from a source that makes it - hire the salespeople to market and sell it and of course have one or two people recording and reporting on the in flow and outlow of money and the profit from the venture - while the owner watches his tool (which is his money) and makes sure there is sufficient amounts of it at various important points along the way.

   Is the definition above changing so now that the risk is totally removed from the equation?

   It would appear to some extent that many of the programs that are offered to individuals on the Internet to begin and operate their own businesses tend towards creating that illusion -

   Of course there are many situations where any individual can either, for free, or for a pitance have a template web site set up in their name where there is also set up a situation where a bit of income is to go towards them if in fact a sale is made from their own personal website or if another person signs up in the program due to their viewing the web site of the first person and then a sale is made from that person’s website - This is of course a legitimate system of the parent company allocating some of the marketing and sales revenue to the potential customers instead of all towards the more traditional large media buys which they may of may not have the ability to purchase, but at the same time it often puts our newbie entrepreneur wanna be - in a precarious position of not necessarily knowing how to ethically get the word out about the opportunity that he or she has bought into -

   And then there are those google ads that everyone wants to add to their pages or the pay per clicks and of course the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) where everyone begins to behave like a bunch of ants climbing up to the top of the hill all landing on top of each other and who could possibly imagine that they out of all the millions of others attempting to get the that illusory top - will be the one not only to be the winner - but that that top spot - of all thiings - would in the least assure them of billions of dollars in sales -

   Nope - as far as successful networks and products and systems go - a company - an organization - or a person has to be so far outstanding and in a position so far away from the others that (as it is described in “Linked - the Science of Network”) they are in a position to embolden the law of - winner takes all - an enviable an highly coveted position to be in - as well as a natural law as decribed in the abvove mentioned book.

   By the way there are some over 12,000 of my images available on-line at this very moment and the number is growing as I write -

   Now perhaps we can go back that definition and discuss and try and figure out what could possibly be meant by a greater than normal risk - and then we can begin to take the next step!

   thank you!

   Walter

6. Scott Allen on August 12, 2007 3:20 pm

   Walter, the concept of “sweat equity” is centuries old. One might even say that the old apprenticeship model was a form of it, though not quite in the same sense as today.

   But yes, absolutely, today it is more possible than ever before for someone to start a business with little or no money out of pocket selling other people’s products and services. In fact, the model is nothing new, either. People have been able to do drop-ship business for years — you don’t have to purchase and stock inventory to have a business selling other people’s products. Or consider a consignment store — it’s pretty easy to put $100,000 of merchandise on display if it’s all on consignment. Or what about manufacturer’s reps? They’ve got a great deal going… not only do they not pay money out of pocket to sell other companies’ products, in some cases they charge money up front to even start selling the company’s products.

   Of course, when it’s services or information products, there’s no product to inventory, even if you wanted to. So certainly, the internet opens up all kinds of opportunities in that regard.

   Now if you don’t spend any money signing up to sell someone else’s product, then you really can’t say you’ve been ripped off. Or if you recoup your investment, you didn’t get ripped off. For that matter, if you feel like you got your money’s worth in some other way, even if you didn’t recoup your investment, you didn’t get ripped off.

   But yes, you’re going to have to put in some sweat equity. Some other company has spent the money to develop the product, create and refine the marketing tools, etc. It’s not too much to ask that you put in some sweat equity. And at that point, you’re an entrepreneur. As soon as you run the risk of working for less than minimum wage, you’re an entrepreneur. That’s “greater than normal” risk. For that matter, if you risk working for less than what you could get paid at a 9-5 job, you’re taking on “greater than normal” risk.

   The thing is… people think it’s going to be easy… that “no prior experience is necessary”. Maybe so, but therein lies the problem. This is a business, and if you have no prior business experience, you can expect to make a lot of bad business decisions. You have to evaluate an opportunity on more than just how good the copy on their squeeze page is.

   And that’s what I’m trying to help people do here — make good, solid business decisions, not impulsive moves based on marketing hype. There are good opportunities out there, but they’re few and far between. What I want to do is show people why I decided on the things I have and why I decided against others, in the hopes that it both presents them some good opportunities based on my own due diligence, as well as gives them some insight into evaluating other opportunities they may come across.